Advertising can shape attitudes and behaviors by targeting specific demographics. For example, advertisers successfully targeted female smokers starting in the early 20th century. As a result, the percentage of female smokers increased and nearly caught up to male smokers by 2004. The document discusses the nature and origins of attitudes, including their cognitive, affective, and behavioral components. Attitudes can form from genetics, direct experiences, classical and operant conditioning, and observations of one's own behavior. The document also examines how attitudes change through persuasion, including the central and peripheral routes to persuasion and the role of emotion.
Ross faces a dilemma in choosing between Rachel and Julie. He makes a list of things he likes and dislikes about each woman to help understand his feelings. However, research shows introspecting about reasons can change attitudes in misleading ways. When feelings are uncertain, people infer attitudes from their behavior and situation rather than introspection alone.
This document provides an overview of social psychology. It begins by defining social psychology as the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by real or imagined presence of others. It discusses key concepts such as social influence, construal, fundamental attribution error, self-esteem, and social cognition. Experimental research methods are emphasized. Comparisons are made between social psychology and other fields like personality psychology and sociology. Applications of social psychology to understanding and solving social problems are also mentioned.
Behavioral assessment is a psychological method used to observe, describe, explain, predict, and sometimes correct behavior. It is derived from behavioral constructs and measures concrete, identifiable behaviors in specific situations. For example, a five-year-old girl named Sara has started getting into trouble at school, prompting the need for a behavioral assessment.
People influence each other constantly, in a variety of different ways.Social Influence Strategies are the foot-in-the-door technique (see the “Attitudes” presentation for a complete explanation), manipulating the reciprocity norm, the lowball technique, and feigned scarcity.
This document discusses several theories of human aggression. It begins by describing five main theories that guide current aggression research: cognitive neoassociation theory, social learning theory, script theory, excitation transfer theory, and social interaction theory. It then introduces the general aggression model (GAM) as an integrative framework that combines elements of these different theories. The GAM proposes that cognition, affect, and arousal mediate the effects of situational and personal factors on aggression. The document argues that the GAM provides a useful way to organize existing knowledge about aggression and suggest directions for future research.
The document discusses conformity and several classic experiments that studied it. Solomon Asch's famous experiment showed that people's perceptions can change under peer pressure from a group. Later experiments by Stanley Milgram and Jane Elliott further demonstrated how people often conform to authorities, even when they disagree privately or have doubts about the authority's instructions. The document also discusses differences in individualism between Western and Eastern cultures and how the desire to fit in or seek guidance from others can lead to normative or informational conformity.
This document discusses attribution theory and the causes of behavior. There are two main categories of causes - situational causes which are external factors, and dispositional causes which are internal traits. Research has found that how people attribute causes correlates with relationship satisfaction. People tend to attribute others' behaviors more to internal traits rather than external situations, known as the fundamental attribution error. Major theories discussed include Kelly's model of causal attribution and the correspondent inference theory.
This document discusses different research methods used in psychology, including descriptive research, correlational research, and experiments. Descriptive research provides information but does not test theories. Correlational research examines relationships between variables but cannot determine causation. Experiments are described as the best method for testing theories by manipulating variables and using random assignment, allowing for causal conclusions. The document uses a study on the relationship between "southernness" and aggression as an example to illustrate strengths and weaknesses of different methods.
Ross faces a dilemma in choosing between Rachel and Julie. He makes a list of things he likes and dislikes about each woman to help understand his feelings. However, research shows introspecting about reasons can change attitudes in misleading ways. When feelings are uncertain, people infer attitudes from their behavior and situation rather than introspection alone.
This document provides an overview of social psychology. It begins by defining social psychology as the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by real or imagined presence of others. It discusses key concepts such as social influence, construal, fundamental attribution error, self-esteem, and social cognition. Experimental research methods are emphasized. Comparisons are made between social psychology and other fields like personality psychology and sociology. Applications of social psychology to understanding and solving social problems are also mentioned.
Behavioral assessment is a psychological method used to observe, describe, explain, predict, and sometimes correct behavior. It is derived from behavioral constructs and measures concrete, identifiable behaviors in specific situations. For example, a five-year-old girl named Sara has started getting into trouble at school, prompting the need for a behavioral assessment.
People influence each other constantly, in a variety of different ways.Social Influence Strategies are the foot-in-the-door technique (see the “Attitudes” presentation for a complete explanation), manipulating the reciprocity norm, the lowball technique, and feigned scarcity.
This document discusses several theories of human aggression. It begins by describing five main theories that guide current aggression research: cognitive neoassociation theory, social learning theory, script theory, excitation transfer theory, and social interaction theory. It then introduces the general aggression model (GAM) as an integrative framework that combines elements of these different theories. The GAM proposes that cognition, affect, and arousal mediate the effects of situational and personal factors on aggression. The document argues that the GAM provides a useful way to organize existing knowledge about aggression and suggest directions for future research.
The document discusses conformity and several classic experiments that studied it. Solomon Asch's famous experiment showed that people's perceptions can change under peer pressure from a group. Later experiments by Stanley Milgram and Jane Elliott further demonstrated how people often conform to authorities, even when they disagree privately or have doubts about the authority's instructions. The document also discusses differences in individualism between Western and Eastern cultures and how the desire to fit in or seek guidance from others can lead to normative or informational conformity.
This document discusses attribution theory and the causes of behavior. There are two main categories of causes - situational causes which are external factors, and dispositional causes which are internal traits. Research has found that how people attribute causes correlates with relationship satisfaction. People tend to attribute others' behaviors more to internal traits rather than external situations, known as the fundamental attribution error. Major theories discussed include Kelly's model of causal attribution and the correspondent inference theory.
This document discusses different research methods used in psychology, including descriptive research, correlational research, and experiments. Descriptive research provides information but does not test theories. Correlational research examines relationships between variables but cannot determine causation. Experiments are described as the best method for testing theories by manipulating variables and using random assignment, allowing for causal conclusions. The document uses a study on the relationship between "southernness" and aggression as an example to illustrate strengths and weaknesses of different methods.
Social cognition refers to how people think about themselves and the social world. There are two types of social cognition: automatic thinking which occurs quickly without much conscious thought using mental shortcuts like schemas and heuristics, and controlled thinking which is more deliberate. Schemas help organize social information but can also lead to errors through stereotypes, biases, and self-fulfilling prophecies. While mental shortcuts are efficient, they sometimes result in faulty judgments.
1) Aggression is defined as behavior intended to harm another living being who wants to avoid harm. Biological, psychological, social, and cultural factors all contribute to aggression.
2) Media violence exposure, through television, movies, video games and other media, increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior in both the short and long term according to research.
3) Bullying is a pattern of repeated aggression against a target with less power. It is motivated by a desire for power and status. Reducing bullying requires recognizing it as a problem and protecting victims.
- Prejudice involves negative prejudgments or feelings toward others based on their group membership rather than their individual attributes. It can stem from emotional, social, cognitive, and personality factors.
- Stereotypes are overgeneralized beliefs about groups. They can be positive or negative and become problems when incorrectly applied to individuals. Stereotype threat describes how awareness of negative stereotypes can undermine performance.
- The fundamental attribution error involves explaining others' behaviors based mainly on internal factors rather than external situational influences. This satisfies the just-world hypothesis that people get what they deserve.
Social psychology seeks to understand how individual human behavior is influenced by other people and the social context. It examines topics like self-concept, group processes, social influence, stereotypes, discrimination, social learning, aggression, and attribution - specifically the fundamental attribution error in which people tend to underestimate the impact of situational factors and overestimate the effect of personality when explaining another person's behavior.
This document provides an overview of the psychology of aggression and violence. It begins with definitions of key terms like aggression, violence, and excitement. It then discusses various classifications and types of aggression, including hostile vs instrumental aggression. The document outlines several models of aggression, including biological, psychological, and social learning theories. It discusses various determinants of aggression including social, environmental, and situational factors. Finally, it proposes several methods for reducing aggression, such as punishment, catharsis, modeling non-aggressive behavior, teaching communication skills, building empathy, and aggression replacement training.
WILL COVER
COMMON SENSE PSYCHOLOGY
CORRESPONDENT INFERENCE THEORY
COVARIENCE MODEL
CONSENSUS
CONSISTENCY
DISTINCTIVENESS
FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR
ACTOR OBSERVER EFFECT
SELF SERVING BIAS
AND APPLICATIONS
Bradford mvsu fall 2012 so 213 prejudice ch 13John Bradford
Prejudice is defined as a negative attitude toward people in a group based solely on their membership in that group. It has three components - cognitive, emotional, and behavioral. Stereotypes are generalizations about groups that assign traits to all members. Contact with outgroup members tends to reduce prejudice when it occurs in a context of mutual interdependence, common goals, equal status, and supportive social norms of equality. Discrimination refers to unjustified negative actions toward a group. Prejudice can be measured explicitly through surveys or implicitly through reaction time tests. The cognitive and implicit emotional components of prejudice can operate automatically through stereotypes while the behavioral component involves conscious discrimination.
1) Several factors can lead to attraction and influence relationships, including proximity, physical attractiveness, similarity, and mimicry of behaviors.
