Attitudes and Social

Cognition
 Persuasion: Changing Attitudes

Attitudes are evaluations of people, objects, ideas, and behavior.

We have all sorts of attitudes, ranging from those about others (“I think the President is
great”), to attitudes about behavior (“I hate it when people are late for appointments”),
to attitudes toward more abstract concepts (“I support affirmative action”
 Persuasion: Changing Attitudes

Persuasion involves changing attitudes. The ease with which attitudes can be changed
depends on a number of factors, including:
▪ Message source. The characteristics of a person who delivers a persuasive message,
known as an attitude communicator, have a major impact on the effectiveness of that
message. Communicators who are physically and socially attractive produce greater
attitude change than do those who are less attractive. Moreover, the communicator’s
expertise and trustworthiness are related to the impact.
 Persuasion: Changing Attitudes

▪ Characteristics of the message. Generally, two-sided messages—which include both

the communicator’s position and the one he or she is arguing against—are more
effective than one-sided messages, given the assumption that the arguments for the
other side can be effectively refuted and the audience is knowledgeable about the
topic. In addition, fear-producing messages (“If you don’t practice safer sex, you’ll get
AIDS”) are generally effective when they provide the audience with a means for
educing the fear.
 Persuasion: Changing Attitudes

▪ Characteristics of the target. Characteristics of the target of the message may

determine whether the message will be accepted. For example, intelligent people are
more resistant to persuasion than are those who are less intelligent. Gender
differences in persuasibility also seem to exist. In public settings, women are
somewhat more easily persuaded than men, particularly when women have less
knowledge about the message’s topic. However, they are as likely as men to change
their private attitudes.
 Routes to Persuasion

Social psychologists have discovered two primary information- processing routes to persuasion:
central route and peripheral route processing. Central route processing occurs when the recipient
thoughtfully considers the issues and arguments involved in persuasion. In central route
processing, people are swayed in their judgments by the logic, merit, and strength of arguments.

In contrast, peripheral route processing occurs when people are persuaded on the basis of factors
unrelated to the nature or quality of the content of a persuasive message. Instead, factors that are
irrelevant or extraneous to the issue, such as who is providing the message, how long the
arguments are, or the emotional appeal of the arguments, influence them.
 Routes to Persuasion

In general, people who are highly involved and motivated use central route processing to comprehend a
message. However, if a person is disinterested, unmotivated, bored, or distracted, the characteristics of the
message become less important, and peripheral factors become more influential. Central route processing
generally leads to stronger, more lasting attitude change.

Are some people more likely to use central route processing? The answer is yes. Need for cognition is
someone’s typical level of thoughtfulness and cognitive activity. Those who have a high need for cognition are
more likely to employ central route processing and vice-versa.

People who have a high need for cognition enjoy thinking, philosophizing, and reflecting on the world.
Because they are more likely to reflect on persuasive messages by using central route processing, they are
persuaded by complex, logical, and detailed messages.
 Routes to Persuasion

In contrast, those who have a low need for cognition become impatient when forced to spend too much time thinking
about an issue. Consequently, they usually use peripheral route processing and are persuaded by factors other than the
quality and detail of messages
 The Link Between Attitudes And Behavior

Attitudes influence behavior, generally people strive for consistency between their
attitudes and their behavior. Furthermore, people hold fairly consistent attitudes. For
instance, you would probably not hold the attitude that eating meat is immoral and still
have a positive attitude toward Burgers.

In some cases our behavior shapes our attitudes, Cognitive dissonance occurs when a
person holds two contradictory attitudes or thoughts.
 The Link Between Attitudes and Behavior

Cognitive dissonance explains many everyday events involving attitudes and behavior. For example, smokers who know
that smoking leads to lung cancer hold contradictory cognitions: (1) I smoke, and (2) smoking leads to lung cancer. The
theory predicts that these two thoughts will lead to a state of cognitive dissonance. More important, it predicts that
smokers will be motivated to reduce their dissonance. There are four ways to reduce the dissonance in this case:

• modifying one or both of the cognitions (e.g., “I really don’t smoke that much”)
• changing the perceived importance of one cognition (“the link between cancer and smoking is weak”)
• adding cognitions (“I exercise so much that I’m really a healthy person”)
• denying that two cognitions are related to each other (“there’s no compelling evidence linking smoking and cancer”)

Whichever strategy the smoker uses results in reduced dissonance

 Social Cognition: Understanding Others

Social cognition—the way people understand and make sense of others and themselves.
Those psychologists have learned that individuals have highly developed schemas, sets
of cognitions about people and social experiences. Those schemas organize information
stored in memory; represent in our minds the way the social world operates; and give us
a framework to recognize, categorize, and recall information relating to social stimuli
such as people and groups.

