Psychology

1. ATTITUDES
A fairly stable organization of beliefs, feelings and behaviour
tendencies directed toward some object such as a
person or group; a state of readiness to exhibit a
behavioural response
Difference between an attitude and
a) Belief – to have trust or confidence; conviction of the
truth of some statement; acceptance of anything, a fact,
a statement, etc as true or existing
b) Values – one’s principles or standards; one’s judgement
of what is valuable or important in life
c) Opinion – verbal expression of an underlying belief,
value, or attitude

2. I. HOW ARE ATTITUDES ACQUIRED?
 Early, direct, personal experience
 Imitation
 Teachers, friends, or even famous people
 Media-television, newspapers, magazines, etc
a) Attitudes summarize past experience and predict
future action.
b) Most attitudes have a belief, emotional and action
component.
 Emotional/affective component – it refers to feelings
and emotions about someone or something. We may
like or hate pizzas.

3.  Belief/cognitive component- it refers to thoughts or
beliefs about people and objects. We may think pizzas
are fattening.
 Action/behavioural component- it refers to people’s
actions and behaviour. We may eat pizzas or avoid
them.
Attitudes, therefore, prepare us to act in a certain
manner.
Cont…

4. II. ATTITUDE CHANGE
 Although attitudes are relatively stable, they are
subject to change.
a) Reference group –any group that an individual
identifies with and uses as a standard for social
comparison.
b) Persuasion –a deliberate attempt to change attitudes
or beliefs with information and arguments.
- Communicator – the person presenting arguments or
information
- Message – the content of a communicators arguments
or information.

5. - Audience – the person or group toward whom a
persuasive message is directed.
Attitude change is encouraged when the following
conditions are met:
- The communicator is likable, expressive, trustworthy, an
expert on the topic, and similar to the audience in some
respect.
- The message appeals to emotions, particularly to fear or
anxiety.
- The message also provides a clear course of action that
will, if followed, reduce fear or produce personally
desirable results.

6. - The message states clear-cut conclusions.
- The message is backed up by facts and statistics.
- Both sides of the argument are presented in the case of
a well-informed audience.
- Only one side of the argument is presented in the case
of a poorly informed audience.
- The persuader appears to have nothing to gain if the
audience accepts the message.
- The message is repeated as frequently as possible.

7. c) role-playing- involves personal experience.
- Emotional experience can dramatically alter attitudes
e.g. the person who gives up drinking after nearly dying
in an automobile accident caused by drunkenness.
d) Cognitive dissonance – an uncomfortable clash
between self-image, thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, or
perceptions and one’s behavior.
WHAT HAPPENS IF PEOPLE ACT IN WAYS THAT ARE
INCONSISTENT WITH THEIR ATTITUDES OR SELF-
IMAGES?
Answer: Typically, the contradiction makes them
uncomfortable. This can motivate them to bring their
thoughts or attitudes into agreement with their
actions.

8.  Cognitive dissonance theory also suggests that people
tend to reject new information that contradicts ideas they
already hold. Cognitive dissonance also underlies
attempts to convince ourselves that we’ve done the right
thing e.g. he’s not stubborn, he has integrity, she’s not
egotistical, she’s really assertive and confident.
e) Forced attitude change
- Brainwashing – engineered or forced attitude change
involving a captive audience.

9. Three techniques used in brainwashing
a) The target person is isolated from other people who
would support his/her original attitudes.
b) The target is made completely dependent on his/her
captors for satisfaction of needs.
c) The indoctrinating agent is in a position to reward the
target for changes in attitude or behavior.
 It typically begins with an attempt to make the target
person feel completely helpless.
 Physical and psychological abuse, lack of sleep,
humiliation, and isolation serve to loosen former values
and beliefs.
 change comes about when exhaustion, pressure, and
fear become unbearable

10. Cults- a group that professes great devotion to some
person, and follows that person almost without
question; cult members are typically victimized by
their leaders in various ways.
 Cults use a powerful blend of guilt, manipulation,
isolation, deception, fear, and escalating
commitment.
III. ATTRIBUTION THEORY- the tendency to give a
causal explanation for someone’s behavior, often by
crediting either the situation or the person’s
disposition. Attributions are the explanations that
people develop to understand the causes of human
behavior. Sometimes, our attributions for others
behavior can be inaccurate. This is due to primarily to
human biases.

