Test: Attitude and Social Cognition- 2 - Humanities/Arts MCQ

The three-component model includes three components to explain the content of attitudes: cognition, emotion and behaviour. The remaining answers are not the correct terms or combination of components that form the three-component model.

Multiple-act criterion is the term used to refer to the assessment of multiple behaviours relevant to the attitude being measured, which has been shown to be a better indicator of the actual relationship between people’s attitudes and behaviour specific to those attitudes. The other terms included above are not used to refer to this type of assessment.

Cognitive dissonance theory explains that people adjust their attitudes to justify past behaviour in order to reduce inconsistency and the discomfort that this can bring to some people. Attribution theory and social learning theory do not explain attitude change. The actor-observer effect is a type of attribution. The theory of planned behaviour focuses on behavioural intentions, and not the attitudes themselves.

McGuire’s (1969) extended version of Hovland, Janis and Kelley’s (1953) model of attitude change stated that a message will elicit the desired behaviour only if it succeeds at the following six stages. People must:

1. encounter the message (presentation stage);
2. attend to it (attention stage);
3. understand it (comprehension stage);
4. change their attitude (yielding stage);
5. remember their new attitude at a later time (retention stage); and
6. the new attitude must influence their behaviour (behaviour stage).

Interestingly, even if the odds of passing each stage are quite good, the chances of completing all the stages can be low. For this reason, modern marketing initiatives take steps to compel completion of each stage, where this is possible. So advertisers will present the message many times, make it attention-grabbing and memorable, and make the message content as powerful as they can.

Both the Jones–Davis and the Kelley models of attribution view the social perceiver as a rational person who uses logical principles of thinking when attributing causality. But empirical research has discovered persistent biases in the attributional processes. According to Fiske and Taylor (1991), bias occurs if the social perceiver systematically distorts (over-uses or under-uses) what are thought to be correct and logical procedures. We will now look in more detail at four of the most pervasive biases: the fundamental attribution error, the actor–observer effect, the self-serving bias and the ultimate attribution error.

The UAE refers to the attributions made at the group level, to protect the group to which we belong. It does not underlie all other processes, apply only to ingroups, or occur at the individual level.

Before we can apply a schema to a social object, we have to categorize (or label) it as something – a book, a tree, an animal, or whatever. In other words, we identify objects, people and events as members of a category, similar to others in that category and different from members of other categories. Mostly we employ categories automatically and with little conscious effort. Categories help to impose order on the stimulus world, and are fundamental to perception, thought, language and action (Lakoff, 1987). Research on categorization stems from the pioneering work of cognitive scientist Eleanor Rosch and her colleagues (Rosch, 1975; 1978).
The categorization of social objects, people and events is assumed to be a more complex process than categorization of inanimate objects because social objects are variable, dynamic and interactive. Nevertheless, members of a social category share common features. Some instances contained in the category are considered to be more typical than others – the most typical, or prototypical, representing the category as a whole.

Automatic processing of information about people is beyond conscious awareness and extremely fast whereas controlled processing is deliberate, conscious and strategic. Schematic, revised, subtype and evaluative are not terms used to describe the type of information processing by Devine.

Well-developed schemas that are activated frequently resist change and persist, even in the face of disconfirming evidence. So a male chauvinist with a highly accessible and frequently activated stereotype that women are less capable than men is rarely convinced otherwise, even when presented with evidence to the contrary. Consistent with the ultimate attribution error described above, instances that disconfirm the stereotype are treated as ‘exceptions to the rule’. This notion is consistent with the subtyping model of stereotype change, which predicts that disconfirming instances of the stereotype are relegated to ‘exceptional’ sub-categories or sub-types that accommodate exceptions while leaving the overall stereotype largely intact (Weber & Crocker, 1983).
There is considerable empirical support for the sub-typing model (Hewstone, 1994; Johnston & Hewstone, 1992). Other models have received less empirical support. These include the book-keeping model, which proposes that there is constant fine-tuning of a schema with each new piece of information (Rumelhart &
Norman, 1978), and the conversion model, which proposes that there is dramatic and sudden change in the schema in response to salient contradictions (Rothbart, 1981).

Research by Petty and colleagues has consistently identified high personal relevance as particularly important for the careful processing of messages, and affects how persuasive messages will be for inducing attitude change and behavioural intentions. Whether or not the message is funny or memorable do not appear to be key components to how carefully or deliberately the information is processed compared to personal relevance. When a message is not provided by an expert source, this can lead to less careful processing.