We typically hold schemas for specific types of people. We may hold a schema for
“mother” that includes the characteristics of warmth, nurturance, and caring.
 Forming Impressions of Others

Impression formation, process by which an individual organizes information about another person to form
an overall impression of that person. In a classic study, for instance, students learned that they were about
to hear a guest lecturer (Kelley, 1950). Researchers told one group of students that the lecturer was “a
rather warm person, industrious, critical, practical, and determined,” and told a second group that he was
“a rather cold person, industrious, critical, practical, and determined.”

The simple substitution of “cold” for “warm” caused drastic differences in the way the students in each
group perceived the lecturer even though he gave the same talk in the same style in each condition.
Students who had been told he was “warm” rated him considerably more positively than did students who
had been told he was “cold.”
 Forming Impressions of Others

The way in which people pay particular attention to certain unusually important traits—known as central traits
help them form an overall impression of others. The presence of a central trait alters the meaning of other traits.

We also form impressions remarkably quickly. In just a few seconds, using what have been called “thin slices of
behavior,” we are able to make judgments of people. Interestingly, these quick impressions are surprisingly
accurate and typically match those of people who make judgments based on longer samples of behavior.

Even when schemas are not entirely accurate, they serve an important function: They allow us to develop
expectations about how others will behave. Those expectations permit us to plan our interactions with others
more easily and serve to simplify a complex social world.
 Attribution Processes: Understanding The Causes of Behavior

Attribution theory considers how we decide, on the basis of samples of a person’s behavior, what the
specific causes of that behavior are. It asks the “why” question: Why is someone acting in a particular way?

In seeking an explanation for behavior, we must answer one central question: Is the cause situational or
dispositional? Situational causes are causes of behavior that are external to a person. For instance,
someone who knocks over a quart of milk and then cleans it up probably does the cleaning not because he
or she is necessarily a neat person but because the situation requires it. In contrast, a person who spends
hours shining the kitchen floor probably does so because he or she is an unusually neat person. Hence, the
behavior has a dispositional cause. Dispositional causes are causes of behavior brought about by a
person’s traits or personality characteristics.
 Attribution Processes: Understanding The Causes of Behavior

Example:
For instance, someone who knocks over a quart of milk and then cleans it up probably
does the cleaning not because he or she is necessarily a neat person but because the
situation requires it. In contrast, a person who spends hours shining the kitchen floor
probably does so because he or she is an unusually neat person. Hence, the behavior has
a dispositional cause.
 Attribution Biases: To Err Is Human

People do not always process information about others as logically as the theory seems to
suggest. In fact, research reveals consistent biases in the ways people make attributions:

▪ The halo effect. Harry is intelligent, kind, and loving. Is he also conscientious? If you were to
guess, your most likely response probably would be yes. The guess reflects the halo effect, a
phenomenon in which an initial understanding that a person has positive traits is used to infer
other uniformly positive characteristics. Learning that Harry was unsociable and
argumentative would probably lead you to assume that he was lazy as well.
 Attribution Biases: To Err Is Human

▪ Assumed-similarity bias. Most people believe that their friends and acquaintances are fairly similar to
themselves. But this feeling goes beyond just people we know to a general tendency—known as the
assumed-similarity bias— to think of people as being similar to oneself even when meeting them for the
first time.

▪ The self-serving bias. When their teams win, coaches usually feel that the success is due to their
coaching. But when their teams lose, coaches may think it’s due to their players’ poor skills. Similarly, if
you get an A on a test, you may think it’s due to your hard work, but if you get a poor grade, it’s due to
the professor’s inadequacies. The reason is the self-serving bias, the tendency to attribute success to
personal factors (skill, ability, or effort) and attribute failure to factors outside oneself.
 Attribution Biases: To Err Is Human

▪ Fundamental attribution error, a tendency to over attribute others’ behavior to dispositional

causes and the corresponding failure to recognize the importance of situational causes.

We tend to exaggerate the importance of personality characteristics (dispositional causes) in

producing others’ behavior and minimize the influence of the environment (situational factors).
For example, we are more likely to jump to the conclusion that someone who is often late to work
is too lazy to take an earlier bus (a dispositional cause) than to assume that the lateness is due to
situational factors, such as the bus always running behind schedule.
Social Influence and
Groups
 Introduction and Definition

Pressures to conform to others’ behavior can be painfully strong and can bring about changes in behavior
that otherwise never would have occurred. Conformity pressures are just one type of social influence.
Social influence

is the process by which social groups and individuals exert pressure on an individual,
either deliberately or unintentionally.

Social influence is so powerful, in part because groups and other people generally play a central role in our
lives. As defined by social psychologists, groups consist of two or more people who (1) interact with one
another; (2) perceive themselves as part of a group; and (3) are interdependent—that is, the events that
affect one group member affect other members, and the behavior of members has significant
consequences for the success of the group in meeting its goals.
 Introduction and Definition

Groups develop and hold norms, beliefs and expectations regarding appropriate behavior for group
members. Norms not only prescribe how people in a group should behave (“wearing pink is in this year”), but
also what members shouldn’t do (“under no circumstances wear black”).

