Social Thinking: Attitudes & Prejudice

1. Social Thinking: Attitudes & Prejudice

2. What is an attitude? • Predisposition to evaluate some people, groups, or issues in a particular way • Can be negative or positive

3. Has three components • Cognitive: thoughts about given topic or situation • Emotional: feelings or emotions about topic • Behavioral: your actions regarding the topic or situation

4. Components of Attitudes

5. Effect of Attitude on Behavior • Most likely to behave in accordance with your attitude when: • Attitudes are extreme or are frequently expressed • Attitudes have been formed through direct experience • You are very knowledgeable about the subject • You have a vested interest in the subject • You anticipate a favorable outcome or response from others for doing so

6. Attitudes Affecting Behavior • Many studies suggest a person’s attitudes do not match their actions • Attitudes do determine behavior in some situations: • If there are few outside influences • Behavior is guided by attitudes specific to that behavior • Behavior is guided by attitudes that come to mind easily

7. Behavior Affecting Attitudes • Under some circumstances one’s actions can influence attitudes • They include: • Foot-in-the-door phenomenon • Role playing • Cognitive dissonance

8. Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon • The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request

9. Role Playing • Playing a role can influence or change one’s attitude • Zimbardo’s Prison Study (Stanford University) • College students played the role of guard or prisoner in a simulated prison. • The study was ended after just 6 days when the guards became too aggressive and cruel. Dr. Phillip Zimbardo

10. 1919-1989 Cognitive Dissonance(Leon Festinger) • The theory that people act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) they feel when their thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent with their actions • When our attitudes are inconsistent with our actions, we change our attitudes to reduce the dissonance.

11. How Cognitive Dissonance Leads to Attitude Change

13. Justification of Effort • Justification of effort refers to the idea that if people work hard to reach a goal, they are likely to value the goal more • They justify working hard by believing that the goal is valuable

14. Prejudice

15. Prejudice • A negative belief or feeling about a particular group of individuals • Based on exaggerated idea that members of other social groups are very different form members of our own social group

16. Keep in mind… • Racial and ethnic groups are far more alike than they are different • Any differences between groups are far smaller than differences among various members of the same group

17. Categorization • Tendency to group similar objects • May be a means to explain stereotypes

18. Stereotype • Generalized belief about a group of people • Are sometimes accurate but often over-generalized

19. Studying Stereotypes • 3 levels of stereotypes • Public - what we say to others about a group • Private - what we consciously think about a group, but don’t say to others • Implicit - unconscious mental associations guiding our judgments and actions without our conscious awareness

20. Implicit Prejudice • People may often have implicit unconscious prejudices even when they do not have explicit prejudices.

21. Ingroups & Outgroups • People’s social identities depend on the groups they belong to • From a person’s perspective, any group he belongs to is an ingroup, and any group he doesn’t belong to is an outgroup

22. Discrimination • In social relations, taking action against a group of people because of stereotyped beliefs and feelings of prejudice

23. Scapegoat Theory • The theory that prejudice provides an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame

24. Accounting for Prejudice

25. Prejudice and inter-group hostility increase when different groups are competing for scarce resources People are prejudices against groups that are perceived as threatening to important in-group norms and values Two Theories

26. Reducing Prejudice • Research shows that prejudice & conflict can be reduced if four conditions are met: • The groups have equality in terms of legal status, economic opportunity, and political power. • Authorities advocate equal rights. • The groups have opportunities to interact formally and informally with each other. • The groups cooperate to reach a common goal.