11. These biases are:
a) Fundamental attribution error- the tendency for
observers, when analyzing another's behavior, to
underestimate the impact of the situation and to
overestimate the impact of personal disposition.
E.g. you walk into the academic registrars office and you
find her on the phone and she’s very angry and slams it
down. To what would you attribute the cause of such
behavior. At this stage, you are unable to be sure
whether dispositional or situational factors caused the
angry behavior. Under these circumstances, you are
liable to opt for a dispositional attribution of causality,
that is, when we lack information about the cause of
specific behavior, we tend to think that it is due to some
aspect of the person’s personality rather than some
external aspect of the situation.

12. The reason for the fundamental attribution error is quite
obvious. When meeting someone for the first time we
tend to concentrate on the person’s actions; the context
in which they take place is less important. We are so
taken up with assessing the person in front of us that we
tend to ignore the background.
b) self-serving bias – the tendency to attribute the cause
of success to internal factors and attribute the cause of
failure to external factors.
E.g. imagine that you are faced with a two-part physiology
exam. The first part is much more difficult than the
second, but you feel quietly confident because you spent
a considerable amount of time revising and feel you
know most of the areas reasonably well. After taking the
first part of the exam, your results confirm your optimism,
and performance ranks with the best in the group.

13. Not surprisingly, you feel quite proud and feel that all your
revising was worthwhile. The second art of the exam
approaches and you feel more confident than you did
before. After taking the exam, you relax in expectation of
similar results. It comes as quite a shock when you find
that you have not done well at all and have barely
achieved average results. This time you start to blame
the irrelevant questions, not having had enough time or
even the heat in the exam room for your poor
performance.
> The self-serving bias can led to serious difficulties for
health professionals, particularly when they are working
as team members. Each member of the team may
perceive success as stemming from their own
contribution, but attribute the cause of failure to their
team member/s. Thus faulty attributions can be a source
of prejudicial feelings and actions towards other

14. c) The Halo effect- when a first impression influences the
perception of other personality characteristics.
E.g. a nurse admits to the ward a patient who cannot speak
clearly and is hard to understand. Much of his speech is
slurred. He has difficulty in controlling the movements of
his mouth and has a tendency to dribble. The nurse
might assume that he is unintelligent, highly dependant
and unable to understand anything she says to him.
Alternatively, she might assume that he is drunk,
irresponsible, potentially aggressive and likely to be a
nuisance. In reality he may well be done of these things,
but consider what the impact of being treated in such a
fashion would be. Thus patients who have created a
positive impression on health staff will have their traits
and abilities evaluated in a favourable manner, whereas
those who, unfortunately, have not made such a good
impression may, as a result of unfavourable evaluations,
receive less interest and attention.

15. d) Labeling – even before we meet someone for the first
time, we often have information about them. This
information can affect the way in which we perceive the
person when we meet them. Because personality is
difficult to define, people tend to resort to labels to
simplify categorization. ‘Labels not only bias perception,
they can also change reality. When teachers are told
certain students are “gifted,” when students expect
someone to be “hostile,” or when interviews check to see
whether someone is “extraverted,” they may act in ways
that elicit the very behavior expected.’ Evidence
suggests that that the use of labels causes problems for
those that use them and more importantly for those they
are applied to. It is difficult to have no preconceived
ideas about people before meeting them, but it is
important to try to maintain an open mind and be ready
to accept information that does not fit into any set
preconceptions.

