Attitudes
What are the three components of the tripartite model of attitudes?
Affect, Behaviour, Cognition
What are the two main types of attributions?
Internal (dispositional) and external (situational).
What is a stereotype?
A generalised or oversimplified belief about a group of people.
What is compliance?
Changing behaviour publicly but not privately.
What is social loafing?
Putting in less effort when working in a group.
What was the main aim of Festinger & Carlsmith’s study?
To test cognitive dissonance when behaviour conflicts with attitudes.
What are the three main processes in Social Identity Theory?
Social categorisation, social identification, and social comparison.
What was the aim of the Robbers Cave study?
To test if intergroup conflict would lead to Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination.
What was Asch’s aim?
To test conformity to group pressure.
What was the aim of the smoke filled room study?
To investigate bystander intervention in ambiguous situations.
Which component of an attitude refers to how you feel about something?
Affective
What is the fundamental attribution error?
Overestimating personal factors and underestimating situational factors in others’ behaviour.
What is prejudice?
A negative attitude toward people based on group membership.
What is identification in social influence?
Conforming because you value the group and want to be part of it.
What is deindividuation?
Loss of self-awareness and inhibition in groups.
Who were the participants?
Male college students.
What is social categorisation?
Classifying people (including ourselves) into groups.
Who were the participants?
22 11-12 year old boys attending summer camp
Did not know eachother
middle class, stable, protestant families
What was the procedure?
Participants judged line lengths with confederates who gave deliberate wrong answers before they answered
What was the procedure?
Participants sat in a room filling out surveys as smoke entered the room in one of 3 conditions:
Participant alone, with 2 other participants, or with 2 passive confederates
Give an example of a cognitive component of an attitude toward recycling.
“I believe recycling helps the environment.”
How does self-serving bias work?
We credit successes to ourselves and blame failures on external factors.
What is discrimination?
Behaviour that unfairly treats people based on group membership.
What is internalisation?
Accepting influence because you believe the ideas are genuinely correct.
How does the bystander effect work?
People are less likely to help when others are present.
What was the key procedure?
Participants did a boring task, then were paid $1 or $20 to tell others it was fun.
How does social comparison create in-group bias?
By favouring our group to boost self-esteem.
What was the key finding?
Competition led to hostility, but cooperation reduced conflict - especially superordinate goals
What percentage conformed at least once?
75%
What happened when others stayed passive?
Participants were less likely to report the smoke.
Why can the tripartite model be criticised?
Attitudes do not always predict behaviour
Give an example of an external attribution for failing a test.
The test was unfair / too hard
The teacher didn't teach it properly
Name one cause of prejudice explained by social identity theory.
In-group bias and out-group hostility.
What is the difference between normative and informational conformity?
Normative = to be liked / accepted; Informational = to be right.
What is diffusion of responsibility?
Assuming someone else will act, so you don’t.
What did they find?
Those paid $1 reported more enjoyment because they had less external justification.
According to the theory, why does prejudice occur?
Because in-group favouritism and out-group hostility help maintain positive social identity.
What was one key procedure used to create hostility?
Competitive games with prizes
What happened when group unanimity was broken?
Conformity dropped signficantly
What happened when participants were alone?
Most reported the smoke quickly.
How does cognitive dissonance link to the tripartite model of attitudes?
Inconsistency between components creates tension, motivating attitude or behaviour change.
How does attribution theory help explain prejudice?
Misattributions can lead to blaming groups unfairly for negative outcomes.
What is one effective strategy to reduce prejudice?
Intergroup contact (contact hypothesis), superordinate goals, mutual interdependence
How do group size and unanimity affect conformity?
Larger groups and unanimous agreement increase conformity.
What is audience inhibition?
People don’t act because they fear looking foolish.
What is one criticism?
Low ecological validity as the task was artificial.
Only Male participants
Small sample size
What is a limitation of Social Identity Theory?
It doesn’t explain why some group differences cause conflict while others don’t.
What’s a criticism of this study?
Ethical concerns – deception and distress caused to children.
Experiment was repeated until desired findings could be published
Boys could not withdraw
What is one criticism?
Lacks ecological validity as the task was trivial.
bias gender sample
One criticism of the study?
Ethical issues – potential distress or danger.
Biased sample - only men