Chapter 6 Attitude And Social Cognition

Explaining Social Behaviour

Social psychology explores how our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Simple actions like reciting a poem can be affected by the social context, even if only imagined. Social psychologists study various forms of social behavior and their underlying mechanisms, including how we form attitudes, make impressions, explain behavior (attribution), and how our actions are influenced by social factors like social facilitation and pro-social behavior.

Understanding social influences requires moving beyond common sense to systematic, scientific observation. This chapter will cover attitudes, social cognition, and pro-social behavior.

Nature And Components Of Attitudes

An attitude is a state of mind characterized by evaluative (positive, negative, or neutral) thoughts and feelings towards a specific 'attitude object' (person, thing, idea). It includes a cognitive component (beliefs), an affective component (emotions), and a behavioral tendency (conative aspect). Attitudes are not behaviors themselves but predispositions to act.

Attitudes are distinct from beliefs (cognitive aspect) and values (attitudes with an 'ought' or 'should' aspect). They serve a functional purpose by providing a framework for understanding situations and guiding behavior.

Key properties of attitudes include:

• Valence: Positivity or negativity towards the attitude object.
• Extremeness: The intensity of the positive or negative valence.
• Simplicity/Complexity (Multiplexity): The number of attitudes within a broader attitude system.
• Centrality: The importance of an attitude within an individual's overall attitude system, influencing other attitudes.

Box 6.1 illustrates the A-B-C (Affective, Behavioral, Cognitive) components of an attitude towards a 'Green Environment'.

Attitude Formation And Change

Attitude Formation

Attitudes are primarily learned through experiences and social interactions. Key processes involved in attitude formation include:

• Learning by Association: Developing positive or negative feelings towards something due to its association with positive or negative experiences (e.g., liking a subject because of a teacher).
• Learning through Reward and Punishment: Forming attitudes based on whether expressing a particular attitude leads to praise or criticism.
• Learning through Modelling: Acquiring attitudes by observing others being rewarded or punished for their expressions.
• Learning through Group/Cultural Norms: Internalizing societal rules and expectations about acceptable behaviors and beliefs.
• Learning through Information Exposure: Forming attitudes based on information received through various media.

Process Of Attitude Formation

The formation process can be influenced by family and school environments, reference groups (groups that individuals identify with and adopt norms from), personal experiences, and media influences.

Factors That Influence Attitude Formation

• Family and School Environment: Early socialization plays a significant role.
• Reference Groups: Influence norms and expectations, especially during adolescence.
• Personal Experiences: Direct encounters can lead to significant attitude shifts.
• Media-related Influences: Powerful in shaping attitudes through information dissemination, though can have both positive and negative impacts.

Attitude Change

Attitudes can be changed through various influences, with less central and less extreme attitudes being more malleable than firmly established ones.

Process Of Attitude Change

Key concepts explaining attitude change include:

• Balance Theory (Heider's P-O-X model): Individuals strive for consistency in their attitudes. Imbalance among relationships (person-other, other-attitude object, person-attitude object) creates discomfort, leading to attitude change to restore balance.
• Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger): Dissonance arises when an individual holds two conflicting cognitions. To reduce this discomfort, one cognition is changed to achieve consistency. Box 6.2 illustrates this with an experiment where participants paid $1 to lie about a boring task changed their attitude more than those paid $20.
• Two-Step Concept (Mohsin): Attitude change involves identification with the source (Step 1) and then imitation of the source's changed behavior (Step 2).

Factors That Influence Attitude Change

• Characteristics of the Existing Attitude: Valence, extremeness, simplicity/complexity, and centrality affect the ease of change.
• Source Characteristics: Credibility and attractiveness of the source influence persuasion.
• Message Characteristics: The content, structure (rational vs. emotional appeals), and mode of message delivery (face-to-face vs. media) impact attitude change.
• Target Characteristics: Persuasibility, self-esteem, prejudices, and intelligence of the recipient influence how easily attitudes change.

Activity 6.1 involves analyzing advertisements to identify their persuasive elements.

Attitude-Behaviour Relationship

While attitudes often predict behavior, this relationship is not always direct. Consistency between attitudes and behavior is more likely when attitudes are strong, central, consciously held, lack external pressure, are not being evaluated by others, and when the person intends to act in line with their attitude.

Research, like LaPiere's study on Chinese travelers in the US, shows discrepancies between stated attitudes (negative towards Chinese in questionnaires) and actual behavior (positive service offered). Conversely, behavior can also shape attitudes, as seen in Festinger's dissonance experiment where lying for a small reward led to a more positive attitude towards the task.

Activity 6.3 explores factors influencing performance in the presence of others, like arousal, evaluation apprehension, and competition.