2) Studies found people are more likely to be attracted to and become friends with those who live nearby, and that mere repeated exposure can increase attraction.
3) Physical attractiveness is an important factor in initial attraction, but similarity in personality and attitudes becomes more important for relationship satisfaction over time as couples tend to grow more similar.
Conformity involves changing your behaviors in order to "fit in" or "go along" with the people around you. In some cases, this social influence might involve agreeing with or acting like the majority of people in a specific group, or it might involve behaving in a particular way in order to be perceived as "normal" by the group.
The document discusses schemas and prototypes in social psychology. It defines schemas as mental frameworks that help organize and interpret information. Schemas can be useful but can also lead to stereotypes. Prototypes are cognitive representations that exemplify the essential features of a category. The document provides examples of schemas and prototypes, and discusses how schemas can influence attention, memory, judgments and behavior through assimilation, accommodation and self-fulfilling prophecies. It also notes some problems with overreliance on schemas.
This document discusses minority influence and the three key behaviors (CCF) that a persuasive minority requires according to Nemeth (2010): consistency, commitment, and flexibility. It provides examples of studies that show minorities are most influential when they remain consistently expressing their opinion over time (Wood et al, 1994). It also discusses how minorities must show commitment to their position while also demonstrating some flexibility in negotiations. An example study from Moscovici et al (1969) found a consistent minority had more influence than an inconsistent one in a color judgment task.
Research methods revision for AS AQA A Psychology 2014+acdefg
This document summarizes key concepts in research methods, including types of variables, experiments, group designs, hypotheses, and sampling. It discusses independent and dependent variables, laboratory, field, and quasi-natural experiments, independent group, repeated measures, and matched pairs designs. It also outlines directional, non-directional, and null hypotheses, and types of sampling such as random, opportunity, self-selected, and stratified.
Explains the process by which we receive, interpret, analyze, remember and use information about the social world. Also attempts to explain the process of attribution and common errors we often commit in social perception.
This document discusses different types of research designs used in psychology, including correlational research, quasi-experimental research, and problems to look for in research studies. It provides examples of each type of research design. Correlational research seeks to establish relationships between variables without manipulation. Quasi-experimental research blends correlation and experimental approaches by examining interactions between individual differences and manipulations. Problems to look for include confounds, nonrandom sampling, failure to replicate, and lack of comparison groups.
Social Psychology, ch 5 Genes, Culture and Gender by Nouman KhiljiNoman Khilji
Genes and culture both influence human behavior and gender roles. While humans share biological traits, culture shapes how those traits are expressed. Originally Africans, humans migrated with climate changes and adapted to new environments, resulting in skin color differences. Gender roles vary across cultures and change over time as cultures evolve, though biological factors like mating preferences still influence behavior. Both nature and nurture interact to determine human diversity in traits, behaviors, and gender norms in different societies.
This document provides an overview of social psychology. It discusses how social psychology studies how individual behaviors and thoughts are influenced by others. Key topics covered include cognitive processes, environmental variables, biological factors, and cultural values that shape social behaviors. Research methods in social psychology like observation, surveys, correlation analysis, and experiments are explained. The role of theory in social psychology and important ethical issues around deception and informed consent in research are also summarized.
Social influence refers to how individuals can affect each other through their presence or actions. Research shows that the presence of others can enhance performance on simple tasks but impair performance on complex tasks, due to increased physiological arousal and anxiety. Additional factors like evaluation apprehension, distraction, and social loafing can also influence individual and group performance and decision making. When making decisions as a group, polarization toward more extreme views can occur as members seek consensus, and groupthink may develop if alternative perspectives are not considered.
There are several key characteristics of group formation:
1. Groups involve people who perceive themselves as a coherent unit distinct from other groups.
2. Groups can be common-bond or common-identity, depending on how members are linked to each other.
3. Important group characteristics include status hierarchies, roles that members take on, norms that guide behavior, and cohesiveness or bonding between members.
4. Theories of group formation examine how and why individuals come together into coherent social units.
1) The document discusses several classic social psychology experiments and concepts related to social influence, conformity, compliance and obedience. It summarizes Solomon Asch's conformity experiments, Milgram's obedience experiments, and techniques of persuasion and compliance.
2) Key factors that influence conformity include group cohesiveness, size, social and situational norms. Asch found that one-third of participants conformed to an incorrect group opinion.
3) Milgram showed that ordinary people may obey destructive commands, especially when authority figures assume responsibility and issues are gradual. The document outlines ways to resist destructive obedience.
4) Techniques to gain compliance include reciprocity, scarcity and others discussed in Cialdini's
Obedience is a form of social influence that involves performing an action under the orders of an authority figure. It differs from
compliance (which involves changing your behavior at the request of another person) and
conformity (which involves altering your behavior in order to go along with the rest of the group). Instead, obedience involves altering your behavior because a figure of authority has told you to.
The document summarizes key concepts about social cognition and conformity from Elliot Aronson's book "The Social Animal". It discusses how conformity is influenced by group dynamics, accountability, commitment, and unanimity. It also covers persuasion techniques like emotional appeals, fear arousal, and inoculation theory. Finally, it examines social cognition heuristics people use to make judgments, including the representative heuristic, availability heuristic, and attitude heuristic.
This document provides an overview of social perception and how we form impressions of other people based on their observable behavior. It discusses how we rely on social perception to understand people based on what they say, do, and their facial expressions, gestures and tone of voice. It also explains some of the challenges in forming accurate impressions, as we can only observe behavior and not truly know people's inner thoughts and motivations. The document outlines several concepts from social psychology research related to social perception, including nonverbal communication, facial expressions, culture, implicit personality theories, attribution theory, and biases like the correspondence bias.
Social cognition refers to how people think about themselves and the social world. There are two types of social cognition: automatic thinking which occurs quickly without much conscious thought using mental shortcuts like schemas and heuristics, and controlled thinking which is more deliberate. Schemas help organize social information but can also lead to errors through stereotypes, biases, and self-fulfilling prophecies. While mental shortcuts are efficient, they sometimes result in faulty judgments.
1) Aggression is defined as behavior intended to harm another living being who wants to avoid harm. Biological, psychological, social, and cultural factors all contribute to aggression.
2) Media violence exposure, through television, movies, video games and other media, increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior in both the short and long term according to research.
3) Bullying is a pattern of repeated aggression against a target with less power. It is motivated by a desire for power and status. Reducing bullying requires recognizing it as a problem and protecting victims.
- Prejudice involves negative prejudgments or feelings toward others based on their group membership rather than their individual attributes. It can stem from emotional, social, cognitive, and personality factors.
- Stereotypes are overgeneralized beliefs about groups. They can be positive or negative and become problems when incorrectly applied to individuals. Stereotype threat describes how awareness of negative stereotypes can undermine performance.
- The fundamental attribution error involves explaining others' behaviors based mainly on internal factors rather than external situational influences. This satisfies the just-world hypothesis that people get what they deserve.
Social psychology seeks to understand how individual human behavior is influenced by other people and the social context. It examines topics like self-concept, group processes, social influence, stereotypes, discrimination, social learning, aggression, and attribution - specifically the fundamental attribution error in which people tend to underestimate the impact of situational factors and overestimate the effect of personality when explaining another person's behavior.
This document provides an overview of the psychology of aggression and violence. It begins with definitions of key terms like aggression, violence, and excitement. It then discusses various classifications and types of aggression, including hostile vs instrumental aggression. The document outlines several models of aggression, including biological, psychological, and social learning theories. It discusses various determinants of aggression including social, environmental, and situational factors. Finally, it proposes several methods for reducing aggression, such as punishment, catharsis, modeling non-aggressive behavior, teaching communication skills, building empathy, and aggression replacement training.
WILL COVER
COMMON SENSE PSYCHOLOGY
CORRESPONDENT INFERENCE THEORY
COVARIENCE MODEL
CONSENSUS
CONSISTENCY
DISTINCTIVENESS
FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR
ACTOR OBSERVER EFFECT
SELF SERVING BIAS
AND APPLICATIONS
Bradford mvsu fall 2012 so 213 prejudice ch 13John Bradford
Prejudice is defined as a negative attitude toward people in a group based solely on their membership in that group. It has three components - cognitive, emotional, and behavioral. Stereotypes are generalizations about groups that assign traits to all members. Contact with outgroup members tends to reduce prejudice when it occurs in a context of mutual interdependence, common goals, equal status, and supportive social norms of equality. Discrimination refers to unjustified negative actions toward a group. Prejudice can be measured explicitly through surveys or implicitly through reaction time tests. The cognitive and implicit emotional components of prejudice can operate automatically through stereotypes while the behavioral component involves conscious discrimination.
1) Several factors can lead to attraction and influence relationships, including proximity, physical attractiveness, similarity, and mimicry of behaviors.
2) Studies found people are more likely to be attracted to and become friends with those who live nearby, and that mere repeated exposure can increase attraction.
3) Physical attractiveness is an important factor in initial attraction, but similarity in personality and attitudes becomes more important for relationship satisfaction over time as couples tend to grow more similar.
Conformity involves changing your behaviors in order to "fit in" or "go along" with the people around you. In some cases, this social influence might involve agreeing with or acting like the majority of people in a specific group, or it might involve behaving in a particular way in order to be perceived as "normal" by the group.
The document discusses schemas and prototypes in social psychology. It defines schemas as mental frameworks that help organize and interpret information. Schemas can be useful but can also lead to stereotypes. Prototypes are cognitive representations that exemplify the essential features of a category. The document provides examples of schemas and prototypes, and discusses how schemas can influence attention, memory, judgments and behavior through assimilation, accommodation and self-fulfilling prophecies. It also notes some problems with overreliance on schemas.
This document discusses minority influence and the three key behaviors (CCF) that a persuasive minority requires according to Nemeth (2010): consistency, commitment, and flexibility. It provides examples of studies that show minorities are most influential when they remain consistently expressing their opinion over time (Wood et al, 1994). It also discusses how minorities must show commitment to their position while also demonstrating some flexibility in negotiations. An example study from Moscovici et al (1969) found a consistent minority had more influence than an inconsistent one in a color judgment task.
Research methods revision for AS AQA A Psychology 2014+acdefg
This document summarizes key concepts in research methods, including types of variables, experiments, group designs, hypotheses, and sampling. It discusses independent and dependent variables, laboratory, field, and quasi-natural experiments, independent group, repeated measures, and matched pairs designs. It also outlines directional, non-directional, and null hypotheses, and types of sampling such as random, opportunity, self-selected, and stratified.
Explains the process by which we receive, interpret, analyze, remember and use information about the social world. Also attempts to explain the process of attribution and common errors we often commit in social perception.
This document discusses different types of research designs used in psychology, including correlational research, quasi-experimental research, and problems to look for in research studies. It provides examples of each type of research design. Correlational research seeks to establish relationships between variables without manipulation. Quasi-experimental research blends correlation and experimental approaches by examining interactions between individual differences and manipulations. Problems to look for include confounds, nonrandom sampling, failure to replicate, and lack of comparison groups.
Social Psychology, ch 5 Genes, Culture and Gender by Nouman KhiljiNoman Khilji
Genes and culture both influence human behavior and gender roles. While humans share biological traits, culture shapes how those traits are expressed. Originally Africans, humans migrated with climate changes and adapted to new environments, resulting in skin color differences. Gender roles vary across cultures and change over time as cultures evolve, though biological factors like mating preferences still influence behavior. Both nature and nurture interact to determine human diversity in traits, behaviors, and gender norms in different societies.
This document provides an overview of social psychology. It discusses how social psychology studies how individual behaviors and thoughts are influenced by others. Key topics covered include cognitive processes, environmental variables, biological factors, and cultural values that shape social behaviors. Research methods in social psychology like observation, surveys, correlation analysis, and experiments are explained. The role of theory in social psychology and important ethical issues around deception and informed consent in research are also summarized.
Social influence refers to how individuals can affect each other through their presence or actions. Research shows that the presence of others can enhance performance on simple tasks but impair performance on complex tasks, due to increased physiological arousal and anxiety. Additional factors like evaluation apprehension, distraction, and social loafing can also influence individual and group performance and decision making. When making decisions as a group, polarization toward more extreme views can occur as members seek consensus, and groupthink may develop if alternative perspectives are not considered.
There are several key characteristics of group formation:
1. Groups involve people who perceive themselves as a coherent unit distinct from other groups.
2. Groups can be common-bond or common-identity, depending on how members are linked to each other.
3. Important group characteristics include status hierarchies, roles that members take on, norms that guide behavior, and cohesiveness or bonding between members.
4. Theories of group formation examine how and why individuals come together into coherent social units.
1) The document discusses several classic social psychology experiments and concepts related to social influence, conformity, compliance and obedience. It summarizes Solomon Asch's conformity experiments, Milgram's obedience experiments, and techniques of persuasion and compliance.
2) Key factors that influence conformity include group cohesiveness, size, social and situational norms. Asch found that one-third of participants conformed to an incorrect group opinion.
3) Milgram showed that ordinary people may obey destructive commands, especially when authority figures assume responsibility and issues are gradual. The document outlines ways to resist destructive obedience.
4) Techniques to gain compliance include reciprocity, scarcity and others discussed in Cialdini's
Obedience is a form of social influence that involves performing an action under the orders of an authority figure. It differs from
compliance (which involves changing your behavior at the request of another person) and
conformity (which involves altering your behavior in order to go along with the rest of the group). Instead, obedience involves altering your behavior because a figure of authority has told you to.
The document summarizes key concepts about social cognition and conformity from Elliot Aronson's book "The Social Animal". It discusses how conformity is influenced by group dynamics, accountability, commitment, and unanimity. It also covers persuasion techniques like emotional appeals, fear arousal, and inoculation theory. Finally, it examines social cognition heuristics people use to make judgments, including the representative heuristic, availability heuristic, and attitude heuristic.
This document provides an overview of social perception and how we form impressions of other people based on their observable behavior. It discusses how we rely on social perception to understand people based on what they say, do, and their facial expressions, gestures and tone of voice. It also explains some of the challenges in forming accurate impressions, as we can only observe behavior and not truly know people's inner thoughts and motivations. The document outlines several concepts from social psychology research related to social perception, including nonverbal communication, facial expressions, culture, implicit personality theories, attribution theory, and biases like the correspondence bias.
Elliot Aronson is an American psychologist born in 1932 who is known for his research on cognitive dissonance, the Jigsaw Classroom technique, and gain-loss theory of attraction. Over his career, he has taught at several top universities, written influential books, and received many awards, making significant contributions to the field of psychology.
1. Attitudes are formed through both social learning and genetic factors over long periods of time and are difficult to change once established.
2. There are two main ways to change attitudes - persuasion techniques which use messages to induce attitude change, and cognitive dissonance, an unpleasant feeling caused by inconsistent attitudes and behaviors that can lead to attitude change.
3. Important work-related attitudes include job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job involvement, which impact outcomes like absenteeism, turnover, and job performance. A variety of individual and job factors determine levels of job satisfaction.
This document provides an overview of communication theories and concepts. It discusses different types of communication including intrapersonal, interpersonal, group, and mass communication. It also covers effects of mass media, differences between old and new media environments, and features of the new media environment such as digital television and the internet. Propaganda devices used to influence audiences are defined, including name calling, glittering generality, transfer, testimonial, plain folks, bandwagon, and card stacking. Theories of persuasion and components of attitudes are also summarized.
Attitude refers to an individual's feelings, thoughts, and predisposition to act towards some object. Attitudes are shaped by experience, education, and environment. There are three components of attitude - cognitive, affective, and behavioral. People can generally be categorized as having positive, negative, or neutral attitudes. Positive attitudes are characterized by optimism and confidence, while negative attitudes involve pessimism and frustration. Neutral attitudes are indifferent and detached. Attitudes influence behavior and can be changed by altering one's perspective.
This document defines aggression and violence, and discusses various models and factors related to aggression. It begins by defining aggression as behavior intended to cause harm between individuals, which can be physical or emotional. Violence is defined as aggressive behavior using force. It then covers biological models of aggression including anatomical bases in the limbic system and hypothalamus, as well as neurotransmitters and hormones. Psychological models discussed include psychoanalytic, humanistic, and social learning theories. Social determinants of aggression highlighted include frustration, provocation, and media violence. The document concludes by covering prevention/control methods and cognitive theories of aggression.
The document defines aggression and discusses factors that can lead to aggressive behavior, including personal, situational, and social factors. It then outlines several strategies that can be used to reduce aggression, such as punishment, catharsis, cognitive interventions like apologies, exposure to non-aggressive social models, training in social skills, and using incompatible responses to generate emotions like laughter that are incompatible with anger.
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings and behaviors are influenced by others. Attitudes are learned evaluations of people, objects or ideas that influence thoughts and actions. Attitudes have cognitive, affective and behavioral components and are formed through social learning, comparison, experiences and potentially genetics. Attitudes can change through persuasion using communicators, messages, audiences and channels of communication. Various scales have been developed to measure attitudes, including Likert scales, Thurstone scales and Bogardus social distance scales. Group dynamics, conformity, cohesiveness and leadership are also areas of study in social psychology.
Kuliah 5-attitude and attitude change.pdfMohdAkif12
This document discusses how attitudes are formed and changed through social influence. It covers several key points:
1. Attitudes have three components - affective, cognitive, and behavioral - and are influenced by our experiences, environment, and social learning.
2. Attitudes can form in different ways, such as through classical and operant conditioning, self-perception, or observation of our own behaviors.
3. Attitudes can be explicit or implicit, and people are often unaware of their implicit attitudes.
4. Attitudes change through social influence from others, cognitive dissonance when our attitudes and behaviors clash, and persuasive communications depending on the message, source, and audience characteristics.
This document provides a summary of key concepts from a chapter on social psychology. It discusses topics like social cognition, person perception, social influence, conformity, prejudice, and obedience. Some main points include:
- Social psychology examines how people think, feel, and behave in social situations. It includes social cognition, or how we form impressions of others, and social influence, how our behavior is affected by other people.
