Attitudes

1. Attitudes • The Nature of Attitudes • 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

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

3. Prejudice Simply called “prejudgment,” a prejudice is an unjustifiable (usually negative) attitude toward a group and its members. Prejudice is often directed towards different cultural, ethnic, or gender groups. Components of Prejudice • Beliefs (stereotypes) • Emotions (hostility, envy, fear) • Predisposition to act (discrimination)

4. Reign of Prejudice Prejudice works at the conscious and [more at] the unconscious level. Therefore, prejudice is more like a knee-jerk response than a conscious decision.

5. How Prejudiced are People? Over the duration of time many prejudices against interracial marriage, gender, homosexuality, and minorities have decreased.

6. Racial & Gender Prejudice Americans today express much less racial and gender prejudice, but prejudices still exist.

7. Social Roots of Prejudice Why does prejudice arise? Social Inequalities Social Divisions Emotional Scapegoating Need to categorize

8. Social Inequality Prejudice develops when people have money, power, and prestige, and others do not. Social inequality increases prejudice.

9. Social Divisions Ingroup: People with whom one shares a common identity. Outgroup:Those perceived as different from one’s ingroup. Ingroup Bias: The tendency to favor one’s own group. Mike Hewitt/ Getty Images Scotland’s famed “Tartan Army” fans.

10. Emotional Roots of Prejudice Prejudice provides an outlet for anger [emotion] by providing someone to blame. After 9/11 many people lashed out against innocent Arab-Americans.

11. Cognitive Roots of Prejudice One way we simplify our world is to categorize. We categorize people into groups by stereotyping them. Michael S. Yamashita/ Woodfin Camp Associates Foreign sunbathers may think Balinese look alike.

12. Sources of Prejudice • Frustration-aggression theory • People who are frustrated in their goals may turn their anger away from the proper target toward another, less powerful target. (Scapegoat) • Authoritarian personality • Personality pattern characterized by rigid conventionality, exaggerated respect for authority, and hostility toward those who defy social norms • Racism • Prejudice and discrimination directed at particular racial group

13. We shall overcome • Recategorize – expand a schema to see how it relates to others. Not protestant vs. Catholic but instead both under Christianity. • Increase contact between groups. • Equal status • One-on-one contact • Come together to cooperate, not compete • Should not be contrived

14. 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.

15. Attitude Change • Process of persuasion • Must get and maintain the person’s attention (Sex and humor) • Must comprehend the message • Comprehension leads to acceptance

16. 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: