Important Questions & Answers: Attitude and Social Cognition - 2 | Psychology Class 12 - Humanities/Arts PDF Download

Very Short Answer Questions

Q1: Discuss how attitudes are learnt through exposure to information.
Ans: In today's world a private is exposed to plenty of data with the assistance of the media, so a negative or positive attitude is created on the knowledge provided. By reading the biographies of self-actualised persons, a private may develop a positive attitude towards labor and other aspects for achieving success in life.

Q2: State any four significant features of attitudes.
Ans: Four features of attitude are:

• Valence
• Extremeness
• Simplicity or Complexity
• Centrality

Q3: What's a stereotype?
Ans: A stereotype could be a cluster of ideas regarding the characteristics of a particular group. They're category-based schemas a few group of individuals. As an example, a stereotype that Americans are hardworking,

Q4: What's social inhibition?
Ans: Decline in performance within the presence of others is named social inhibition. For instance, if you recite a poem to an audience, your performance is inhibited than once you recite it to your teacher.

Q5: What's a prototype?
Ans: Schemas that function within the variety of categories are called prototypes. They're the complete set of features or qualities that help us to define an object clearly.

Q6: Explain pro-social behaviour.
Ans: Pro-social behavior or altruism is doing something or pondering the welfare of others with none selfinterest. As an example, sharing things, cooperating with others, helping during natural calamities, showing sympathy, doing favours to others.

Q7: Explain the concept of prejudice.
Ans: Prejudices are negative attitudes towards a selected group and are supported stereotypes (the cognitive component). The cognitive component of prejudice is in the midst of dislike or hatred (the affective component). Prejudice gets translated into discrimination (the behavioural component) whereby people behave in less positive way towards a specifictarget group compared to a different group which they favour. In our society there has been cases of discrimination thanks to prejudice supported gender, religion, community, caste, physical handicap and illness like AIDS.

Q8: What's halo effect?
Ans: During formation of impression, we've got a bent to think that a target one that has one set positive qualities must produce other positive qualities. This can be called halo effect. For example, if we are told that someone is 'tidy' and 'punctual', we are likely to think that the person must even be 'hardworking'.

Q9: Explain social cognition with the assistance of examples.
Ans: Social cognition refers to all or any those psychological processes that cope with the gathering and processing of data associated with social objects. For example, a teacher's conclusions regarding a student's behavior at schoolare quite different from his mother's conclusion who observes him reception.

Q10: What's schema?
Ans: Schemas that function within the type of categories are called prototypes. They're the complete set of features or qualities that help us to define an object clearly.

Q11: Elaborate the ABC component of attitude.
Ans: The emotional component of an attitude is that the affective aspect, the behavioural component is that the tendency to act while the cognitive component is that the thought component of an attitude. For instance, the cognitive component of prejudice, i.e., stereotype is in the middle of dislike or hatred, the affective component which can get translated into discrimination, the behavioural component.

Q12: What are the characteristics of pro-social behaviour?
Ans: The characteristics of pro-social behavior are

• Aim to learn or benefit to others without expecting anything reciprocally.
• Helping others without expecting anything reciprocally.
• To willingly benefit others with none quite pressure.
• Provide help with none difficulty or any cost.

Q13: Explain the processes involved within the learning of attitudes.
Ans: The method of learning attitude is:

• learning of attitudes usually takes place by association,
• through rewards and punishments,
• through modelling,
• through group and cultural norms,
• through exposure to information.

Q14: You've got been given the responsibility of fixing the attitude of your schoolmates towards food wastage. Identify any three factors that you just have to confine mind while bringing during this attitude change and explain it with the assistance of an example.
Ans: Characteristics of the present attitude valence, extremeness, simplicity or complexity and centrality.

• Source characteristics: credibility and attractiveness.
• Message characteristics: rational, emotional appeal, motives, mode.
• Target characteristics: persuasibility, strong prejudices, self-esteem and intelligence.

