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

1. Beliefs (stereotypes)
2. Emotions (hostility, envy, fear)
3. 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?

1. Social Inequalities
2. Social Divisions
3. Emotional Scapegoating
4. 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 ones ingroup. Ingroup Bias The tendency to
  favor ones own group.

Mike Hewitt/ Getty Images
Scotlands 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 Bushs attack on
Iraq under public pressure. However, they had
their private reservations.
15
Attitude Change

• Process of persuasion
• Must get and maintain the persons 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