Attitudes, Beliefs,

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Chapter Three

• Attitudes, Beliefs,
• And
• Behavior
• Presenter Tina Quicoli

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Attitudes

• An Attitude is defined as a favorable or
  unfavorable evaluation of an object or behavior.
  Example Likes, Dislikes, Love, or Hate.
• Sociologists are interested in the social content
  of the attitude.
• Psychologists are interested in their formal
  theoretical nature, sources, and consequences.

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Attitudes in Psychological Research

• Attitudes are a complex of affairs that cant be
  described by a numerical indicator.
• However, the degree of favorableness or
  unfavorableness towards an object can be
  abstracted.
• The attitude is an underlying disposition that is
  manifested in specific behaviors.
• Belief about X gtgtgt Attitude towards X gtgtgt
• Intensions towards X gtgtgt Behavior towards X.
• A Persons belief about an object leads to their
  tendency towards the object.

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Measuring Attitudes

• There are several different ways to measure
  attitude strength. Scales are commonly used.
• Types of scales Extremity, Intensity, and
  Importance.
• Non-attitudes are very weak attitude. On certain
  issues the public may lack an opinion. Thus,
  people often flip a mental coin or take a minute
  to establish their opinion before answering.
• Questions may be answered at different levels of
  generality, general or specific, depending on
  knowledge about the object.

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Attitude Change

• Psychologists are interested in the effects of
  various forms of persuasion in creating or
  altering attitudes.
• They bring subject into a controlled setting and
  conduct tests.
• Sociologists are interested in a socially
  important attitude that shifts over a period of
  time. Their concern with attitude change is more
  descriptive.
• Example Change in racial attitudes over five
  years.

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Attitudes and Their Cousins

• Value An enduring belief related to a specific
  mode of conduct that is preferred.
• Norm An expected standard for appropriate
  behavior and belief that is established and
  enforced by a group.
• Schema An organized and complex mental construct
  that evaluates a specific object.
• Script Prescribed sequence of behavior that is
  expected to occur in a particular setting.
• Opinion Similar to attitudes, but connote a more
  cognitive thought out view.

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• Chapter 4
• Social Cognition
• Presenter Tina Quicoli

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Social Cognition

• Social cognition can be defined as the structure,
  the process, and the content of knowledge.
• It shapes the way we interpret, analyze,
  remember, and use information about the social
  world.
• Social forces play a key factor in shaping
  cognition.
• Cognition is thought, it is not emotions or
  behavior. However, it relates to these
  constructs.
• Social cognition is dominant within Psychological
  S.P., but not in Sociology S.P.

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Sociological Roots

• Durkheim developed a theory of individual and
  collective psychology which proposed the notion
  of a collective representation of social life.
• Weber asserted that macro-sociological phenomena
  do not exist independent from the individual. He
  analyzed large-scale social processes based on a
  theory of the individual. He also conceived of a
  meaningful act as social thought to which
  subjective meaning is attached. Lastly, his ideal
  types are the predecessors of the prototypes.

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• Mead viewed individuals as social. For him,
  society can only be understood as a system that
  is created and continuously recreated through
  social interaction. He also recognized the
  unique human capacity for using gestures and
  symbols in social interaction.
• Schutz believed that social actors live in a
  subjectively perceived life-world. Individuals
  conform to predetermined situation that embody
  previous experiences, organized into stocks of
  knowledge. This is similar to the idea of the
  schema, scripts, or prototypes.
• Question Can you think of any other social
  theorists who are ancestors of social cognition?

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Cognitive Structures

• Cognitive Structures are organized representation
  of knowledge, the elements of cognition.
• Humans have cognitive limits, it is impossible to
  process all incoming information.
• Cognitive structures help to categorize and sort
  incoming information.

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• Prototypes are the tendencies of the
  characteristics that are associated with members
  of a category.
• Schemas organize knowledge about a concept and
  shape how people view and use information.
• Anchoring acts to incorporate new knowledge into
  preexisting systems. This involves abstracting
  thoughts and personifying aspects and creating
  visual representations.

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Cognitive Processes

• Cognitive processes go hand-in-hand with
  cognitive structures.
• Attention The focus of attention is the first
  step in processing information. Once a stimulus
  comes into focal attention it is identified,
  classifies, and given semantic meaning.
• Memory Once information is encoded it is
  available for retrieval. Memory retrieval
  involves activating information stored in
  long-term memory and bringing it into the
  short-term memory.

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Cognitive Inferences

• Information retrieved from memory is used to form
  cognitive inferences.
• The process of social inferences involves
  combining information in order to form judgments.
• First we gather relevant information.
• Once we gather an adequate amount of
  information, we combine it to make social
  inferences.