Q15: What's primacy effect?
Ans: During formation of impression, information presented first includes a stronger effect than information presented at the top. This is often primacy effect.

Q16: What are values?
Ans: Values are attitudes with a 'should' or 'ought' aspect, i.e., moral or ethical values. For example, one should be putting your all into or one should be honest.

Q17: What's social facilitation?
Ans: Improvement in performance within the presence of others is termed social facilitation. For instance, cyclists racing with one another perform better than once they cycle alone.

Q18: What's recency effect?
Ans: During formation of impression, information that comes at the tip may have stronger influence. This can be recency effect.

Q19: What's belief?
Ans: Beliefs seek advice from the cognitive component of attitudes like belief in or belief in democracy.

Short Answer Questions

Q20: Discuss the concept of impression formation with the assistance of examples.
Ans: After we meet people, we make inferences about their personal qualities. This is often impression formation. For example, if an individual is nice looking we form impressions that the person would be sincere and hard-working. The one who forms the impression is named the perceiver. The individual about whom the impression is created is termed the target. Impression formation consists of the subsequent sub-processes:

• Selection: Information is collected about target person.
• Organisation: Information is combined in an exceedingly systematic way.
• Inference: A conclusion is drawn about the type of person the target is.

Q21: State any 3 sources of prejudice.
Ans:

• Learning: Prejudices are learned through association, reward and punishment, observing others, group or cultural norms and exposure to information. Family, reference groups, personal experiences and media play a job within the learning of prejudices. Prejudiced persons show low adjusting capacity, anxiety and feelings of hostility against outgroup.
• A powerful Social Identity and in group Bias: Prejudiced individuals who have a powerful social identity and have a really positive attitude towards their own group boost this attitude by holding negative attitudes towards other groups.
• Scapegoating: the bulk group places the blame on a majority outgroup for its social, economic and political problems. Scapegoating could be a group-based way of expressing frustration and it often leads to negative attitudes or prejudices against the weaker group.

Q22: Discuss the cognitive dissonance component in attitude change process.
Ans: The concept of cognitive dissonance was proposed by Leon Festinger. If a private find that two cognitions in an attitude are dissonant, then one in all them are changed in the direction of consonance. For instance, consider the case of the subsequent two ideas or cognitions: 

• Cognition 1: Pan masala causes mouth cancer which is fatal.
• Cognition 2: I eat pan masala.

Here the 2 ideas are dissonant within the attitude towards pan masala. Therefore, one among these ideas will need to be changed in order that consonance will be attained. Thus, to get rid of or reduce the dissonance, change Cognition 2.
Thus Cognition 2 will become: I will stop eating pan masala. Both balance and cognitive dissonance are samples of cognitive consistency. Cognitive consistency mAns: two components; aspects or elements of the attitude or attitude system must be within the same direction.

Q23: Why do individuals show better performance within the presence of others?
Ans: Social facilitation is that the process during which individuals show better performance within the presence of others. This can be because:

• The individual experiences arousal within the presence of others which makes him react during a more intense manner.
• The person feels that he would be evaluated. The thought of evaluation apprehension makes him to perform well and avoid mistakes.
• The character of task affects performance within the presence of others. Just in case of an easy or familiar task, the person is surer of performing well than just in case of a fancy or new task, the person could also be petrified of making mistakes.
• If others are performing the identical task, there's a situation of co-action where there's social comparison and competition and hence performance is healthier.
• If individuals are working together in an exceedingly large group, a phenomenon of social loafing occurs supported the diffusion of responsibility within which there's a discount of individual effort when performing on a collective task.

