2. Copyright © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Module 54: Attitudes and Social Cognition

3. MODULE 54 Copyright © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Social Psychology Social Psychology is the study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions are affected by others. Attitudes are l earned predispositions to respond in a favorable or unfavorable manner to a particular person, behavior, belief, or thing Ryan McVay/Getty Images

4. MODULE 54 Copyright © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Persuasion: Changing Attitudes Message source The characteristics of a person who delivers a persuasive message, known as the attitude communicator Characteristic of the message What the message is like One-sided argument Two-sided argument Fear-producing message PhotoLink/Getty Images

5. MODULE 54 Copyright © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Persuasion: Changing Attitudes Characteristics of the target Central-route processing Occurs when the recipient thoughtfully considers the issues and arguments involved in persuasion Peripheral-route processing Occurs when people are persuaded on the basis of factors unrelated to the nature or quality of the content of a persuasive message PhotoLink/Getty Images

6. MODULE 54 Copyright © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Persuasion

7. MODULE 54 Copyright © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Cognitive Dissonance Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds two attitudes or thoughts (referred to as cognitions) that contradict each other S. Wanke/PhotoLink/Getty Images

8. MODULE 54 Copyright © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Cognitive Dissonance

9. MODULE 54 Copyright © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Social Cognition: Understanding Others Social cognition Processes that underlie our understanding of the social world Schemas Sets of cognitions about people and social experiences David Buffington/Getty Images

10. MODULE 54 Copyright © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Social Cognition: Understanding Others Impression formation The process by which an individual organizes information about another person to form an overall impression of that person Central traits Traits utilized to form an overall impression of others

11. MODULE 54 Copyright © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Attribution Process Attribution theory seeks to explain how we decide, on the basis of samples of an individual’s behavior, what the specific causes of that person’s behavior are Situational causes A cause of behavior that is brought about by something in the environment Dispositional causes A cause of behavior that is prompted by the person’s disposition (his or her internal traits or personality characteristics)

12. MODULE 54 Copyright © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Biases in Attribution Fundamental attribution error Tendency to over-attribute others’ behavior to dispositional causes, and the corresponding failure to recognize the importance of situational causes Halo effect Phenomenon in which an initial understanding that a person has positive traits is used to infer other uniformly positive characteristics

13. MODULE 54 Copyright © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Biases in Attribution Assumed-similarity bias The tendency to think of people as being similar to oneself, even when meeting them for the first time Rob Melnychuk/Getty Images