Social Psychology Quiz #3

An evaluation of the social world

• - affect (feelings)
• - behavior (inclination to act)
• - cognitions (beliefs, thoughts)

when the attitude is specific

when you have a vested interest (changing legal drinking age)

• we infer our attitudes from our behaviors
• ex. do i like green? most of my clothes are and so is my couch... i guess so

• participants had consistent or inconsistent environmental views
• conclusion: participants who had inconsistent views were more likely to change their views based on their responses

• "the motive to reduce inconsistencies in cognitions"
• a feeling of discomfort caused by performing an action that is inconsistent with one's attitudes

• - cognition about a behavior: I smoke
• - cognition about an attitude: smoking is dangerous

• 1. change cognition about behavior
• 2. change cognition about attitude
• 3. add consonant cognitions

• "changing attitudes to justify unrewarding actions" 
• getting someone to do something they don't want to do for no reason at all

• when paid $20, task was said to be boring
• when paid $1, task was sad to be fun
• conclusion: we change attitudes to justify unrewarded actions

• "changing attitudes to justify effortful actions"
• when effort is exerted, people change their attitudes to "justify" that effort

• "changing attitudes to justify past decisions"
• more certain about something after they have committed to it

• how we interpret, analyze, remember, and use information about the social world
• ways of managing "social data"

• schemas
• heuristics
• atrrributions

mental structures that allow us to organize information in an efficient manner

shortcuts and strategies we use in order to make sense out of the social world

how we make judgments about behaviors

• focus attention and memory
• helps "go beyond the data"
• guides affect

• misremembering - seeing things that are not there
• first impressions - the primary effect
• polarization - biases that exist in your mind

two sides read article, each one thinks it is anti-their side

• we can make our schemas come true based on our behavior
• have an expectation about a person or situation
• this expectation influences how you act
• ex. children who were told they had potential to have higher IQ, did at end of year then those who did not

• basing a decision on the ease of thinking
• it is easier to think of airplane crashes than car accidents, so we think we are much more likely to due in a plane crash

• (easy) think of 6 times you were assertive
• (hard) think of 12 times you were assertive
• when it is easy to think of times you were assertive, you think you are assertive and vice versa

• basing a judgment on "typically" or resemblance
• blonde student with dark tan and mellow personality who likes to go to the beach - is he from california?

• people tend to put too much weight on typicality
• ignore more "diagnostic" information

• answer depends on how the question is asked
• - is the population over 100,0000
• - is the population under 1,000,000

• a description of the way in which people explain the causes of their own and other people's behavior
• negative events lead to a much greater search for reasons than positive events

• different attributions cause you to draw different conclusions
• man pushing women in front of library - is it playful or aggression and should they assume they are dating or call the cops

most important judgment is what the cause is

cause is internal to the person, such as personality traits, moods, abilities, efforts, or attitudes

cause is external to the person, such as actions of others, nature of the situation, or luck

• actual cause is unimportant in making attributions, what we think determines our actions
• primarily interested in when people make an dispositional attribution or an external attribution

• distinctiveness (person's behavior unique to that situation)
• consistency (person's behavior stable across situations)
• consensus (would other people do the same thing in the same situation)

• tendency to attribute other's behavior to corresponding dispositions
• behavior reveals dispositions 
• a failure to discount situational causes
• ex. when you raise your hand if you are given 5 extra pts to say you want the drinking age to be 25, people tend to think you actually want the drinking age to be 25
• we should not draw a correspondent inference from the behavior but we tend to

• people read a positive article about Castro and half were told the author did it by free will and other half told author had no choice
• the people who were told the author had no choice still thought that those were the authors views
• fundamental attribution error

• good dispositions, bad situations
• take credit for positive behaviors/outcomes
• blame negative behaviors/outcomes on external factors