Q24: How are prejudices formed?
Ans: The sources of prejudice are:

• Learning: Prejudices are learned through association, reward and punishment, observing others, group or cultural norms and exposure to information. Family, reference groups, personal experiences and media play a task within the learning of prejudices. Prejudiced persons show low adjusting capacity, anxiety and feelings of hostility against outgroup.
• A robust social identity and in group bias: Prejudiced individuals who have a robust social identity and have a really positive attitude towards their own group boost this attitude by holding negative attitudes towards other groups.
• Scapegoating: The bulk group places the blame on a majority outgroup for its social, economic and political problems. Scapegoating could be a group-based way of expressing frustration and it often ends up in negative attitudes or prejudices against the weaker group.
• Kernel of truth concept: People still hold stereotypes because they think that finally, there must be some truth or 'kernel of truth' in what everyone says about the opposite group.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy: The target group may behave in ways in which justify the unfairness, i.e., conform the negative expectations which can thus strengthen the prevailing prejudice.

Q25: How message characteristics facilitate attitude change?
Ans: The message for attitude change contains a rational appeal or an emotional appeal makes a difference. For example, an ad for cooking food in a very sterilizer may show that this protects cooking gas (rational appeal) or preserves nutrition (emotional appeal). The motives activated by the message also determine attitude change. For instance, drinking milk makes an individual healthy, good-looking, more energetic and more successful in one's job. The mode of spreading the message plays a big role. Face-to-face transmission of the message is typically simpler than transmission mechanism. As for example, through letters and pamphlets or perhaps through mass media.

Q26: Explain the factors that influence impression formation.

Ans: Impression formation is influences by:

• Nature of data available to the perceiver.
• Social schemas within the perceiver (including stereotypes).
• Personality characteristics of the perceiver.
• Situational factors

Q27: Discuss the components of an attitude.
Ans: An attitude may be a set of views or opinions which have an evaluative feature (positive, negative or neutral quality) and is in the midst of ABC components namely affective, behavioural and cognitive components. For example, a positive attitude of scholars towards teachers and fogeys. The emotional component of an attitude is that the affective aspect, the behavioural component is that the tendency to act while the cognitive component is that the thought component of an attitude. For example, the cognitive component of prejudice i.e. stereotype is amid dislike or hatred, the affective component which can get translated into discrimination, the behavioural component.

Q28: Describe the concept of balance within the process of attitude change?
Ans: The concept of balance proposed by Fritz Heider is described within the type of P-0-X triangle. Attitude changes if there's a state of imbalance between P-O attitude and 0-X attitude and P-X attitude. For example, within the study of attitude towards dowry (X), someone (P) includes a positive attitude towards dowry ( P-X positive). P is going to get his son married to the daughter of some person (0) who encompasses a negative attitude towards dowry ( 0-X negative). Here P-X is positive, 0-P is positive but 0-X is negative. That is, there are 2 positives and 1 negative within the triangle. This is often a situation of imbalance. Imbalance on POX triangle is found when

• All three sides of the POX triangle are negative or
• Two sides are positive and one side negative. 

Balance is found when:

• All three sides are positive or
• Two sides are negative and one side is positive.

Q29: Discuss two-step theory of attitude change.
Ans: The 2-step concept of attitude change was proposed by an Indian psychologist, S. M. Mohsin.
Step 1: The target changes his attitude by identifying with the source.
Step 2: The source shows an attitude change towards the attitude object. The target also shows an attitude change.
This is often a form of imitation or observational learning. For example,
Step 1: Preeti reads in newspaper that a specific drinkable she enjoys is harmful. But she imitates the sports person with whom she identifies.
Step 2: The sports person having positive feelings towards his fans may change his habit of consuming the potable by substituting it with a health drink. Now, Preeti will change her attitude and stop consuming the harmful drinkable.