- When forming impressions of others, we rely on mental shortcuts like social categorization and implicit personality theories. We also make attributions to explain others' behaviors.
- Studies on conformity, like Asch's line experiment, show that people often conform to group pressures even if it means agreeing with
This document provides an overview of Chapter 13 on social psychology from a PowerPoint presentation. It discusses several key topics in social psychology including attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error, how attitudes can influence actions and vice versa, conformity and obedience, and social influence from groups. Specific concepts covered include attribution biases based on culture, the foot-in-the-door phenomenon, how role playing can shift attitudes, and cognitive dissonance theory. Forms of social influence like automatic mimicry and conformity to norms are also summarized.
Social psychology involves studying how people relate to and influence one another. Key topics include attitudes, prejudice, aggression, attraction, love, and group behavior. Attitudes can guide actions if external pressures are low, the attitude is aware, and relevant to the behavior. However, actions often influence attitudes instead due to cognitive dissonance, the mental discomfort from inconsistent cognitions. Prejudice arises from categorization, vivid cases, a just world view, and provides an outlet for anger. Groups impact conformity, polarization, social loafing, and deindividuation where people lose their sense of self.
1. An attitude consists of three components - affective (feelings), behavioral (actions), and cognitive (thoughts). The three-component model is most popular in describing attitudes.
2. Attitudes serve important functions like knowledge, pursuing goals, self-esteem, and expressing values. They also allow for cognitive consistency between how we feel about objects and people.
3. Attitudes can be formed through direct experience, conditioning, social influence from parents and peers, and exposure to media. Specific attitudes better predict behaviors than general attitudes.
Social psychology examines how individuals are influenced by and influence others. Key topics include social influence, norms, attitudes, stereotypes, conformity, obedience, and persuasion. Important concepts are social learning theory, attribution biases like the fundamental attribution error, and interpersonal attraction factors like similarity, proximity, and self-disclosure.
This chapter's focus is on Social Psychology. There is discussion of relationships, persuasion, coercion, and other types of social influence. Love and intimate relationships is also included.
The document discusses various theories and mechanisms related to attitude formation and change. It describes four main ways attitudes can be formed: mere exposure, associative learning, self-perception, and functional reasons. Attitude change can occur through self-perception, learning theory, cognitive dissonance, and persuasion. The theory of planned behavior model proposes that attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control influence behavioral intentions and actual behaviors.
1. Attribution theory examines how people explain the behaviors of others as being caused either by internal dispositions or external situational factors, with a tendency to underestimate the impact of situations.
2. Conformity is the adjustment of one's behavior to match a group standard, as seen in studies where participants changed their estimates to match the group.
3. Obedience studies like Milgram's showed that ordinary people can engage in shocking behaviors when instructed by an authority figure in a lab coat.
4. Groups can polarize attitudes to more extreme positions than individual members hold alone and groupthink can override rational decision making in a desire for group harmony.
The document discusses factors that influence attitude formation and change. It describes four main ways attitudes can be formed: mere exposure, associative learning, self-perception, and functional reasons. Attitudes can also change through self-perception, learning theories, cognitive dissonance, and persuasion. A key model for predicting behavior is the theory of planned behavior, which says behavioral intentions are influenced by attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control.
This document discusses attitudes and their formation. It defines attitudes as evaluations of objects that can be positive or negative. Attitudes have three components - cognitive, affective, and behavioral. The cognitive component involves beliefs and knowledge about an object, the affective component involves feelings toward the object, and the behavioral component involves tendencies to behave in certain ways toward the object. Attitudes are formed through various determinants like community influences, cultural factors, experiences, socialization, needs, media, and personality traits. The theoretical perspective of attitude formation is explained through social learning theory and concepts like classical and instrumental conditioning.
This document defines attitudes and prejudice, discusses their history and formation, and examines factors that influence them. It notes that attitudes are made up of affective, behavioral, and cognitive components and can be either positive or negative. Prejudice involves negatively judging others without fully understanding them. Theories on attitude formation include cognitive dissonance theory, self-perception theory, and the elaboration likelihood model. Reducing prejudice requires addressing its cognitive, emotional and behavioral aspects.
After three decades of research, three major psychological theories of crime have emerged: psychodynamic theory, behavioral theory and cognitive theory. Learning these criminology theories and how to put them into practice is a component of an online Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice degree program.
This document discusses attitudes, beliefs, and social cognition. It begins by defining attitudes as favorable or unfavorable evaluations of people, objects, or situations. Attitudes have three components - cognitive, affective, and behavioral. The document then discusses how attitudes are formed through direct contact, direct instruction, and interaction with others. Attitudes help us understand the social world, describe social groups, understand our identity, and gain approval from others. The document concludes by stating that attitudes are learned and can change over time or through new experiences.
The document summarizes key concepts about the self from chapter 6 of the book "Self in a Social World". It discusses the physical self, social self, and personal self. It also covers self-concept, self-esteem, identity statuses including identity achievement, identity foreclosure, identity moratorium, and identity diffusion. Prejudice and its sources are discussed along with attribution theory.
Attitudes are stable organizations of beliefs, feelings, and behaviors towards objects like people or groups. Attitudes are acquired through early experiences, imitation of others, and media influences. They consist of cognitive, affective, and behavioral components and prepare people to act in certain ways.
Attitudes can change through social influences like reference groups, persuasion techniques that appeal to emotions, role-playing personal experiences, and cognitive dissonance when actions contradict attitudes. Common cognitive biases that influence how we perceive others include the fundamental attribution error, self-serving bias, halo effect, and effects of labeling. Social compliance techniques used to influence others include the foot-in-the-door effect, door-in-the-face effect
This document defines key concepts related to attitudes and prejudice, including how attitudes are formed and can change. It discusses three characteristics of attitudes: stability, evaluation, and guidance of behavior. Attitudes can change through persuasive communication, changing behavior, or ideology. Prejudice involves negative attitudes toward groups, and racism is a system that categorizes people by physical features. The document also examines gender stereotyping, patriarchy, sexism, and feminist efforts to reduce prejudice and ideological support for inequality.
This document defines key concepts related to attitudes and prejudice, including how attitudes are formed and can change. It discusses three characteristics of attitudes: stability, evaluation, and guidance of behavior. Attitudes can change through persuasive communication, changing behavior, or ideology. Prejudice involves negative attitudes toward groups, and racism is a system that categorizes people by physical features. The document also examines gender stereotyping, patriarchy, sexism, and feminist efforts to reduce prejudice and ideological support for inequality.
Attitudes are evaluations people make about objects, ideas, events, or other people. Attitudes can be positive or negative.
Explicit attitudes are conscious beliefs that can guide decisions and behavior. Implicit attitudes are unconscious beliefs that can still influence decisions and behavior.
Attitudes can include up to three components:
cognitive,
emotional, and
behavioral.
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1. Social Psychology
Elliot Aronson
University of California, Santa Cruz
Timothy D. Wilson
University of Virginia
Robin M. Akert
Wellesley College
slides by Travis Langley
Henderson State University
6th edition
2. Chapter 7
Attitudes and
Attitude Changes:
Influencing Thoughts
and Feelings
“By persuading others,
we convince ourselves.”
— Junius
3. THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF
ATTITUDES
Advertising can have powerful effects.
• Until the early twentieth century, men bought
99% of cigarettes sold. Then advertisers began
targeting female buyers.
• In 1955, there were twice as many male as
female smokers in the United States.
• Although the smoking rate has decreased
overall, women have almost caught up to men.
In 2004 23% of adult men smoked, compared
to 19% of adult women.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
4. THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF
ATTITUDES
• Although the smoking rate has decreased
overall, women have almost caught up to men.
In 2004 23% of adult men smoked, compared
to 19% of adult women.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
• But is advertising responsible?
• To what extent can advertising shape
people’s attitudes and behavior?
• Exactly what is an attitude, anyway, and
how is it changed?
5. THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF
ATTITUDES
Attitudes
Evaluations of people,
objects, and ideas.
People are not neutral observers of the
world.
They evaluate what they encounter.
They form attitudes.
6. THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF
ATTITUDES
Attitudes are made up of three parts that together
form our evaluation of the “attitude object”:
1.An affective component, consisting of your
emotional reactions toward the attitude object.
2.A cognitive component, consisting of your
thoughts and beliefs about the attitude object.
3.A behavioral component, consisting of your
actions or observable behavior toward the
attitude object.
7. THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF
ATTITUDES
1. What is your affective reaction when you see a
certain car?
– Perhaps you have feelings of excitement.
– If you are a U.S. autoworker examining a new foreign-
made model, maybe you feel anger and resentment.
2. What is your cognitive reaction?
– What beliefs do you hold about the car’s attributes?
– Perhaps you admire its hybrid engine that makes it one
of the most fuel efficient cars you can buy.
3. What is your behavioral reaction?
– Do you go to a dealership and test-drive the car and
actually buy one?
8. Where Do Attitudes Come From?
One provocative answer that some attitudes, at
least, are linked to our genes.
