Social Thinking: Attitudes & Prejudice

Attitudes

What is an attitude?– Our beliefs and feelings about objects, people, and

events that lead people to behave in certain ways.– Has three components

• Cognitive—thoughts about given topic or situation

• Affective—feelings or emotions about topic

• Behavioral—your actions regarding the topic or situation

Components of Attitudes• An attitude is a positive or negative

evaluation of an object, person, or idea

How Attitudes Develop• Conditioning – Children are reinforced for acting and

thinking in ways that are consistent with their parents’ attitudes.

• Observational Learning – We observe others and adopt their ways of acting.

• Cognitive Evaluations – Evaluate evidence and then form a belief based on that. Do this when you have to justify your attitude.

• Cognitive Anchors – beliefs that shape the ways we see the world and interpret events. We reject things that differ too much from our cognitive anchor.

The Effect of Attitudes on Behavior

• You’re most likely to behave in accordance with your attitudes when

1. Attitudes are extreme or are frequently expressed

2. Attitudes have been formed through direct experience.

3. You are very knowledgeable about the subject. 4. You have a vested interest in the subject. 5. You anticipate a favorable outcome or

response from others for doing so.

Attitudes Affecting Actions

• Many studies suggest a person’s attitudes do not match their actions

• Attitudes can predict behavior if:

– Outside influences are minimal

– People are aware of their attitudes

– Attitude is relevant to behavior

Actions Affecting Attitudes

• Under some circumstances one’s actions can influence attitudes. They include:

– Foot-in-the-door phenomenon

– Role playing

– Cognitive dissonance

Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon

• The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request

Role Playing

• Playing a role can influence or change one’s attitude

• Zimbardo’s Prison Study– College students played the role of guard

or prisoner in a simulated prison.– The study was ended after just 6 days

when the guards became too aggressive and cruel.

Dr. Phillip Zimbardo

Cognitive Dissonance (Leon Festinger)

• The theory that people act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) they feel when their thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent with their actions

• When our attitudes are inconsistent with our actions, we change our attitudes to reduce the dissonance.

1919-1989

How Cognitive Dissonance Leads to Attitude Change

When your behavior conflicts with your attitudes, an uncomfortable state of tension is produced. However, if you can rationalize or explain your behavior, the conflict (and the tension) is eliminated or avoided. If you can’t explain your behavior, you may change your attitude so that it is in harmony with your behavior.

Insufficient-justification effect• Festinger & Carlsmith (1959)

– gave subjects a boring task, then asked subjects to lie to the next subject and say the experiment was exciting

– paid ½ the subjects $1, other ½ $20

– then asked subjects to rate boringness of task

– $1 group rated the task as far more fun than the $20 group

– each group needed a justification for lying • $20 group had an external justification of money

• since $1 isn’t very much money, $1 group said task was fun

Cognitive Dissonance: A Review

– If you have a good excuse for a behavior that does not go with your attitude then you avoid dissonance.

– If you do not have a good excuse for a behavior that is against your attitude you must change your attitude to fit your behavior.

Dissonance-Reducing Mechanisms

• Avoiding dissonant information– we attend to information in support of our

existing views, rather than information that doesn’t support them

• Firming up an attitude to be consistent with an action– once we’ve made a choice to do something,

lingering doubts about our actions would cause dissonance, so we are motivated to set them aside

Prejudice

Prejudice

• Based on the exaggerated notion that members of other social groups are very different from members of our own social group

• An unjustifiable attitude toward a group and its members

• Usually involves stereotyped beliefs, negative feelings, and a predisposition to discriminatory action

• Usually involves a negative attitude

Keep in Mind…

• Racial and ethnic groups are far more alike than they are different

• Any differences that may exist between members of different racial and ethnic groups are far smaller than differences among various members of the same group.

Categorization

• The tendency to group similar objects

• May be a means to explain stereotypes

Stereotype• An unchanging, oversimplified and usually distorted belief about a

group of people• We assume those different from ourselves must all be

similar to each other.• Because stereotypes sometimes have a kernel of truth,

they are easy to confirm, especially when you see only what you expect to see.

• When stereotypic beliefs become expectations that are applied to all members of a given group, they can be both misleading and damaging

• Creating special cases, or exceptions, allows people to maintain stereotypes in the face of contradictory evidence

• Stereotypes limit the possibilities of individuals by discouraging them to explore their full range of talents.

Studying stereotypes• 3 levels of stereotypes in today’s research

– public • what we say to others about a group

– private • what we consciously think about a group, but don’t say to others

– implicit • unconscious mental associations guiding our judgments and actions

without our conscious awareness

• See The Hidden Prejudice video clip (Scientific American Frontiers (6 minutes)

Implicit Stereotypes• Use of priming: subject doesn’t know

stereotype is being activated, can’t work to suppress it– Bargh study

• have subjects read word lists, some lists include words like “gray,” “Bingo,” and “Florida”

• subjects with “old” word lists walked to elevators significantly more slowly

– another study • flash pictures of Black vs. White faces subliminally• give incomplete words like “hos_____,” subjects seeing Black make

“hostile,” seeing White make “hospital”

Implicit Stereotypes• Devine’s automaticity theory

– stereotypes about African-Americans are so prevalent in our culture that we all hold them

– these stereotypes are automatically activated whenever we come into contact with an African-American

– we have to actively push them back down if we don’t wish to act in a prejudiced way.

