Social Psychology 501
- The three components of an attitude are the affective (emo-
tional) component, the behavior component, and the cognitive
component.
- Attitudes are often poor predictors of behavior unless the atti-
tude is very specific or very strong.
- Direct contact with the person, situation, object, or idea can help
form attitudes.
- Attitudes can be formed through direct instruction from parents
or others.
- Interacting with other people who hold a certain attitude can
help an individual form that attitude.
- Attitudes can also be formed through watching the actions and
reactions of others to ideas, people, objects, and situations.
- 6 Describe how attitudes can be changed.
- Persuasion is the process by which one person tries to change
the belief, opinion, position, or course of action of another per-
son through argument, pleading, or explanation.
- The key elements in persuasion are the source of the message,
the message itself, and the target audience.
- In the elaboration likelihood model, central-route processing
involves attending to the content of the message itself, whereas
peripheral-route processing involves attending to factors not
involved in the message, such as the appearance of the source
of the message, the length of the message, and other noncontent
factors.
- 7 Explain how people react when attitudes differ
from behavior.
- Cognitive dissonance is discomfort or distress that occurs when
a person’s actions do not match the person’s attitudes.
- Cognitive dissonance is lessened by changing the conflicting
behavior, changing the conflicting attitude, or forming a new
attitude to justify the behavior.
- 8 Describe how people form impressions of others.
- Impression formation is the forming of the first knowledge a
person has about another person.
- The primacy effect in impression formation means that the very
first impression one has about a person tends to persist even in
the face of evidence to the contrary.
- Impression formation is part of social cognition, or the men-
tal processes that people use to make sense out of the world
around them.
- Social categorization is a process of social cognition in which
a person, upon meeting someone new, assigns that person to a
category or group on the basis of characteristics the person has
in common with other people or groups with whom the per-
ceiver has prior experience.
- One form of a social category is the stereotype, in which the
characteristics used to assign a person to a category are superfi-
cial and believed to be true of all members of the category.
- An implicit personality theory is a form of social cognition in
which a person has sets of assumptions about different types
of people, personality traits, and actions that are assumed to be
related to each other.
- Schemas are mental patterns that represent what a person
believes about certain types of people. Schemas can become
stereotypes.
- 9 Describe the process of explaining one’s own
behavior and the behavior of others.
- Attribution is the process of explaining the behavior of others as
well as one’s own behavior.
- A situational cause is an explanation of behavior based on fac-
tors in the surrounding environment or situation.
- A dispositional cause is an explanation of behavior based on the
internal personality characteristics of the person being observed.
- The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to overesti-
mate the influence of internal factors on behavior while under-
estimating the influence of the situation.
Social Interaction
- 10 Distinguish between prejudice and
discrimination.
- Prejudice is a negative attitude that a person holds about the
members of a particular social group. Discrimination occurs
when members of a social group are treated differently because
of prejudice toward that group.
- There are many forms of prejudice, including ageism, sexism,
racism, and prejudice toward those who are too fat or too thin.
- In-groups are the people with whom a person identifies,
whereas out-groups are everyone else at whom prejudice tends
to be directed.
- Scapegoating refers to the tendency to direct prejudice and dis-
crimination at out-group members who have little social power
or influence. New immigrants are often the scapegoats for the
frustration and anger of the in-group.
- 11 Describe theories of how prejudice is learned
and how it can be overcome.
- Social cognitive theory views prejudice as an attitude acquired
through direct instruction, modeling, and other social influences.
- Conflict between groups increases prejudice and discrimination
according to realistic conflict theory.
- Social identity theory sees a person’s formation of a social sense
of self within a particular group as being due to three things:
social categorization (which may involve the use of reference
groups), social identity (the person’s sense of belonging to a par-
ticular social group), and social comparison (in which people
compare themselves to others to improve their own self-esteem).
- Stereotype vulnerability refers to the effect that a person’s
knowledge of the stereotypes that exist against his or her social
group can have on that person’s behavior.
- People who are aware of stereotypes may unintentionally come
to behave in a way that makes the stereotype real in a self-
fulfilling prophecy.