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• Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts that allow for
  information to be processed more efficiently.
  They are inferential strategies that help to
  reduce information.
• Anchoring and adjustments are paired heuristics.
  An anchor is a starting point which is then
  adjusted to form a final judgment.
• Inferential strategies are efficient, but they
  may lead to errors and prejudices.
• Attributions refer to information of a causal
  inference. It is a judgment about what factors
  may produce an outcome or trait inferences that
  attaches a particular trait to an individual.

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Sociology and Social Cognition

• Sociologists recognize a broad definition of
  social cognition that recognizes all process of
  knowledge.
• When concerned with all processes of knowledge,
  cognition is profoundly social.
• Thus, social cognition should be understood in
  terms of a collective and individual cognitive
  process.
• Sociologists are concerned with the social
  element embedded in the content of social
  knowledge and how that knowledge is created and
  used.
• Cognitions are expressed through and are shaped
  by social interaction.
• Cognition underlies interpersonal dynamics.

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Collective/Social Cognition

• Thoughts are processed collectively as well as
  individually.
• Social cognition cannot be reduced to individual
  cognition. A persons prototypes, stereotypes,
  and scripts are not simply given, they are
  negotiated, altered and redefined through social
  interaction.
• Collective cognition refers to the collective
  nature of the processes that underlie the
  understanding of the social world.
• The collective/social cognition emerges from the
  association with the individual, but they are
  separate from the individual.

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Social Categorization

• Social categorization is the process that
  constructs social knowledge stored in cognitive
  structures.
• Classifying means to impose a certain notions
  about behavior or rules on a person.
• Through categorization social knowledge shapes
  social phenomena.
• Categories offer a prototype that provides a
  mental image of the person.
• When a prototype is established it is given a
  positive or negative value.

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• Cognitive categories are significant to broader
  sociological phenomena.
• Social categories are more than systems of
  cognitive organization, they reflect power
  relationships.
• Social categorization leads to the legitimation
  of social stratification, which becomes part of
  the individuals consciousness.
• Social institutions maintain legitimacy through
  their effects on the self, serving to maintain
  social order.
• Individual and Social categories then shape
  social behavior.
• Question How do you think cognitive categories
  lead to the domination of one social group over
  another and to the maintenance of the
  stratification system?

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Cognition and Social Interaction

• Interaction involves a minimum of 2 people.
• The products of social cognition are messages
  communicated among people.
• Language is the mechanism that allows for people
  to engage in self-interaction and it acts as a
  medium for exchange between people.

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Cross-Cultural Perspective

• S.P. findings are unique historical facts
  relating to certain conditions not universal
  truths.
• S.P. has been largely a North American
  phenomenon.
• It has been argued that many of the assumptions
  in S.P. are biased towards the U.S.
• Understanding cross-cultural differences can
  enrich the understanding of cognition.
• Cross-cultural difference should be understood
  within the unique context of the culture at hand.
• Question How can you explain cross-cultural
  differences in cognition?

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• Discussion
• on
• Postmodernism
• Presenter Jesse Fletcher

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Poststructuralismand Postmodernism

• Breaking Down the Sign Signifiers/Signifieds
• Semiotic Circuit Mass Media, Appropriation, and
  Recontextualization
• Floating Signifiers
• Simulations and the Hyperreal
• Substituting signs of the real for reality
• The era of simulation is thus everywhere
  initiated by the interchangeability of previously
  contradictory or dialectically opposed terms.
  (Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death)
• Centeredness and Decenteredness
• Play and the paradox of the center
• Discussion Point Kuhnian Paradigms as models of
  centered science. Sociology as decentered
  science that makes claims towards being
  benefitted by being without a center/paradigm.
  Without anthropomorphizing sociology, can this be
  viewed as an example of Cognitive Dissonance?
  Why/Why Not?

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So what! How does this apply?

• As society becomes less real, do people give it
  more weight? Do people perceive it, or claim to
  perceive it, as MORE real?
• If society was a desert of the real, a
  hodgepodge of simulation/simulacrum, then would
  it not be characterized by a perpetual state of
  insufficient justification? What is
  socialization into this world comprised of, then,
  and what is the end result? By the time one is
  socialized, is there a real self?
• Could increased consumerism, item/ideological
  loyalty, and faith in societys institutions be a
  matter of cognitive dissonance? Are floating
  signifiers even more powerful than their
  structured and centered predecessors?
• Self and Personality as Simulation (a postmodern
  self?)
• The self no longer has to be rational, since it
  is no longer measured against some ideal or
  negative instance. It is nothing more than
  operational. It is a hyperreal the product of
  an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models.
  (Baudrillard, Simulacra Simulations)
• By extinguishing its own foundational myth, the
  self also eliminates its internal
  contradictions (no more reality and no referent
  with which to challenge it). (Baudrillard,
  Symbolic Exchange and Death)