Chapter 16--Social Psych - Personal/Professional

[Pages:27]Chapter 16

Social Psychology

PSY 100 Rick Grieve, Ph.D. Western Kentucky University

Attitudes

What are attitudes?

Attitudes are beliefs or opinions about people, object, and ideas

Attitudes

Foot-in-the-door strategy

Individual presents a weaker request first, saving the strongest demand until the end

Door-in-the-face strategy

Individual makes the strongest demand first, then presents a more reasonable offer

Attitudes

Cognitive dissonance

Individual's motivation to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) caused by two inconsistent thoughts

Self-perception theory

Individuals make inferences about their attitudes by perceiving and examining their behavior

Attitudes

Cognitive dissonance theory

Self-perception theory

"I hate my job. I need to develop a better attitude toward it, or I could quit and be a beach bum."

"I am spending all of my time thinking about how much I hate my job. I really must not like it.

Social Thinking

Attribution theory

People are motivated to discover the underlying causes of behavior as part of their effort to make sense of the behavior

Attribution

Dimension of causality

Internal/external causes

? Internal attributions: personality traits, intelligence, models, attitudes, and health

? External attributions: social pressure, aspects of the social situations, money, weather, and luck

Stable/unstable causes

Controllable/uncontrollable causes

Attributional Errors

Fundamental attribution error

Observers overestimate the importance of traits and underestimate the importance of situations when they seek explanations of an actor's behavior

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