Prejudice And Discrimination

Prejudice refers to negative, often stereotype-based attitudes towards a particular group. It typically involves a cognitive component (stereotype), an affective component (dislike/hatred), and a behavioral tendency (prejudice). Discrimination is the behavioral manifestation of prejudice, involving unfair treatment of a group.

Sources of prejudice include learning (through family, media, norms), strong social identity and ingroup bias, scapegoating (blaming an outgroup for societal problems), the "kernel of truth" concept (perpetuating stereotypes based on minimal evidence), and self-fulfilling prophecies (where target groups' behaviors confirm existing prejudices).

Strategies For Handling Prejudice

Addressing prejudice involves:

• Minimizing opportunities for learning prejudice.
• Changing prejudiced attitudes.
• De-emphasizing narrow group identities (ingroup bias).
• Discouraging self-fulfilling prophecies.

Effective strategies include education, information dissemination, increasing intergroup contact (especially in cooperative, equal-status contexts), and highlighting individual identity over group identity.

Social Cognition

Social cognition refers to the mental processes involved in understanding, interpreting, and explaining social information. These processes are guided by mental structures called schemas.

Schemas And Stereotypes

A schema is a mental framework or guideline for processing information. Social schemas are mental structures related to social objects (people, groups). Prototypes are category-based schemas that represent typical features. Stereotypes are overgeneralized, often unverified, category-based schemas about groups, which can lead to prejudice and bias.

Impression Formation And Explaining Behaviour Of Others Through Attributions

Impression Formation

Impression formation is the process of developing an understanding of a target person. It involves:

• Selection: Choosing specific pieces of information about the target.
• Organization: Systematically combining the selected information.
• Inference: Drawing conclusions about the target's characteristics.

Key factors influencing impression formation include the primacy effect (early information having a stronger impact), recency effect (later information having a stronger impact under certain conditions), and the halo effect (assuming positive traits accompany other positive qualities).

Activity 6.2 explores how gender might influence impression formation and the choice of attributed qualities.

Attribution Of Causality

Attribution is the process of explaining the causes of behavior. Causes can be classified as:

• Internal (Dispositional): Attributing behavior to the person's personality or internal states.
• External (Situational): Attributing behavior to external factors or the environment.
• Stable vs. Unstable: Causes that are unchanging versus those that change over time.

Common attributional tendencies include the fundamental attribution error (overemphasizing internal causes for others' behavior) and the actor-observer effect (attributing one's own behavior to situational factors while attributing others' behavior to dispositional factors).

People tend to attribute success to internal factors and failure to external factors. They also strive to maintain a positive self-image, influencing attributions.

Behaviour In The Presence Of Others

The presence of others can influence performance, a phenomenon known as social facilitation or inhibition. According to Zajonc, mere presence of others leads to arousal, enhancing performance on simple or familiar tasks but impairing performance on complex or new tasks. Cottrell proposed that evaluation apprehension (fear of being judged) is the basis for this effect.

In co-action situations (performing tasks alongside others), competition and social comparison further influence performance. Social loafing, where individuals exert less effort in a group setting due to diffusion of responsibility, is another social influence.

Activity 6.3 asks students to identify factors like arousal, evaluation apprehension, and competition present in different social performance situations.

Pro-social Behaviour

Pro-social behavior, akin to altruism, involves actions aimed at benefiting others without expectation of reward. Examples include sharing, cooperation, and helping the needy. It is characterized by a desire to help, willingness, and often some personal cost.

Despite its value, pro-social behavior is not always prevalent, influenced by various factors:

Factors Influencing Pro-social Behaviour

• Inborn Tendency: Humans may have a natural inclination to help others for species survival.
• Learning: Pro-social behavior is learned through family examples, emphasis on values, and social reinforcement.
• Cultural Factors: Cultures that encourage independence may see less pro-social behavior, while those emphasizing community support foster it. Resource scarcity can also impact it.
• Social Norms: Norms of social responsibility (help anyone in need), reciprocity (help those who helped you), and equity (help when it's fair) influence helping.
• Expected Reactions: The perception of how the recipient might react (e.g., feeling insulted) can deter helping.
• Empathy: Individuals with higher empathy are more likely to engage in pro-social behavior, especially when situations evoke empathy.
• Mood and Personal Problems: A bad mood or preoccupation with one's own issues can reduce helping.
• Diffusion of Responsibility: In the presence of multiple bystanders, individuals may feel less personal responsibility to help, leading to reduced helping behavior compared to situations with a single bystander.

Activity 6.4 involves a practical exercise to observe the effect of the number of bystanders on helping behavior and to collect news reports about helping incidents.