Psychology2016

Social Psychology 471

examples of the followers of Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhite, David Koresh (the Waco,

Texas, disaster in 1993), and ISIS clearly demonstrate that cults, like any group of people,

can become deadly.

Social Cognition

Social cognition focuses on the ways in which people think about other people and how
those cognitions influence behavior toward those other people. In this section, we’ll con-
centrate on how we perceive others and form our first impressions of them, as well as
how we explain the behavior of others and ourselves.

Attitudes

12.5 Identify the three components of an attitude and how attitudes are
formed.

One area of social cognition concerns the formation and influence of attitudes on the
behavior and perceptions of others. An attitude can be defined as a tendency to respond
positively or negatively toward a certain idea, person, object, or situation ( Triandis, 1971).
This tendency, developed through people’s experiences as they live and work with others,
can affect the way they behave toward those ideas, people, objects, and situations and can
include opinions, beliefs, and biases. In fact, attitudes influence the way people view these
things before they’ve actually been exposed to them (Petty et al., 2003).

What do you mean—how can an attitude have an effect on

something that hasn’t happened yet?

Attitudes are not something people have when they are born. They are learned through
experiences and contact with others and even through direct instruction from parents, teach-
ers, and other important people in a person’s life. Because attitudes involve a positive or

social cognition

the mental processes that people use

to make sense of the social world

around them.

attitude

a tendency to respond positively or

negatively toward a certain person,

oDLect idea or situation.