– Overcoming prejudice is possible, but takes work

Ingroup “Us”

• People with whom one shares a common identity

Outgroup “Them”

• Those perceived as different or apart form “us” (the ingroup)

Out-Group Homogeneity Effect

1. Typically, we describe the members of our in-group as being quite varied, despite having enough features in common to belong to the same group

2. We tend to see members of the out-group as much more similar to one another, even in areas that have little to do with the criteria for group membership.

Ingroup Bias

• The tendency to favor one’s own group usually at the expense of the outgroup

• We make favorable, positive attributions for behaviors by members of our in-group, and unfavorable, negative attributions for behaviors by members of out-groups.

• Ethnocentrism - belief that one’s own culture or ethnic group is superior to others

The Basis for Prejudice

• In combination, stereotypes and in-group/out-group bias form the cognitive basis for prejudicial attitudes.

• Prejudice also has a strong emotional component, which is intensely negative and involves hatred, contempt, fear, and loathing

• Behaviorally, prejudice can be displayed in the form of discrimination

Discrimination

• Unfair treatment of individuals because they are members of a particular group.

• Victims of discrimination may see themselves as inferior.

• Low expectations + low self esteem = low chance for success.

• See clip of Clark’s study from Separate but Equal.

• See this modern example (2 min)

Prejudice and Discrimination

• Play “Attitudes and Prejudicial Behavior” (6:06) Segment #31 from Psychology: The Human Experience.

• Play “Ethnocentrism and Prejudice” (5:06) Segment #32 from Psychology: The Human Experience.

Causes of Prejudice

Exaggerating Differences

• People exaggerate how different others are from themselves.

• We tend to prefer people who look, act and think like us and see others as being more different than they really are.

Justifying Economic Status

• People of higher socioeconomic status tend to justify it by assuming that people of lower economic status are inferior to them.

• Believe that lower status people are lazy and don’t work as hard.

• This is also known as Just-World Phenomenon

Just-World Phenomenon

• The tendency to believe that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get

• Reflects child’s attitude that good is rewarded and evil is punished

Social Learning

• Children will imitate their parents attitudes and parents will reinforce these attitudes in their children

• This is how prejudice is passed on from generation to generation

Victimization

• Victims of prejudice try to gain a sense of power and pride by putting down another group that is even worse off them.

Scapegoat Theory

• Individual or group is blamed for a problem that is too complex, powerful or remote to be addressed.

• Provides an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame

• Example: Nazi Germany blaming the Jews for the troubles in Germany after WWI.

Accounting for Prejudice

Accounting for Prejudice: Two Theories

1. Prejudice and intergroup hostility increase when different groups are competing for scarce resources

2. People are prejudiced against groups that are perceived as threatening important in-group norms and values

• Social psychologists have increasingly come to believe # 2 is more correct.

Overcoming Prejudice

Reducing Prejudice

• Initially, researchers thought simple contact between conflicting groups would reduce prejudice (contact theory)

• They now think that prejudice can be overcome when rival groups cooperate to achieve a common goal

Social Identity and CooperationSocial identity theory:– States that when you’re assigned to a group, you

automatically think of that group as an in-group for you

– Sherif’s Robbers Cave study• 11–12 year old boys at camp• Boys were divided into 2 groups and kept

separate from one another• Each group took on characteristics of distinct

social group, with leaders, rules, norms of behavior, and names

Robbers Cave (Sherif)• Leaders proposed series of competitive interactions

which led to 3 changes between groups and within groups– within-group solidarity – negative stereotyping of other group – hostile between-group interactions

• A fierce rivalry quickly developed• To restore harmony, Sherif created a series

of situations in which the two groups would need to cooperate to achieve a common goal

• After a series of joint efforts, the rivalry diminished and the groups became friends.

1906-1988

Robbers Cave

Overcoming the strong we/they effect– establishment of superordinate goals

• e.g., breakdown in camp water supply– overcoming intergroup strife - research

• stereotypes are diluted when people share individuating information

• This idea used in the classroom – The Jigsaw Method of cooperative learning. (see pg. 514)

Ways to Reduce Prejudice

1. Increase contact among members of different groups

2. Individuals must decide that prejudiced responses are wrong and consciously reject their own and others’ prejudiced and stereotyped thinking

3. Individuals must learn to recognize automatic prejudicial reactions and deliberately replace them with nonprejudiced responses that are based on their personal standards