• Identical twins share more attitudes than
fraternal twins, even when raised in different
homes, never knowing each other.
• Some attitudes are an indirect function of our
genetic makeup, related to things like our
temperament and personality.
9. Where Do Attitudes Come From?
Even if there is a genetic component, our
social experiences clearly play a large
role in shaping our attitudes.
Not all attitudes are created equally.
Though all attitudes have affective,
cognitive, and behavioral components,
any given attitude can be based more on
one type of experience than another.
10. Cognitively Based Attitude
An attitude based primarily on people’s
beliefs about the properties of an
attitude object.
Sometimes our attitudes are based
primarily on the relevant facts, such as
the objective merits of an automobile.
• How many miles to the gallon does it
get?
• Does it have side-impact air bags?
11. Affectively Based Attitude
An attitude based more on people’s feelings
and values than on their beliefs about the
nature of an attitude object.
Sometimes we simply like a car,
regardless of how many miles to the
gallon it gets.
Occasionally we even feel great about
something or someone in spite of having
negative beliefs.
12. If affectively based attitudes do not come
from examining the facts, where do they
come from? They can result from:
1. People’s values, such as religious and
moral beliefs,
2. Sensory reaction, such as liking the
taste of chocolate ,
3. Aesthetic reaction, such as admiring a
painting or the lines and color of a car,
4. Conditioning.
13. The phenomenon whereby a stimulus
that elicits an emotional response is
repeatedly paired with a neutral stimulus
that does not until the neutral stimulus
takes on the emotional properties of the
first stimulus.
Classical Conditioning
14. Classical conditioning works this way:
A stimulus that elicits an emotional response is
accompanied by a neutral stimulus that does not
until eventually the neutral stimulus elicits the
emotional response by itself.
• Suppose that when you were a child, you
experienced feelings of warmth and love when
you visited your grandmother.
• Suppose also that her house always smelled
faintly of mothballs.
• Eventually, the smell of mothballs alone will
trigger the emotions you experienced during
your visits, through the process of classical
conditioning.
15. The phenomenon whereby behaviors that
people freely choose to perform increase
or decrease in frequency, depending on
whether they are followed by positive
reinforcement or punishment.
Operant Conditioning
16. Operant Conditioning
In operant conditioning, behaviors we freely
perform become more or less frequent,
depending on whether they are followed by a
reward (positive reinforcement) or punishment.
How does this apply to attitudes?
Imagine:
• A 4-year-old white girl goes to the playground
and begins to play with an African American
girl.
• Her father expresses strong disapproval, telling
her, “We don’t play with that kind of child.”
• It won’t take long before the child associates
interacting with African Americans with
disapproval, thereby adopting her father’s racist
attitudes.
17.
18. Although affectively based attitudes come
from many sources, we can group them
into one family because they:
(1)Do not result from a rational examination of
the issues,
(2)Are not governed by logic (e.g., persuasive
arguments about the issues seldom
change an affectively based attitude), and
(3)Are often linked to people’s values, so that
trying to change them challenges those
values.
19. Behaviorally Based Attitude
An attitude based on observations of
how one behaves toward an attitude
object.
According to Daryl Bem’s (1972) self-
perception theory, under certain
circumstances, people don’t know how
they feel until they see how they behave.
We can form our attitudes based on our
observations of our own behavior.
20. Behaviorally Based Attitude
An attitude based on observations of
how one behaves toward an attitude
object.
People infer their attitudes from their behavior only
under certain conditions.
1. Their initial attitude has to be weak or
ambiguous.
2. People infer their attitudes from their behavior
only when there are no other plausible
explanations for their behavior.
21. Explicit versus Implicit Attitudes
Explicit Attitudes
Attitudes that we consciously
endorse and can easily report.
Implicit Attitudes
Attitudes that are involuntary,
uncontrollable, and at times unconscious.
22. Explicit versus Implicit Attitudes
Consider Sam, a white, middle-class college
student who genuinely believes that all races
are equal and abhors any kind of racial bias.
This is Sam’s explicit attitude, in the sense that it
is his conscious evaluation of members of other
races that governs how he chooses to act.
For instance, consistent with his explicit attitude,
Sam recently signed a petition in favor of
affirmative action policies at his university.
23. Explicit versus Implicit Attitudes
Sam has grown up in a culture in which there are
many negative stereotypes about minority
groups, however, and it is possible that some of
these negative ideas have seeped into him in
ways of which he is not fully aware.
When Sam is around African Americans, for
example, perhaps some negative feelings are
triggered automatically and unintentionally. If
so, he has a negative implicit attitude toward
African Americans.
24. Explicit versus Implicit Attitudes
People can have explicit and implicit
attitudes toward virtually anything, not just
other races.
For example, students can believe explicitly
that they hate math but have a more
positive attitude at an implicit level.
25. HOW DO ATTITUDES CHANGE?
• When attitudes change, they often do so in
response to social influence.
• Our attitudes toward everything from a
presidential candidate to a brand of laundry
detergent can be influenced by what other
people do or say.
• This is why attitudes are of such interest to
social psychologists—even something as
personal and internal as an attitude is a highly
social phenomenon, influenced by the imagined
or actual behavior of other people.
26. Changing Attitudes by Changing Behavior:
Cognitive Dissonance Theory Revisited
As we noted in Chapter 6, people experience
dissonance:
• When they do something that threatens their
image of themselves as decent, kind, and
honest.
• Particularly if there is no way they can explain
away this behavior as due to external
circumstances.
When you can’t find external justification for your
behavior, you will attempt to find internal
justification by bringing the two cognitions (your
attitude and your behavior) closer together.
27. Changing Attitudes by Changing Behavior:
Cognitive Dissonance Theory Revisited
Suppose you don’t want to rub your new father-in-
law the wrong way by arguing with him about
politics. You might go along with a mildly positive
remark about a politician you actually dislike.
Counterattitudinal advocacy, a process by which
people are induced to state publicly an opinion or
attitude that runs counter to their own private
attitudes, creates dissonance.
When this is accomplished with a minimum of
external justification, it results in a change in
people’s private attitude in the direction of the
public statement.
28. Communication (e.g., a speech or television
ad) advocating a particular side of an
issue.
Persuasive Communication
How should you construct a message so that it
would really change people’s attitudes?
29. Persuasive Communications
and Attitude Change
Yale Attitude Change Approach
The study of the conditions under which
people are most likely to change their
attitudes in response to persuasive
messages, focusing on “who said what
to whom”—the source of the
communication, the nature of the
communication, and the nature of the
audience.
30.
31. The Central and Peripheral
Routes to Persuasion
Elaboration Likelihood Model
An explanation of the two ways in which
persuasive communications can cause attitude
change:
• Centrally, when people are motivated and have
the ability to pay attention to the arguments in
the communication.
• peripherally, when people do not pay attention
to the arguments but are instead swayed by
surface characteristics.
32. The Central and Peripheral
Routes to Persuasion
Under certain conditions, people are motivated to
pay attention to the facts in a communication,
and so they will be most persuaded when these
facts are logically compelling.
Central Route to Persuasion
The case whereby people elaborate on a persuasive
communication, listening carefully to and thinking
about the arguments, as occurs when people
have both the ability and the motivation to listen
carefully to a communication.
33. The Central and Peripheral
Routes to Persuasion
Under other conditions, people are not motivated
to pay attention to the facts; instead, they notice
only the surface characteristics of the message,
such as how long it is and who is delivering it.
Peripheral Route to Persuasion
The case whereby people do not elaborate
on the arguments in a persuasive
communication but are instead swayed by
peripheral cues.
34.
35. The Motivation to Pay Attention
to the Arguments
One thing that determines whether people
are motivated to pay attention to a
communication is the personal relevance
of the topic:
• How important is the topic to a person’s
well-being?
36. The Motivation to Pay Attention
to the Arguments
The more personally relevant an issue is,
the more willing people are to pay
attention to the arguments in a speech,
and therefore the more likely people are
to take the central route to persuasion.
37.
38. The Motivation to Pay Attention
to the Arguments
People high in the need for cognition are more likely to
form their attitudes by paying close attention to
relevant arguments (i.e., via the central route),
whereas people low in the need for cognition are
more likely to rely on peripheral cues, such as how
attractive or credible a speaker is.
Need for Cognition
A personality variable reflecting the
extent to which people engage in and
enjoy effortful cognitive activities.
39. The Ability to Pay Attention
to the Arguments
When people are unable to pay close
attention to the arguments, they are
swayed more by peripheral cues.
• Status of communicator
• Liking or trusting communicator
Therefore someone with a weak argument
can create distractions (e.g., loud music)
to make people more susceptible to
peripheral influence.
40. How to Achieve Long-Lasting
Attitude Change
Compared to people who base their
attitudes on peripheral cues, people who
base their attitudes on a careful analysis
of the arguments will be:
• More likely to maintain this attitude over
time,
• More likely to behave consistently with
this attitude,
• More resistant to counterpersuasion.
41. Emotion and Attitude Change
• Before people will consider your carefully
constructed arguments, you have to get
their attention.
• One way is to grab people’s attention by
playing to their emotions.
Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.
