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Attitudes and attributes (Y1) - Coggle Diagram
Attitudes and attributes (Y1)
Attributions
Heider-Simmel Illusion (1944) - test the hypothesis that people have an innate disposition to assign attributions and personality traits to shapes as if they are agents
Theories -
Heider - theory of naïve psychology
Jones and Davis - theory of correspondent inference
Kelley - covariation model
Weiner - attribution theory
Heider - naive psychology - three principles
Behaviour is motivated
We search for stable and enduring properties of the world
Two sources of explanation -
-> Internal (dispositional) - e.g. personality and ability
-> External (situational) - e.g. situations, social pressure
Correspondent inference (Jones and Davis, 1965): When do we infer internal causes from behaviour?
We like making correspondent inferences - attributing behaviour to underlying disposition
Dispositional cause is stable - help us to predict
Five sources of information / cues to make a correspondent inference:
Freely chosen behaviour
Behaviour with few non-common effects (effects of behaviour relatively exclusive to one behaviour) - outcome bias (believe they choose that outcome)
Socially undesirable behaviour
Important direct consequences for self - hedonic relevance
Intention to benefit / harm us (personalism)
Covariation model - Kelley -
How do we explain people's behaviour; identify what factor (internal dispositions / external environments) covaries most closely with the behaviour
Assign causal roles
Three classes of information that are assessed -
Consistency - how does the same person act in response to same stimulus
Distinctiveness - how does the person act in response to stimuli that are similar but not the same
Consensus - how do other people act in response to the same stimulus
Low consistency -> attribution of discounting (search for different cause)
High consistency + distinctiveness + consensus -> external attribution to stimulus
High consistency but low distinctiveness + consensus -> internal attribution to the person
Attribution theory - Weiner, 1979:
How do we explain our own task performance and other people's
Three performance dimensions -
Locus - performance caused by the actor (internal) or by the situation (external)
Stability - cause unstable or stable
Controllability - future task performance under the actors' control
Controllable, stable and internal -> typical effort
Controllable, unstable and internal -> unusual effort
Controllable, stable and external -> consistent help from others
Controllable, unstable and external -> unusual help from others
Uncontrollable, stable and internal -> ability
Uncontrollable, unstable and internal -> mood
Uncontrollable, stable and external -> task difficulty
Uncontrollable, unstable and external -> luck
Culture and attribution
WEIRD Research - Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic (Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan, 2010)
Individualistic v collectivistic cultures - Miller (1984) initially do not differ in the proportion of internal attributions
Clear difference by the age of 15
Americans are more internal than Indians in their attributions
Lee and Seligman (1997) - self-serving bias is weaker in collectivistic cultures
Causal attribution plays a role in how we experience emotions - emotions are made of physiological arousal and cognitions that label this arousal and determine the emotion that is experienced
Arousal and label go together and our thoughts can generate the associated arousal
Sometimes there is initially unexplained arousal that could be experienced as different emotions, depending on the attributions we experience
Schachter and Singer (1962) - Emotional lability - if emotions depend on what cognitive label is assigned, through causal attribution to undifferentiated arousal, it might be possible to transform depression into cheerfulness simply by reattributing arousal
-> Misattribution paradigm- those with anxiety asked to redirect their attributed arousal internally to external factors
-> Criticisms - emotions are not labile, environmental cues are not readily accepted as bases for inferring emotions from unexplained arousal and because it is unpleasant it is negatively assigned
Rotter's locus of control theory
Attributional Style Questionnaire - Peterson et al, 1982 - Kelly constructs
ACS - Attributional Complexity Scale (Fletcher et al, 1986) - measures individual differences in the complexity of attributions that people make for events
Biases in attribution
Fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977) - the tendency to see other people's actions as internally caused, rather than situationally caused, even when there are clear external causes
James and Harris (1967) - US participants read a speech that was either pro or anti Castro, which was either freely chosen or instructed to write
DV of true attitude - degree of choice was larger between choice condition than no choice condition
Actor-observer bias - Jones and Nesbitt, 1972 -
The tendency to see other people's actions as internally caused and their own as situationally caused - even when explaining the same actions
Self-serving biases - we tend to make attributions that satisfy our desire for a favourable image of ourselves - observed across many cultures (Fletcher and Ward, 1988)
Self-enhancing bias - positive / success -> internal attribution
Self-protecting bias - negative / failure -> external attribution
Self-handicapping bias - make a public eternal attribution for anticipated failure / poor performance
Ultimate attribution error - Pettigrew, 1979 -
Tendency to attribute bad outgroup and good ingroup behaviour internally, and to attribute good outgroup and bad ingroup behaviour externally
Taylor and Jaggi (1974) - Hindu pps read vignettes
-> Positive v negative social behaviour
-> By ingroup v outgroup (Muslims)
-: Why do we behave like this
False consensus effect - Kelley; consensus information is one of the three types of information people use to make attributions about others' behaviour
People do not ignore consensus information, but rather they form their own consensus information - see own behaviour as typical, and so believe others will act the same, and this leads to a false consensus effect
Believing everyone is thinking the same