16. IV. SOCIAL INFLUENCE
a) Compliance- bending to the request of a person who
has little or no authority or other form of social power;
these requests are quite common. They are:
 Foot-in-the-door effect –the tendency for person who
has first complied with a small request to be more
likely later to fulfill a larger request.
 Door-in-the-face effect –the tendency for a person
who has refused a major request to subsequently be
more likely to comply with a minor request.
 Low-ball technique –a strategy in which commitment
is gained first to reasonable or desirable terms, which
are then made less reasonable or desirable.

17. PATIENT COMPLIANCE
 The extent to which a patient’s behavior coincides with
the clinical prescription provided by a health
professional (Sackett, 1976).
A patient may not comply on purpose or may simply forget
or misunderstand the instructions. The extent of non-
compliance depends on a number of factors
i) Complexity of the treatment procedures
ii) Degree of change required in one’s lifestyle
iii) Length of time during which the patient has to follow
the advice
iv) Whether the illness is extremely painful
v) Whether the treatment is seen as potentially lifesaving
vi) Severity of illness as perceived by the patient and not
the health professional.

18. The degree of non-compliance varies according to whether the
regime is curative or preventive, short or long term.
FACTORS AFFECTING NON-COMPLIANCE
Compliance can be improved by:
a) Simplify information –individual’s can’t comply with instructions
if they have misunderstood what has been said. At times medical
personnel provide incomplete information using medical jargon
and giving patients too much to remember.
b) Primacy effect – give patients instructions about treatment before
explaining anything else. When people are given a list of items to
remember, they tend to remember those items that were said at
the beginning or presented at the beginning of the list.
c) Use repetition
d) Be specific

19. CONFORMITY
 Bringing one’s behavior into agreement or harmony
with norms or with the behavior of other in a group.
A) Conformity situations develop when individuals
become aware of the differences between themselves
and group actions, norms, or values.
B) A study by Solomon Ash (1955) shows just how strong
group pressures are for conformity.
 Some people are more susceptible to group pressures
than others, e.g. people with high needs for structure,
people who are anxious, low in self-confidence, or
concerned with the opinions or approval of others

20.  How do groups enforce norms:
i) Group sanctions- rewards and punishments (such as
approval or disapproval) administered by groups to
enforce conformity among members.
ii) Negative sanctions (punishment) – include laughter,
staring, or social disapproval to complete rejection or
formal ostracism.
iii) Importance of group membership is a factor that
affects the degree of conformity, therefore, the more
important group membership (status) is to a person,
the more he/she will be influenced by other group
members; the larger the group (size), the greater the
number of people influenced.
iv) Unanimity – being unanimous or of one mind;
agreement. This means that having at least one
person in your corner can greatly reduce pressures to
conform.
v) Women are more likely to conform (peacemakers)
compared to men.

21. SOCIAL POWER
 The capacity to control, alter, or influence the behavior
of another person, there are five (5) types of social
power:
a) Reward power- social power based on the capacity to
reward a person for acting as desired, e.g. teachers try
to exert reward power over their students through the
use of grades.
b) Coercive power- social power based on the ability to
punish others, e.g. issuing of fines or imprisonment in
order to control behavior.
c) Legitimate power- social power based on a person’s
position as an agent of an accepted social order, e.g. a
teacher in a classroom has legitimate power, but
outside the classroom that power would have to come
from another source (elected leaders, supervisors).

22. a) Referent power- social power gained when one is
used as a point of reference by others, it is responsible
for much of the conformity observed in groups.
b) Expert power- social power derived from possession
of knowledge or expertise, e.g.

23. OBEDIENCE
Obedience - conformity to the demands of an authority.
Stanley Milgram (1965, 1974) studied obedience and came
up with the following conclusions:
 People obey when the authority figure is physically close
 People obey when the “victim” is at a distance
 When directions come from an authority, people
rationalize that they are not personally responsible for
their actions.
 In conformity situations, the pressure to conform is
usually indirect. When an authority commands
obedience, the pressure is direct and difficult to resist.