43. Fear-Arousing Communications
Do fear-arousing
communications work?
• If a moderate amount of fear is
created and people believe that
listening to the message will teach
them how to reduce this fear, they
will be motivated to analyze the
message carefully and will likely
change their attitudes via the central
route.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
44. A group of smokers who watched a graphic film depicting lung cancer and then
read pamphlets with specific instructions about how to quit smoking reduced
their smoking significantly more than people who were shown only the film or
only the pamphlet.
45. Fear-Arousing Communications
Fear-arousing appeals will also
fail if they are so strong that
they overwhelm people.
If people are scared to death,
they will become defensive,
deny the importance of the
threat, and be unable to think
rationally about the issue.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
46. Emotions as a Heuristic
Heuristic–Systematic Model of
Persuasion
An explanation of the two ways in which
persuasive communications can cause
attitude change: either systematically
processing the merits of the arguments or
using mental shortcuts (heuristics) –
(e.g., thinking, “Experts are always right”)
47. Emotions as a Heuristic
Interestingly, our emotions and moods can
themselves act as heuristics to determine
our attitudes.
When trying to decide attitude about
something, we often rely on the “How do I
feel about it?”-heuristic.
If we feel good, we must have a positive
attitude; if we feel bad, it’s thumbs down.
48. Emotions as a Heuristic
• The problem with the “How do I feel about it?” heuristic
is that we can make mistakes about what is causing
our mood, misattributing feelings created by one
source to another.
• If so, people might make a bad decision.
• Once you get a new couch home, you
might discover that it no longer makes
you feel all that great.
• Advertisers and retailers want to create good feelings
while they present their product (e.g., by playing
appealing music or showing pleasant images), hoping
that people will attribute at least some of those feelings
to the product they are trying to sell.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
49. Emotion and Different
Types of Attitudes
Several studies have shown that it is best
to fight fire with fire:
• If an attitude is cognitively based, try to
change it with rational arguments.
• If it is affectively based, try to change it
with emotional appeals.
50. Emotion and Different
Types of Attitudes
• Some ads stress the objective merits of a
product, such as an ad for an air conditioner or
a vacuum cleaner that discusses its price,
efficiency, and reliability.
• Other ads stress emotions and values, such as
ones for perfume or designer jeans that try to
associate their brands with sex, beauty, and
youthfulness, rather than saying anything about
the objective qualities of the product.
• Which kind of ad is most effective?
51.
52. Culture and Different
Types of Attitudes
• Perhaps people in Western cultures base their
attitudes more on concerns about individuality
and self-improvement, whereas people in Asian
cultures base their attitudes more on concerns
about their standing in their social group, such
as their families.
• If so, advertisements that stress individuality
and self-improvement might work better in
Western cultures, and advertisements that
stress one’s social group might work better in
Asian cultures.
53. RESISTING PERSUASIVE
MESSAGES
Attitude Inoculation
Making people immune to attempts to
change their attitudes by initially
exposing them to small doses of the
arguments against their position.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
54. RESISTING PERSUASIVE
MESSAGES
Being Alert to Product Placement
• When an advertisement comes on during a TV
show, people often decide to press the mute
button on the remote control or to get up and
get a snack.
• To counteract this tendency to tune out,
advertisers look for ways of displaying their
wares during the show itself.
• With this technique, called product placement,
companies pay the makers of a TV show or
movie to incorporate their product into the script.
55. RESISTING PERSUASIVE
MESSAGES
Being Alert to Product Placement
• When an advertisement comes on during a TV
show, people often decide to press the mute
button on the remote control or to get up and
get a snack.
• To counteract this tendency to tune out,
advertisers look for ways of displaying their
wares during the show itself.
• With this technique, called product placement,
companies pay the makers of a TV show or
movie to incorporate their product into the script.
• When people are forewarned, they analyze
what they see and hear more carefully and as
a result are likely to avoid attitude change.
• Without such warnings, people pay little
attention to the persuasive attempts and tend
to accept them at face value.
• So before kids watch TV or sending them off to
the movies, it is good to remind them that they
are likely to encounter several attempts to
change their attitudes.
56. RESISTING PERSUASIVE
MESSAGES
Resisting Peer Pressure
• Peer pressure is linked to values and emotions, playing
on their fear of rejection and their desire for freedom
and autonomy.
• In adolescence, peers become an important source of
social approval—perhaps the most important—and can
dispense powerful rewards for holding certain attitudes
or behaving in certain ways, such as using drugs or
engaging in unprotected sex.
• What is needed is a technique that will make young
people more resistant to attitude change attempts via
peer pressure so that they will be less likely to engage
in dangerous behaviors.
57. RESISTING PERSUASIVE
MESSAGES
Resisting Peer Pressure
• One possibility is to extend the logic of the attitude
inoculation approach to more affectively based
persuasion techniques, such as peer pressure.
• In addition to inoculating people with doses of logical
arguments that they might hear, we could also inoculate
them with samples of the kinds of emotional appeals
they might encounter.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
58. When Persuasion Attempts Boomerang:
Reactance Theory
Reactance Theory
The idea that when people feel their
freedom to perform a certain
behavior is threatened, an
unpleasant state of reactance is
aroused, which they can reduce by
performing the threatened behavior.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
59. WHEN WILL ATTITUDES
PREDICT BEHAVIOR?
The relationship between attitudes and behavior is not
simple, as shown in a classic study (LaPiere, 1934):
• In the early 1930s, Richard LaPiere embarked on a cross-
country sightseeing trip with a young Chinese couple.
• Prejudice against Asians was common in the United States
at this time, so at each hotel, campground, and restaurant
they entered, LaPiere worried that his friends would be
refused service.
• To his surprise, of the 251 establishments he and his
friends visited, only one refused to serve them.
• And yet when surveyed, only one replied that it would
serve a Chinese visitor. More than 90 percent said they
definitely would not; the rest were undecided.
60. Predicting Spontaneous Behaviors
Attitudes will predict spontaneous behaviors only
when they are highly accessible to people.
Attitude Accessibility
The strength of the association between an
attitude object and a person’s evaluation
of that object, measured by the speed
with which people can report how they
feel about the object.
61. Predicting Deliberative Behaviors
Theory of Planned Behavior
The idea that the best predictors of a
person’s planned, deliberate behaviors
are the person’s attitudes toward
specific behaviors, subjective norms,
and perceived behavioral control.
62. Predicting Deliberative Behaviors
Specific behaviors: The theory of planned
behavior holds that only specific attitudes toward
the behavior in question can be expected to
predict that behavior.
Subjective norms: We also need to measure
people’s subjective norms—their beliefs about
how people they care about will view the
behavior in question.
Perceived behavioral control: Intentions are
influenced by the ease with which they believe
they can perform the behavior.
63.
64. THE POWER OF ADVERTISING
It turns out that people are influenced by
advertisements more than they think.
The results of over three hundred split
cable market tests indicate that
advertising does work, particularly for
new products.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Effective ads worked quickly,
increasing sales substantially
within the first six months
they were shown.
65. THE POWER OF ADVERTISING
Subliminal Messages
Words or pictures that are not consciously
perceived but may nevertheless influence
people’s judgments, attitudes, and behaviors.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Simply stated, there is no evidence
that the types of subliminal
messages encountered in
everyday life have any influence
on people’s behavior.
66. Advertising, Cultural Stereotypes,
and Social Behavior
• Advertisements transmit cultural
stereotypes in their words and images,
subtly linking products with desired
images.
• Advertisements can also reinforce and
perpetuate stereotypical ways of thinking
about social groups.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
67. • Gender stereotypes are particularly pervasive in
advertising imagery.
• Men are depicted as doers, women as observers.
68. Advertising, Cultural Stereotypes, and
Social Behavior
Stereotype Threat
The apprehension experienced by
members of a group that their behavior
might confirm a cultural stereotype.
69. Social Psychology
Elliot Aronson
University of California, Santa Cruz
Timothy D. Wilson
University of Virginia
Robin M. Akert
Wellesley College
slides by Travis Langley
Henderson State University
6th edition
Editor's Notes
(Ajzen, 2001; Eagly & Chaiken, 1998; Fazio, 2000; Petty, Cacioppo, Strathman, & Priester, 2005).
One study, for example, found that identical twins had more similar attitudes toward such things as the death penalty and jazz than fraternal twins did (Martin et al., 1986).
People may have inherited a temperament and personality from their parents that made them predisposed to like jazz more than rock-and-roll.
(Zanna & Rempel, 1988)
An attitude based more on emotions and values than on an objective appraisal of pluses and minuses is called an affectively based attitude (Breckler & Wiggins, 1989; Zanna & Rempel, 1988).
As a guide to which attitudes are likely to be affectively based, consider the topics that etiquette manuals suggest should not be discussed at a dinner party: politics, sex, and religion. People seem to vote more with their hearts than their minds, for example, caring more about how they feel about a candidate than their beliefs about his or her specific policies (Abelson, Kinder, Peters, & Fiske, 1982; Granberg & Brown, 1989).
In fact, it has been estimated that one-third of the electorate knows virtually nothing about specific politicians but nonetheless has strong feelings about them (Redlawsk, 2002; Wattenberg, 1987).