Long Answer Questions

Q30: State the factors that influence attitude change.
Ans: The factors that influence attitude change are as follows:

• Characteristics of the prevailing attitude: All four properties of attitudes namely, valence (positivity or negativity), extremeness, simplicity or complexity and centrality determine attitude change. Positive attitudes are easier to alter than negative attitudes. Extreme attitudes and central attitudes are harder to vary than the less extreme and peripheral (less significant) attitudes. Simple attitudes are easier to alter than multiple attitudes. Attitude change is also congruent if it changes within the same direction because the existing attitude. For example, a positive attitude may become more positive or a negative attitude may become more negative. An attitude change is also incongruent if it changes during a direction opposite to the prevailing attitude. For example, a positive attitude may have subsided positive or negative or a negative attitude may dwindle negative or positive.
• Source characteristics: Attitudes are more likely to alter when the message comes from a highly credible source than from a coffee credible source. for instance, adults who are getting to buy a laptop are more convinced by a computer engineer advertising the laptop while when the buyers are themselves school children they're more convinced by a college child advertising the laptop.
• Message characteristics: The message for attitude change contains a rational appeal or an emotional appeal makes a difference. For instance, an ad for cooking food in a very sterilizer may indicate that this protects cooking gas (rational appeal) or preserves nutrition (emotional appeal).
• The motives activated by the message also determine attitude change. For instance, drinking milk makes someone healthy, good-looking, more energetic and more successful in one's job. The mode of spreading the message plays a big role. Face-to-face transmission of the message is sometimes more practical than transmission mechanism. As for example, through letters and pamphlets or maybe through mass media.
• Target characteristics: People with strong prejudices, people with low self-esteem and low intelligence change their attitudes easily. People with more open and versatile personalities change more easily. Advertisers benefit most from such people.

Q31: Is behaviour always a mirrored image of one's attitude? Explain with a relevant example.
Ans: There's consistency between Attitudes and behavior when:

• The attitude is powerful, and occupies a central place within the attitude system.
• The person is conscious of his attitude, there's no external pressure for the person to behave during a particular way. For example, there's no group pressure to follow the norm.
• The person's behaviourisn't being watched or evaluated by others.
• The person thinks that the behaviour would have a positive consequence.

In the days when Americans were said to be prejudiced against the Chinese, Richard La Piere, an American social psychologist, conducted the subsequent study. He asked a Chinese couple to travel across the U.S., and stay in numerous hotels. One time during these occasions they were refused service by one amongst the hotels. Sometime later, La Piere sent out questionnaires to managers of hotels and tourist homes within the same areas where the Chinese couple had travelled, asking them if they might give accommodation to Chinese guests. A really large percentage said that they might not do so.
This response showed a negative attitude towards the Chinese, which was inconsistent with the positive behaviour that was actually shown towards the travelling Chinese couple. Thus, attitudes might not always predict actual pattern of one's behaviour. Sometimes it'sbehaviour that decides the attitude.
In the experiment by Festinger and Carlsmith, students who got only 1 dollar for telling others that the experiment was interesting, discovered that they liked the experiment. That is, on the premise of their behaviour (telling others that the experiment was interesting, for under a little amount of money), they concluded that their attitude towards the experiment was positive ("I wouldn't have told a lie for this bit of cash, which suggests that the experiment was actually interesting").

Q32: Highlight the importance of schemas in social cognition.
Ans: Social cognition refers to any or all those psychological processes that handle the gathering and processing of data associated with social objects. These include all the processes that help in understanding, explaining and interpreting social behaviour. The processing of knowledge associated with social objects (particularly individuals, groups, people, relationships, social issues, and also the like) differs from the processing of data associated with physical objects. People as social objects may themselves change because the operation takes place. For example, an educator who observes a student at school may draw conclusions about her/him that are quite different from the conclusions drawn by the student's mother, who observes her/him reception. The coed may show a difference in her/his behaviour, reckoning on who is watching her/him - the teacher or the mother. Social cognition is guided by mental units called schemas. Schemas and Stereotypes a schema is defined as a mental structure that gives a framework, set of rules or guidelines for processing information about any object. Schemas (or 'schemata') are the essential units stored in our memory, and performance as shorthand ways of processing information, thus reducing the time and mental effort required in cognition. Within the case of social cognition, the essential units are social schemas. Some attitudes can also function like social schemas. We use many alternative schemas, and are available to grasp about them through analysis and examples.