Exists because of -> we seek out similar others, our own opinions are salient to us and therefore at the forefront of the consciousness, eclipsing other options and we are motivated to ground our opinions and actions in perceived consensus to validate them and build a stable world for ourselves
The effect is stronger for important beliefs that we care about and for beliefs which are certain
External threat, positive qualities, perceived similarity of others and minority group status also inflate perceptions of consensus
Attitudes
Attitudes are in everyday life - an attitude is a psychology tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour (Eagly and Chaiken, 1998)
Three component attitude model -
-> Affective - feelings about the attitude object
-> Behavioural - predisposition to act towards the attitude object in a certain way
-> Cognitive - cognitive - beliefs about the attitude object
A relatively enduring organisation of beliefs, feelings and behavioural tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events or symbols (Himmelfarb and Eagly, 1974)
Functions of attitudes -
Knowledge
Instrumentality - means to an end or goal
Ego-defence - protect self esteem
Value-expressiveness - display values that uniquely identify and define us
Measuring attitudes -
Direct measures - self report measures (direct and straightforward, provided reports are not always accurate)
-> Attitude scales - multi-item questionnaires designed to measure people's attitudes towards and object e.g. Likert Scale
Indirect measures - monitor physiological indices - hard to control responses and sensitive to other variables, not just attitudes
-> Facial electromyography (EMG) - electronic instrument that records facial muscle activity associated with emotions and attitudes
-> Certain muscles contract when we feel specific emotions
-> Priming - the prime (object of attitude) could be presented subliminally - activate stereotypical judgements (Kawakami, Young and Dovidio, 2002)
-> Covert attitudes - bias in language use and priming
-> Overt attitudes - unobtrusive measures such as archival research
-> Implicit association test (IAT; Greenwalk, Nosek and Banaji, 2003) - measure the speed with which one response to pairings of concepts and evaluations - the faster and more accurate the response, the stronger the mental associations
-> Associate good or bad words with a concept we disagree with
Causal explanations are powerful bases for prediction and control (Hilton, 2007)
Behavioural view - people invent attitudes to explain behaviour that has already occurred - McGuire identities three main phases in research -
Concentration on measuring attitude
Focus on dynamics of change in attitude
Analysis of cognitive and social structure of attitudes and attitude systems
Attitude structures -
one component model (Thurnstone, 1931) - affect for or against psychological object
two component model (Allport, 1935) - attitude consists of a mental readiness to act and guides evaluative responses
three component - affect, behaviour and cognition - attitude is an enduring set of beliefs about social objects, relatively permanent, generalisable and abstract and limited to socially significant events and objects
Cognitive consistency - cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957)
Also focused on inconsistency - disharmony known as dissonance, with people changing beliefs to make them consistent
Interpersonal relationships
Go through three basic stages - formation, maintenance and dissolution
Formation - attributions reduce ambiguity and facilitate communication and understanding of the relationship
Maintenance - need to make attributions wanes because stable personalities and relationships have been established
Dissolution - increase in attributions to regain understanding of the relationship
Attributional conflict - partners proffer divergent causal interpretations and disagree over what attributions to adopt
Attributions have a causal impact on relationship satisfaction - women tend to regularly think about causal impacts, men only think of them when the relationship is dysfunctional
Intergroup attribution
Individuals as group members attribute their behaviour as either in or out group members - outgroup negative behaviour attributed internally and in group positive behaviour as internal, opposite as external
Ethnocentrism is an ingroup serving bias
Attribution at different levels of explanation -
-> Cognitive processes - social categorisation generates category-congruent expectations in the form of attributing to stable internal factors whereas expectancy-inconsistent behaviour is given to situational factors
-> Self esteem - making self-favouring comparisons is part of protecting our own interests and depleting the skills of others
-> interpersonal interactions
-> group membership dynamics
-> intergroup relations all affect and relate to each other
Attribution and stereotyping - societal and intergroup processes significantly influence and are influenced by stereotypes we have of groups in society
Stereotyping is not only an individual cognitive activity but it can also serve eg-defensive functions and social functions
Groups invoke and accentuate existing stereotypes in order to attribute large-scale distressing events to the actions of specific outgroups - scapegoats
Justify exploitation through stereotypes
Societal attributions and social knowledge
We rely on schema and well-learned causal scripts - stop and make causal attributions when events are inconsistent or unexpected, when in a bad mood or lacking control as a justification for bad behaviour
-> rely on cultural knowledge, social representations and collective ideologies as well as stereotypes
Emphasis on social knowledge surfaces in explanations for large-scale phenomena, whereas as specific phenomena are based on socially constructed belief systems
Socioeconomic status and political ideology also influence attribution and social explanation e.g. poverty
Riots - distal and proximal causes - influenced by socio-political perspective - right wing blames illegitimate internal causes, whereas the left emphasised legitimate external causes (Schmidt, 1972)
More educated individuals are cognitively driven
Western societies less likely to make dispositional attributions - more pervasive and influential nature of social roles in collectivist cultures and a reflection of a more holistic world view that promotes context dependent, occasion bound thinking