Group members understand that not adhering to group norms can result in retaliation from other group
members, ranging from being ignored to being overtly derided or even being rejected or excluded by the
group. Thus, people conform to meet the beliefs and expectations of the group. Groups exert considerable
social influence over individuals that ranges from the mundane, such as the decision to wear a certain kind of
jeans, to the extreme. Three types of social pressure: conformity, compliance, and obedience are considered.
 Social Pressure - Conformity: Following What Others Do

Conformity is a change in behavior or attitudes brought about by a desire to follow

the beliefs or standards of other people. Subtle or even unspoken social pressure results
in conformity. According to findings:

▪ The characteristics of the group. The more attractive a group appears to its members,
the greater its ability to produce conformity. Furthermore, a person’s relative status,
the social standing of someone within a group, is critical: The lower a person’s status in
the group, the greater groups’ power over that person’s behavior
 Social Pressure - Conformity: Following What Others Do

▪ The situation in which the individual is responding. Conformity is considerably

higher when people must respond publicly than it is when they can do so privately.

▪ The kind of task. People working on ambiguous tasks and questions (those with no
clear answer) are more susceptible to social pressure. When asked to give an opinion
on something, such as what type of clothing is fashionable, a person will more likely
yield to conformist pressures than he or she will if asked a question of fact. In addition,
tasks at which an individual is less competent than others in the group make
conformity more likely.
 Social Pressure - Conformity: Following What Others Do

▪ Unanimity of the group. Groups that unanimously support a position show the most
pronounced conformity pressures. But what about the case in which people with
dissenting (different) views have an ally in the group, known as a social supporter, who
agrees with them? Having just one person present who shares the minority point of
view is sufficient to reduce conformity pressures.
 Groupthink: Caving in to Conformity

Groupthink is a type of thinking in which group members share such a strong motivation to achieve
consensus that they lose the ability to critically evaluate alternative points of view. Groupthink is most likely
to occur when a popular or powerful leader is surrounded by people of lower status.

Groupthink typically leads to poor decisions. Groups limit the list of possible solutions to just a few, and they
spend relatively little time considering any alternatives once the leader seems to be leaning toward a
particular solution.

Groups may fall prey to entrapment, a circumstance in which commitments to a failing point of view or
course of action are increased to justify investments in time and energy that have already been made.
Ultimately, group members may completely ignore information that challenges a developing consensus.
 Conformity to Social Roles

Social roles are the expectations for people who occupy a given social position. For example, we
expect that the role of “student” comprises behaviors such as studying, listening to an instructor,
and attending class. Similarly, we expect that taxi drivers will know their way around a city and be
able to find the quickest route to where we are going. Like a theatrical role, social roles tell us what
behavior is associated with a given position. In some cases, though, social roles influence us so
profoundly that we engage in behavior in ways that are atypical for us.

Conforming to a social role can have a powerful consequence on the behavior of even normal, well-
adjusted people and induce them to change their behavior in sometimes undesirable ways.
 Social Pressure - Compliance: Submitting to Direct Social Pressure

Compliance is behavior that occurs in response to direct social pressure. Several frequently techniques
represent attempts to gain compliance:

▪ Foot-in-the-door technique. The use of the foot-in-the-door technique begins when a person first makes
a small, trivial request. Because the request is easy to comply with, the likelihood that the target of the
request will comply is high. Later, though, the target is asked to comply with a significantly larger request.
It turns out that compliance with the second request increases substantially when the target has first
agreed to the initial, smaller request.

It may work as involvement with the small request leads to an interest in an issue and complying with the
initial request, individuals may come to see themselves as people who provide help when asked
 Compliance: Submitting to Direct Social Pressure

▪ Door-in-the-face technique. Opposite of the foot-in-the door approach; someone

makes a large request, expects it to be refused, and follows it with a smaller one. E.g.
You may have tried it at some point yourself by perhaps by asking your parents for a
large increase in your allowance and later settling for less.

▪ That’s-not-all technique. A salesperson offers you a deal at an inflated price. But

immediately after the initial offer, the salesperson offers an incentive, discount, or bonus
to clinch the deal.
 Compliance: Submitting to Direct Social Pressure

▪ Not-so-free sample. If you ever receive a free sample, keep in mind that it comes with a
psychological cost. Although they may not couch it in these terms, salespeople who
provide samples to potential customers do so to bring the norm of reciprocity into play.
The norm of reciprocity is the social standard that we should treat other people as they
treat us. It’s a strong cultural standard: When someone does something nice for us, we
tend to feel obligated to return the favor.
 Social Pressure - Obedience: Following Direct Orders

Obedience is a change in behavior in response to the commands of others. Although

obedience is considerably less common than conformity and compliance, it does occur in
several specific kinds of relationships. For example, we may show obedience to our bosses,
teachers, or parents merely because of the power they hold to reward or punish us.