ATTITUDES

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• ATTITUDES

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What are Attitudes?

• Long lasting patterns of feelings and beliefs
  about other people, ideas, or objects that based
  in peoples experiences and shape their future
  behaviour.
• A psychological tendency that is expressed by
  evaluating a particular entity with some degree
  of favor or disfavor. (Eagly Chaiken, 1993)
• A positive or negative evaluation of people,
  objects, event, activities, ideas, or just about
  anything in your environment. (Zimbardo et al.,
  1999

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Why Study Attitudes?

• Attitudes influence social cognition
• They can function as schemas for organizing and
  interpreting information about social entities.
• Think about your attitudes toward "spending
  money," professors, and eating out during the
  week.
• I suggest to class "Hey class, let's celebrate
  the end of semester by going out to dinner
  together at the Silvers restaurant." What's your
  response?
• How is response informed by each of these
  attitudes?
• Attitudes may influence behavior
• People will behave in ways consistent with their
  attitudes

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Types of Attitudes

• Cognitive
• Affective
• Behaviour

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Cognitive

• Head over heart
• Based primarily about peoples beliefs about the
  rewards and punishments thy can provide or the
  pluses and minuses of an object

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Affective

• Heart over head
• Based more on peoples feelings and values than
  on beliefs about the nature of the object
• Come from a variety of sources
• Religious beliefs
• Moral beliefs
• Sensory reactions (chocolate)
• Conditioning

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Behavior

• Based more on self-perception,
• How you feel about something is based on
  performance or activity

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How are Attitudes Formed?

• Attitudes are acquired through
• social learning
• social comparison
• genetic factors (not all agree on this)

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What is Social Learning?

• The theories covering social learning are
• Classical Conditioning
• Operant or Instrumental Conditioning
• Observational Learning or Modeling

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Classical Conditioning

• From class this would be the lemonade experiment.
• Many studies show that when initially neutral
  social stimuli are paired repeatedly with
  positive or negative stimuli, subjects will
  develop positive or negative attitudes toward the
  previously neutral stimulus.
• Think of advertisements where products are tied
  closely to babies or cute animals.

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Classical Conditioning
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Operant or Instrumental Conditioning

• Persons are rewarded for expressing the "correct"
  attitudes/punished for "incorrect.
• Ex Think about response I would get from others
  if I were to express these attitudes publically
• It's okay to smoke and drink.
• The Taliban should not be attacked by the U.S.
• Tuition should be abolished at USU.
• Students should never have to take an exam.

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Operant or Instrumental Conditioning

• The rich should pay less in taxes.

• It is OK to text and drive.

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Learning or Modeling

• Persons form attitudes by observing and then
  imitating models they like and admire.
• Ex Your mother states that "Only biodegradeable
  products should be used to do laundry." (Will you
  model that attitude?)

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Social Comparison

• Social comparison is our tendency to compare
  ourselves with others to judge whether our view
  of social reality is correct or not
• When physical reality is vague we rely more and
  more on others to determine social reality

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Social Comparison
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Genetic Factors

• Controlled twin studies in US and Sweden reveal
  that identical twins share more similar attitudes
  than fraternal twins
• Genetic factors may influence general
  dispositions (e.g., tendency to have positive
  affect) and conditionability that may influence
  formation of more specific attitudes

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Gender Attitudes

• How men and women think about things is not
  always the same.
• In the next two slides you will see the top 10
  attributes that each sought in the other.

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Women most sought in a man

1. A record of achievement
2. Leadership qualities
3. Skills at his job
4. Earning potential
5. A sense of humor
6. Intellectual ability
7. Attentiveness
8. Common sense
9. Moral perception
10. Good abstract reasoning

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Men most sought in a woman

1. Physical attractiveness
2. Ability in bed
3. Warmth and affection
4. Social skills
5. Homemaking ability
6. Dress sense
7. Sensitivity to others needs
8. Good taste
9. Moral perception
10. Artistic creativity

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Discussion

• What are the attitudes of a successful student?

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The Task

• What are the necessary attitudes to be successful
  in life?
• Create a top 5 list of these attitudes.
• Explain why each of these attitudes is important
  in detail.