1. Unit 12: Social Pyschology
WHS AP Psychology
Unit 12: Social Pyschology
Essential Task 12-2: Discuss attitude formation and how attitudes change with specific attention to schema, primacy effect, cognitive dissonance and the central and peripheral routes to persuasion. 
Logo Green is R=8 G=138 B= Blue is R= 0 G=110 B=184
Border Grey is R=74 G=69 B=64

2. Social Psychology Conformity Compliance Schema Attraction
Unit 12:
Social Psychology
Attribution
Attitudes and Persuasion
Impact of Others on You
Group Behavior
Fundamental Attribution Error
Self-Serving Bias
Just-World Hypothesis
Individualistic vs. Collectivistic Culture
Schema
Conformity
Compliance
Group Polarization
Group Think
In-Group/Out-Group
Attraction
Cognitive Dissonance
Routes to Persuasion
We are here

3. Social Cognition: How you think about people?
Impression Formation – how do you construct your social cognition?
Primacy effect
Early information about someone weighs more than later information in forming impressions
We are “cognitive misers”
Self-fulfilling prophecy
A person’s expectations about another elicits behavior from the other person that confirms the expectations
“Hostile” partners continued to be more hostile
Randomly identified “bloomers” made greater gains
Schemata
Stereotypes

4. Impression Formation Schemata Ready-made categories
Allow us to make inferences about others (good for cognitive misers)
Also plays a major role in how we interpret and remember information
We will remember characteristics of our schema that weren’t there

5. Impression Formation Stereotypes
A set of characteristics believed to be shared by all members of a social category
It is usually unfair
Most often applied to sex, race, occupation, physical appearance, place of residence, membership in a group or organization
Can become the basis for self-fulfilling prophecies

6. Attitudes The Nature of Attitudes Self-monitoring Relatively stable
Beliefs – facts and general knowledge
Feelings – love, hate, like, dislike
Behaviors – inclination to approach, avoid, buy
Self-monitoring
High self-monitors look for cues about how they are expected to behave
Makes using attitudes to predict behavior difficult
Low self-monitors express and act on their attitudes consistently making prediction easier

7. Attitude Development
Many factors contribute to the development of attitudes
Imitation
Reward
Teachers
Peers
Mass media

8. Attitudes Can Affect Action
Our attitudes predict our behaviors imperfectly because other factors, including the external situation, also influence behavior.
Democratic leaders supported Bush’s attack on Iraq under public pressure. However, they had their private reservations.
OBJECTIVE 4| Describe the conditions under which attitudes can affect actions.

9. Attitude Change Process of persuasion
Must get and maintain the person’s attention (Sex and humor and sex and then some more funny sex)
Must comprehend the message
Comprehension leads to acceptance

10. Attitude Change
Communication model – how the message gets comprehended and then accepted
Source (credibility is key)
Message itself (more effective when it acknowledges other arguments and then gives novel ones – a little fear is good)
Medium of communication (writing good for complex, media better for audience with a gist, face-to-face is the best)
Audience’s characteristics

11. Routes a Message Can Take to Persuade You
Central Route to Persuasion
when the attitude of the audience, or individual, is changed as a result of thoughtful consideration of the message.
Peripheral Route to Persuasion occurs when positive or negative cues (such as images, sounds, or language) are associated with the object of the message.
An advertisement featuring a song that the audience member likes, or a person whom the audience member sees as appealing might cause a person to have positive feelings toward the brand, without that person ever thinking deeply about the message.

12. Audience Characteristics
Most difficult to change if
Strong commitment to present attitude
Attitude is shared by others
The attitude has been held since early childhood
Up to a point the larger the difference between message and audience the more likely attitudinal change will occur
Low self-esteem more likely to change

13. Cognitive Dissonance Theory
(Leon Festinger 1957)
Occurs whenever a person has two contradictory cognitions or beliefs at the same time. They are dissonant, each one implies the opposite of the other.
The less coerced and more responsible we feel for an action the more dissonance. The more dissonance the more likely we are to change our attitude
It creates an unpleasant cognitive tension and the person tries to resolve in the following ways:

14. Resolution of Cognitive Dissoance
1. Sometimes changing your attitude is the easiest way to solve this.
Example: I am a loyal friend, but yesterday I gossiped about my friend Chris Well I can’t change my action but I don’t want to change my view of myself, so my attitude about Chris must be wrong. He is more of an acquaintance than a friend.
2. Increase the number of consonant elements – the number of thoughts that back one side.
It was awesome gossip
Reduce the importance of one of both of the sides
The person I gossiped with won’t really tell that many people.