Cultural issues have a significant impact on attribution and social explanation - social explanation approached differently, and different cultures make very different attributions
Social representations - Moscovici - understandings among group members that are shared, emerging through everyday informal communication transforming the unfamiliar and complex into the familiar and straightforward. providing a common sense framework for interpreting experiences
Group explanation for a phenomenon, and this becomes shared and popularised until it is a norm and thus a social representation
Differences in groups happen due to clashes in these
Often lead to rumour development and communication - 3 processes in rumour transition (Allport and Postman, 1947)
Levelling - become shorter, less detailed and less complex
Sharpening - certain features of the rumour are selectively emphasised and exaggerated
Assimilation - rumour is distorted in line with people's pre-existing prejudices, partialities, interests and agendas
Rumour distortion and transmission depends on how anxious those who hear the rumour are, with uncertainty and ambiguity causing more anxiety - rationalise through rumours as they provide information
Rumours have a source which purposefully elaborates the rumour for a specific reason such as discrediting individuals or economic reasons
Gossip is narrower - informal talk - personal characteristics over issues of significance to the group
Gossip polices normative practices by vilifying those who violate norms - increases cohesion amongst those involved and empowers those who spread it - social representation function
Conspiracy theories - simplistic and exhaustive causal theories that attribute widespread natural or social calamities and perceived setbacks to the striving of one's group or social identity to the intentional and organised activity of groups
A group develops, sustains and adheres to a conspiracy theory as a central component of its social identity - targeting specific outsiders as wanting to destroy the ingroup
Populism - this is how the group pushes the ideology - popular as they reduce uncertainty and provide belonging
Causal explanations of enduring dispositions that can explain a wide range of events, rather than complex situational factors that are less widely applicable - worrying events also become controllable and easily remedied because they are caused by small groups of highly visible people rather than sociohistorical circumstance
Immune to disconfirmation
Attitudes - alternative theories
Balance theory - Heider, 1946 - Person, Another Person and attitude, object or topic (P-O-X)
Triad is consistent if balanced, which is assessed by counting the relationship possibiolities betwee the elements
8 possible combinations of relationships between two people and an attitude object, 4 balanced and 4 not
People feel tense and need to restore balance when in unbalanced triads - choose way that requires least amount of effort
Decision-making and attitudes - information integration theory; use of cognitive algebra and information processing approaches allows attitude construction from the information we receive from attitude objects
We mentally average out the values attached to discrete bits of information that are collated and stored in memory
Devine (1989) - attitude is underpinned by implicit and automatic judgements and thus are less impacted by social desirability, making them a more reliable and true measure of a person's attitudes
Attitude accessibility - accessible attitudes expressed more easily as they are recalled quicker from memory - affective evaluations are faster, making them more accessible, and often stronger attitudes are also recalled faster - orientate categorisation processes and visual attention through availability heuristics
Connectionism - an accessible attitude is well connected to other stimuli so it is accessible because it is embedded in multiple areas
Only strong associations allow for automatic activation of attitude
Direct experience - the more you think about an attitude, the more accessible it becomes
Attitude-behaviour link - attitudes are accessible, stable attitude over time, people have direct experience with attitude object and people frequently report attitudes to groups etc
Moderator variables - situation, personality, habit, sense of control and direct experience
Attitudes moderate behaviour
Individual v situational variable explanations for attitude behaviour e.g. habits v peers
Mood can be situational or a personality variable
Attitude formation - behavioural approaches -
direct experience effects - formed through interaction with attitude objects
provides information about the attributes of an object, shapes beliefs and also indicates how much we like / dislike an object - mildly traumatic experiences can trigger negative attitudes and make certain beliefs more salient than others
-> Classical conditioning - association of bad event with object, spreading attitude effect, a liked or disliked object may effect the evaluation of the second person directly associated and others merely associated with them
-> mere exposure - repeated exposure makes you more attracted to it
-> instrumental conditioning - positive consequences reinforce attitude
-> Observational learning - seeing how others treat an object can form an attitude
Cognitive development - building multiple cognitive elements makes an attitude more likely to form - connectionism allows different stimuli to activate same attitude systems
Bem (1972) - self-perception theory - we gain knowledge about ourselves through making self attributions
Behavioural - external processes and cognitive - internal processes
Sources of learning -
peers, parents, observational learning, group behaviour, social identity, mass media and internet as echo chambers of reinforcing attitude
Concepts related to attitude - values frame attitudes, and attitudes reflect favouraibiltiy to an object, whereas values are rated for their importance as guiding principles
Theoretical values, economic, aesthetic, social, poltical and religious values
Ideology - a strong ideology constructs an attitude - different priorities assigned to specific values, and some ideologies can be pluralistic but most are monistic
Social representations