Q33: Prejudice can exist without discrimination and the other way around. Comment.
Ans: Prejudices can exist without being shown within the style of discrimination. Similarly, discrimination is shown without prejudice. Yet, the 2 go together fairly often. Wherever prejudice and discrimination exist, conflicts are very likely to arise between groups within the identical society. Our own society has witnessed many deplorable instances of discrimination, with and without prejudice, supported gender, religion, community, caste, physical handicap, and illnesses like AIDS. Moreover, in many cases discriminatory behaviour may be curbed by law. But, the cognitive and emotional components of prejudice are tougher to alter. Prejudice gets translated into discrimination (the behavioural component) whereby people behave in less positive way towards a specific target group compared to a different group which they favour. In our society there has been cases of discrimination because of prejudice supported gender, religion, community, caste, physical handicap and illness like AIDS.

Q34: Differentiate between prejudice and stereotype.
Ans: A stereotype may be a cluster of ideas regarding the characteristics of a particular group. They're category-based schemas a few group of individuals. For example, a stereotype that Americans are hardworking. Prejudices are negative attitudes towards a selected group and are supported stereotypes (the cognitive component). The cognitive component of prejudice is in the course of dislike or hatred (the affective component). Prejudice gets translated into discrimination (the behavioural component) whereby people behave in less positive way towards a specific target group compared to a different group which they favour. In our society there has been cases of discrimination because of prejudice supported gender, religion, community, caste, physical handicap and illness like AIDS.

Q35: State the factors which influence pro-social behavior.
Ans:  The factors influencing pro-social behavior are:

• It's supported the inborn natural tendency in kinsfolk.
• It's influenced by learning. Individuals from family environments which emphasize helping as a worth and praise helpfulness show more pro-social behavior.
• Some cultures encourage people to assist the needy and distressed.
• Pro-social behavior is expressed when things activates certain social norms that need helping others. The norms are:
  • Norm of Social Responsibility which states that we should always help anyone who needs help.
  • Norm of Reciprocity which states one should help those persons who have helped us within the past.
  • Norm of Equity which states that we must always help others whenever it's fair to try and do so. For example, it's fair to assist someone who has lost all belongingness during a flood than to assist an individual who has lost everything through gambling.
• People might not help the needy because they feel that the person might feel insulted or may become dependent.
• Pro-social behavior is more likely to be shown by individuals who have a high level of empathy.
• Pro-social behavior is reduced by factors like bad mood, being busy with one's own problems, or feeling that the person to be helped is to blame for his/her situation.
• Pro-social behavior is reduced when people are a part of an oversized group. For instance, when there's a road accident all and sundry thinks that it's not his/her responsibility alone to allow help which somebody else may take the responsibility which isn't the case when the person is alone. The people are thus influenced by the phenomenon of the diffusion of responsibility.

Q36: Discuss factors influencing impression formation. Explain actor-observer effect in attribution.
Ans: Impression formation is influenced by:

• Nature of data available to the perceiver.
• Social schemas within the perceiver (including stereotypes).
• Personality characteristics of the perceiver.
• Situational factors

The process of impression is influenced by the above factors which are successively influenced by:

• Primacy effect
• Recency effect
• Halo effect

We assign causes to the behavior shown in specific social situations. This process is named attribution. A distinction is formed between the attributions that an individual makes for his/her positive and negative experiences (actor-role) than the attribution made by another person's positive and negative experiences (observer-role). This is often called actor-observer effect. When an individual attributes his/her own success, he/she emphasizes on internal factors except for failures to external factors; whereas when he/she attributes success of others he gives emphasis to external factors and for failures to internal factors. Impression formation is influence.