People’s feelings about such issues as abortion, the death penalty, and premarital sex are often based more on their values than on a cold examination of the facts. The function of such attitudes is not so much to paint an accurate picture of the world as to express and validate one’s basic value system (Maio & Olson, 1995; Schwartz, 1992; Smith, Bruner, & White, 1956; Snyder & DeBono, 1989).
(Olson & Fazio, 2001).
(Cacioppo, Marshall-Goodell, Tassinary, & Petty, 1992; De Houwer, Baeyens, & Eelen, 1994)
Attitudes can take on a positive or negative affect through either classical or operant conditioning, as shown in Figure 7.1 (Cacioppo et al., 1992; Kuykendall & Keating, 1990).
How can we tell if an attitude is more affectively or cognitively based? See the Try It! exercise in the textbook for one way to measure the bases of people’s attitudes.
For example, suppose you asked a friend how much she likes to exercise. If she replies, “Well, I guess I like it, because I always seem to be going for a run or heading over to the gym to work out,” we would say she has a behaviorally based attitude. Her attitude is based more on an observation of her behavior than on her cognitions or affect. As a guide to which attitudes are likely to be affectively based, consider the topics that etiquette manuals suggest should not be discussed at a dinner party: politics, sex, and religion. People seem to vote more with their hearts than their minds, for example, caring more about how they feel about a candidate than their beliefs about his or her specific policies (Abelson, Kinder, Peters, & Fiske, 1982; Granberg & Brown, 1989).
In fact, it has been estimated that one-third of the electorate knows virtually nothing about specific politicians but nonetheless has strong feelings about them (Redlawsk, 2002; Wattenberg, 1987).
If your friend already has a strong attitude toward exercising, she does not have to observe her behavior to infer how she feels about it.
If your friend believes she exercises to lose weight or because her doctor has ordered her to, she is unlikely to assume that she runs and works out because she enjoys it. (See Chapter 5 for a more detailed description of self-perception theory.)
(Bassili & Brown, 2005; Fazio & Olson, 2003; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000)
(Devine, 1989a)
(Dovidio, Kawakami, & Gaertner, 2002)
(Hofmann, Gawronski, Gschwendner, Le, & Schmitt, 2005; Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2002; Rudman, 2004)
A variety of techniques have been developed to measure people’s implicit attitudes, some of which we discussed in Chapter 3. One of the most popular is the Implicit Association Test or IAT (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998; Nosek, Greenwald, & Banaji, 2005), in which people categorize words or pictures on a computer. Rather than going into detail about how this test works, we encourage you to visit a Web site where you can take the test yourself and read more about how it is constructed (http://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit).
Attitudes do sometimes change. In America, for example, the popularity of the president often seems to rise and fall with surprising speed. In the weeks before the tragic events of September 11, 2001, for example, only about 50 percent of Americans said that they approved of the job that George W. Bush was doing as president. In the days right after 9/11, his approval rating jumped to 86 percent. Since then his popularity has gone up and down. Right before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March of 2003 his approval rating had dropped to 57 percent; a month later, it rose to 71 percent (PollingReport.com, 2003). In November of 2005, as the war dragged on, only 37 percent of Americans approved of President Bush’s performance.
Drawing on their experiences during World War II, when they worked for the United States armed forces to increase the morale of U.S. soldiers (Stouffer, Suchman, De Vinney, Star, & Williams, 1949), Carl Hovland and his colleagues (Hovland, Janis, & Kelley, 1953) conducted many experiments on the conditions under which people are most likely to be influenced by persuasive communications. In essence, they studied “who says what to whom,” looking at the source of the communication (e.g., how expert or attractive the speaker is), the communication itself (e.g., the quality of the arguments; whether the speaker presents both sides of the issue), and the nature of the audience (e.g., which kinds of appeals work with hostile or friendly audiences).
This approach yielded a great deal of useful information on how people change their attitudes in response to persuasive communications; some of this information is summarized in Figure 7.2. As the research mounted, however, a problem became apparent: Many aspects of persuasive communications turned out to be important, but it was not clear which were more important than others—that is, it was unclear when one factor should be emphasized over another.
For example, let’s return to that job you have with the American Cancer Society. The marketing manager wants to see your ad next month! If you were to read the many Yale Attitude Change studies, you might find lots of useful information about who should say what to whom in order to construct a persuasive communication. However, you might also find yourself saying, “There’s a lot of information here, and I’m not sure where I should place the most emphasis. Should I focus on who delivers the ads? Or should I worry more about the content of the message?”
The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Petty et al., 2005), for example, specifies when people will be influenced by what the speech says (i.e., the logic of the arguments) and when they will be influenced by more superficial characteristics (e.g., who gives the speech or how long it is).
Petty and Cacioppo (1986) call this the central route to persuasion.
Here people will not be swayed by the logic of the arguments because they are not paying close attention to what the communicator says. Instead, they are persuaded if the surface characteristics of the message—such as the fact that it is long or is delivered by an expert or attractive communicator—make it seem like a reasonable one. Petty and Cacioppo call this the peripheral route to persuasion because people are swayed by things peripheral to the message itself.
What determines whether people take the central versus the peripheral route to persuasion? The key is whether people have both the motivation and the ability to pay attention to the facts. If people are truly interested in the topic and thus motivated to pay close attention to the arguments, and if they people have the ability to pay attention—for example, if nothing is distracting them—they are more likely to take the central route.
For example, consider the issue of whether Social Security benefits should be reduced. How personally relevant is this to you? If you are a 72-year-old whose sole income is from Social Security, the issue is extremely relevant; if you are a 20-year-old from a well-to-do family, the issue has little personal relevance.
Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman (1981): Figure 7.4 shows what happened when an issue is highly relevant to the listeners.
This finding illustrates a general rule: When an issue is personally relevant, people pay attention to the arguments in a speech and will be persuaded to the extent that the arguments are sound—the “proof” of the speech, in Aristotle’s words. When an issue is not personally relevant, people pay less attention to the arguments. Instead, they will take a mental shortcut, following such peripheral rules as “Prestigious speakers can be trusted” (Chen & Chaiken, 1999; Fabrigar, Priester, Petty, & Wegener, 1998).
This is a personality variable that reflects the extent to which people engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activities.
An exchange of letters appeared in the an advice column about whether drugs such as cocaine and marijuana should be legalized. Readers wrote in with all sorts of compelling arguments on both sides of the issue, and it was difficult to figure out which arguments had the most merit. One reader resolved this dilemma by relying less on the content of the arguments than on the prestige and expertise of the source of the arguments.
(Chaiken, 1980; Mackie, 1987; Petty, Haugtvedt, & Smith, 1995; Petty & Wegener, 1998)
In one study, for example, people changed their attitudes either by analyzing the logic of the arguments or by using peripheral cues. When the participants were telephoned ten days later, those who had analyzed the logic of the arguments were more likely to have maintained their new attitude—that is, attitudes that changed via the central route to persuasion lasted longer (Chaiken, 1980).
Now you know exactly how to construct your ad for the American Cancer Society, right? Well, not quite. If you are going to show your antismoking ad on television, for example, how can you be sure people will watch the ad when it comes on, instead of changing the channel or heading for the refrigerator?
Public service ads often take this approach by trying to scare people into practicing safer sex, wearing seat belts, and staying away from drugs.
For example, as of January, 2001, cigarette packs sold in Canada are required to display graphic pictures of diseased gums and other body parts that cover at least 50% of the outside label (Carroll, 2003).
(Petty, 1995; Rogers, 1983)
Why? Watching the film scared people, and giving them the pamphlet reassured them that there was a way to reduce this fear—by following the instructions on how to quit. (Leventhal, Watts, & Pagano, 1967)
Seeing only the pamphlet didn’t work very well because there was little fear motivating people to read it carefully. Seeing only the film didn’t work very well either because people are likely to tune out a message that raises fear but does not give information about how to reduce it. This may explain why some attempts to frighten people into changing their attitudes and behaviors fail: They succeed in scaring people but do not provide specific recommendations to help them reduce their fear (Hoog, Stroebe, & de Wit, 2005; Ruiter, Abraham, & Kok, 2001).
So if you have decided to arouse people’s fear in your ad for the American Cancer Society, keep these points in mind: First, try to create enough fear to motivate people to pay attention to your arguments but not so much fear that people will tune out or distort what you say. Second, include some specific recommendations about how to stop smoking so that people will be reassured that paying close attention to your arguments will help them reduce their fear.
Recall from Chapter 3 that heuristics are mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently. In the present context, a heuristic is a simple rule people use to decide what their attitude is without having to spend a lot of time analyzing every little detail about the matter.
Examples of such heuristics include thinking that length equals strength (i.e., long messages are more persuasive than short ones).
Now this probably sounds like a pretty good rule to follow, and like most heuristics, it is—most of the time.
Suppose you need a new couch and go to a furniture store to look around. You see one in your price range and are trying to decide whether to buy it. If you use the “How do I feel about it?” heuristic, you do a quick check of your feelings and emotions. If you feel great while you’re sitting in the couch in the store, you will probably buy it.
(Clore & Schnall, 2005; Forgas, 1995; Schwarz & Clore, 1988)
The problem is that sometimes it is difficult to tell where our feelings come from. Is it really the couch that made you feel great, or is it something completely unrelated? Maybe you were in a good mood to begin with, or maybe on the way to the store you heard your favorite song on the radio. Or perhaps a salesperson greeted you with a big smile and an ice-cold drink when you walked in the door, and that brightened your mood.
The success of various attitude change techniques depends on the type of attitude we are trying to change. As we saw earlier, not all attitudes are created equally; some are based more on beliefs about the attitude object (cognitively based attitudes), whereas others are based more on emotions and values (affectively based attitudes).
(Fabrigar & Petty, 1999; Shavitt, 1989; Snyder & DeBono, 1989)
Shavitt (1990): Participants looked at different kinds of advertisements. Some were for “utilitarian products,” such as air conditioners and coffee. People’s attitudes toward such products tend to be formed after an appraisal of the utilitarian aspects of the products (e.g., how energy-efficient an air conditioner is) and thus are cognitively based. The other items were “social identity products,” such as perfume and greeting cards. People’s attitudes toward these types of products tend to reflect a concern with how they appear to others and are more affectively based.
To test this hypothesis, researchers created different ads for the same product that stressed independence (e.g., an ad for shoes said, “It’s easy when you have the right shoes”) or interdependence (e.g., “The shoes for your family”) and showed them to both Americans and Koreans (Han & Shavitt, 1994). The Americans were persuaded most by the ads stressing independence, and the Koreans were persuaded by the ads stressing interdependence.
The researchers also analyzed actual magazine advertisements in the United States and Korea and found that these ads were in fact different: American ads tended to emphasize individuality, self-improvement, and benefits of the product for the individual consumer, whereas Korean ads tended to emphasize the family, concerns about others, and benefits for one’s social group. In general, then, advertisements work best if they are tailored to the kind of attitude they are trying to change.
By considering “small doses” of arguments against their position, people become immune to later, full-blown attempts to change their attitudes. Having considered the arguments beforehand, people are relatively immune to the effects of the later communication, just as exposing people to a small amount of a virus can inoculate them against exposure to the full-blown viral disease.
In contrast, if people have not thought much about the issue—that is, if they formed their attitude via the peripheral route—they are particularly susceptible to an attack on that attitude using logical appeals.
In the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, for example, Elliot left a trail of Reese’s Pieces to draw out E.T., after which sales of the candy boomed. In a 1996 James Bond movie, Agent 007 abandoned his usual Aston Martin and drove a BMW Z3 roadster, reportedly in return for a $3 million fee from the BMW company. Moviegoers responded with $240 million in advance sales for the car (York, 2001).
Children can be especially vulnerable. One study, for example, found that the more children in grades 5–8 had seen movies in which adults smoked cigarettes, the more positive were their attitudes toward smoking (Sargent et al., 2002; Wakefield, Flay, & Nichter, 2003).
(Sagarin, Cialdini, Rice, & Serna, 2002; Wood & Quinn, 2003)
One study found that the best predictor of whether an adolescent smokes marijuana is whether he or she has a friend who does so (Allen, Donohue, & Griffin, 2003; Yamaguchi & Kandel, 1984).
Consider Jake, a 13-year-old who is hanging out with some classmates, many of whom are smoking cigarettes. The classmates begin to tease Jake about not smoking, calling him a wimp. One of them even lights a cigarette and holds it in front of Jake, daring him to take a puff. Many 13-year-olds, facing such pressure, would cave in. But suppose that we immunized Jake to such social pressures by exposing him to mild versions of them and showing him ways to combat these pressures. We might have him role-play a situation where a friend calls him a chicken for not smoking a cigarette and teach him to respond by saying, “I’d be more of a chicken if I smoked it just to impress you.” Would this help him resist the more powerful pressures exerted by his classmates?
Several programs designed to prevent smoking in adolescents suggest that it would. In one, psychologists used a role-playing technique with seventh graders, very much like the one we described (McAlister, Perry, Killen, Slinkard, & Maccoby, 1980). The researchers found that these students were significantly less likely to smoke three years after the study, compared to a control group that had not participated in the program. This result is encouraging and has been replicated in similar programs designed to reduce smoking (Chassin, Presson, & Sherman, 1990; Falck & Craig, 1988; Killen, 1985).
In one study, for example, researchers placed one of two signs in the bathrooms on a college campus, in an attempt to get people to stop writing graffiti on the restroom walls (Pennebaker & Sanders, 1976). One sign read, “Do not write on these walls under any circumstances.” The other gave a milder prohibition: “Please don’t write on these walls.” The researchers returned two weeks later and observed how much graffiti had been written since they posted the signs. As they predicted, significantly more people wrote graffiti in the bathrooms with the “Do not write …” sign than with the “Please don’t write …” sign. Similarly, people who receive strong admonitions against smoking, taking drugs, or getting their nose pierced become more likely to perform these behaviors in order to restore their sense of personal freedom and choice (Bushman & Stack, 1996; Dowd et al., 1988).
LaPiere’s study was not, of course, a controlled experiment.
As he acknowledged, there are several reasons why his results may not show an inconsistency between people’s attitudes and behavior.
He had no way of knowing whether the proprietors who answered his letter were the same people who had served him and his friends, and even if they were, people’s attitudes could have changed in the months between the time they served the Chinese couple and the time they received the letter.
Nonetheless, the lack of correspondence between people’s attitudes and what they actually did was so striking that we might question the earlier assumption that behavior routinely follows from attitudes.
(Fazio, 1990, 2000; Fazio & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2005; Kallgren & Wood, 1986)
When accessibility is high, your attitude comes to mind whenever you see or think about the attitude object. When accessibility is low, your attitude comes to mind more slowly.
It follows that highly accessible attitudes will be more likely to predict spontaneous behaviors because people are more likely to be thinking about their attitude when they are called on to act.
In many circumstances, behavior is not spontaneous but deliberative and planned. Most of us think seriously about where to go to college, whether to accept a new job, or where to spend our vacation. Under these conditions, the accessibility of our attitude is less important. Given enough time to think about an issue, even people with inaccessible attitudes can bring to mind how they feel. It is only when we have to decide how to act on the spot, without time to think it over, that accessibility matters (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993; Fazio, 1990).
In one study, researchers asked a sample of married women for their attitudes toward birth control pills, ranging from the general (their attitude toward birth control) to the specific (their attitude toward using birth control pills during the next two years; see Table 7.1). Two years later, they asked the women whether they had used birth control pills at any time since the last interview. As Table 7.1 shows, the women’s general attitude toward birth control did not predict their use of birth control at all. This general attitude did not take into account other factors that could have influenced their decision, such as concern about the long-term effects of the pill and their attitude toward other forms of birth control. The more specific the question was about the act of using birth control pills, the better this attitude predicted their actual behavior (Davidson & Jaccard, 1979).
Considerable research supports the idea that asking people about these determinants of their intentions—attitudes toward specific behaviors, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control—increases the ability to predict their planned, deliberative behaviors, such deciding what job to accept, whether to wear a seat belt, whether to check oneself for disease, and whether to use condoms when having sex (Albarracin, Johnson, Fishbein, & Muellerleile, 2001; Armitage & Conner, 2001; Cooke & Sheeran, 2004; Trafimow & Finlay, 1996).
(Abraham & Lodish, 1990; Liebert & Sprafkin, 1988; Ryan, 1991; Wells, 1997; Wilson, Houston, & Meyers, 1998)
The best evidence that advertising works comes from studies using what are called split cable market tests. Advertisers work in conjunction with cable television companies and grocery stores, showing a target commercial to a randomly selected group of people. They keep track of what people buy by giving potential consumers special ID cards that are scanned at checkout counters; thus they can tell whether people who saw the commercial for ScrubaDub laundry detergent actually buy more ScrubaDub—the best measure of advertising effectiveness.
(Lodish et al., 1995)
Hidden commands do not cause us to line up and buy popcorn any more than we normally do, and the subliminal commands on self-help tapes do not (unfortunately!) help us quit smoking or lose weight (Brannon & Brock, 1994; Merikle, 1988; Moore, 1992; Pratkanis, 1992; Theus, 1994; Trappey, 1996).
As seen in Figure 7.9 here, one review found that women were more likely to be portrayed in dependent roles (that is, not in a position of power but dependent on someone else) than men in every country that was examined (Furnham & Mak, 1999).
Where do commercials fit in? A recent study found that advertisements that portray women in stereotypical ways can trigger stereotype threat (Davies, Spencer, Quinn, & Gerhardstein, 2002). College women and men who were good at math watched television ads that showed women in stereotypical ways (e.g., an ad for an acne product in which a young woman bounced up and down on a bed) or counterstereotypical ways (e.g., an ad in which a woman impressed a man with her knowledge about cars). The students then took a difficult math test. As you can see in Figure 7.10, women and men performed at similar levels when they saw the counterstereotypical ads (there was no significant difference between men and women in this condition). Women performed significantly worse than men when they saw the stereotypical commercials.