- Information
- AI Chat
Module 2 Social Perception
Social Psychology (PS03)
Jamia Millia Islamia
Recommended for you
Related Studylists
Sem 3Preview text
MODULE 2: SOCIAL PERCEPTION AND ATTITUDES
2 Social Perception-Definition, Non-Verbal Communication- facial expression, gazes, stares, body language, touching, deception and micro expressions. 2 Attribution - Definition, Theories - Correspondence inference, Kelly’s theory, Applications of attribution theory, Attribution Errors. 2 Attitude and behavior - Definition, nature, components, functions and formation of attitudes. Persuasion, cognitive approach to persuasion, resistance to persuasion. Cognitive dissonance and attitude change.
SOCIAL PERCEPTION:
“Social perception is the process through which we seek to know and understand other people.” -BARON
“Social perception refers to constructing an understanding of the social world from the data we get through our senses. More narrowly defined, it refers to the processes by which we form impressions of other people’s traits and personalities.” - MYERS, DELAMATER; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
It is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting and organizing sensory information in interpersonal and social environments. Social perception is a study that understands the manner in which individuals develop impressions about other people and try to create their individuality. Individuals understand feelings and emotions of others by gathering information, then noticing their outward appearance, gestures and verbal communication. A lot of information is learnt by the expressions of their face, hand movements, body language and even the tone of their speech. There are four main components of social perception. They are observation, attribution, integration, and confirmation. Social perception is one important component of social competence and successful social life. The interest in social perception can be dated back to the seventeenth century; this was also the time of the
origin of social psychology. A number of researches began in order to explore social perception.
NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION:
Defined as, “Communication between individuals that does not involve the content of spoken language. It relies instead on an unspoken language of facial expressions, eye contact, and body language.”
We learn about others from nonverbal communication —information provided not by their words, but by their facial expressions, eye contact, body movements, postures, and even changes in their body chemistry, which are communicated through tiny amounts of substances released into the air Nonverbal communication can be defined as the way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words. The main channels of nonverbal communication are facial expressions, eye contact, body movements, posture and touching.
Many of us associate facial expression and gestures with nonverbal communication, but these are not the only two types involved. There are, in fact, eight different types of nonverbal communication
Facial Expression: This makes up the largest proportion of nonverbal communication. Large amounts of information can be conveyed through a smile or frown. The facial expressions for happiness, sadness, anger, and fear are similar across cultures throughout the world.
Gestures: Common gestures include pointing, waving, and using fingers, etc. You can tell a person's attitude by the way they walk or by the way they stand. Same goes for gestures.
Para linguistics: This includes factors such as tone of voice, loudness, inflection, and pitch. Tone of voice can be powerful. The same sentence said in different tones can convey different messages. A strong tone of voice may indicate approval or enthusiasm, whereas the same sentence said with a hesitant tone of voice may convey disapproval or lack of interest. Vocal Behaviors such as pitch, inflection, volume, rate, filler words, pronunciation, articulation, accent, and silence, often reveal considerable information about others.
Body Language and Posture: A person’s posture and movement can also convey a great deal of information. Arm crossing or leg-crossing conveys different meanings depending on the context and the person interpreting them. Body language is very subtle, and may not be very definitive.
Body language: Cues provided by the position,
posture, and movement of others’ bodies or
body parts.
Proxemics: This refers to personal space. The amount of space a person requires depends on each individual’s preference, but also depends on the situation and other people involved in the situation. -The Use of Space- The only time you really notice this one is when we particularly need the space. For instance, being in a crowded elevator or being in a overly crowded house party. A lot of times when a person is upset they just need their space to calm down.
Eye Gaze: Looking, staring, and blinking are all considered types of eye gaze. Looking at another person can indicate a range of emotions including hostility, interest, or attraction. - Eye behaviors- play a role in several important types of relational interaction.
Haptics (Touch): This refers to communicating through touch. Haptics is especially important in infancy and early childhood. -Touch is one of our five senses, but, every touch has a different kind of meaning to it and when nonverbally communicating - it’s something you need to know. Five major areas of touching is: affectionate touch, care giving touch, power and control touch, aggressive touch, ritualistic touch. Information that is conveyed from touch depends on several factors relating to who does the touching (a friend, a stranger, a member of your own or the other gender); the nature of this physical contact (brief or prolonged, gentle or rough, what part of the body is touched); and the context in which the touching takes place (a business or social setting, a doctor’s office). Depending on such factors, touch can suggest affection, sexual interest, dominance, caring, or even aggression. Despite such complexities, existing evidence indicates that when touching is considered appropriate, it often produces positive reactions in the person being touched.
Appearance: Our choice of color, clothing, hairstyles, and other factors affecting our appearance are considered a means of nonverbal communication.
Scent: Scent also serves as a nonverbal cue, and subtle cues concerning women’s menstrual cycle can be transmitted in this way.
DECEPTION: Research findings indicate that most people tell at least one lie every day and use deception in almost 20 percent of their social interactions. Experiments confirming these findings indicate that a majority of strangers lie to each other at least once during a brief first encounter. People lie for many reasons: : to avoid hurting others’ feelings, to conceal their real feelings or reactions, to avoid punishment for misdeeds.
Careful attention to both nonverbal and verbal cues can reveal the fact whether others are trying to deceive us. The following information non verbal cues can be very helpful to identify deception.
Microexpressions: These are fleeting facial expressions lasting only a few tenths of a second. Such reactions appear on the face very quickly after an emotion-provoking event and are difficult to suppress. As a result, they can be very revealing about others’ true feelings or emotions.
Interchannel discrepancies: A second nonverbal cue revealing of deception is known as interchannel discrepancies. (The term channel refers to type of nonverbal cues; for instance, facial expressions are one channel, body movements are another.) These are inconsistencies between nonverbal cues from different basic channels. These result from the fact that people who are lying often find it difficult to control all these channels at once. For instance, they may manage their facial expressions well, but may have difficulty looking you in the eye as they tell their lie.
Eye contact: Efforts at deception are often revealed by certain aspects of eye contact. People who are lying often blink more often and show pupils that are more dilated than people who are telling the truth. They may also show an unusually low level of eye contact or— surprisingly—an unusually high one as they attempt to fake being honest by looking others right in the eye.
cause that could not be produced by any other apparent cause.
KELLY’S THEORY OF CASUAL ATTRIBUTION:
Extending Heider’s ideas, Kelley suggests that we try to figure out whether the behaviour occurs in the presence or absence of various factors that are possible causes. Then to identify the cause(s) of the behavior, we apply the principle of co variation: We attribute the behaviour to the factor that is both present when the behaviour occurs and absent when the behaviour fails to occur; that is here, the cause that co varies with the behavior.
We want to know why other people have acted as they have or why events have turned out in a specific way. Such knowledge is crucial, for only if we understand the causes behind others actions or events that occur can we hope to make sense out of the social world. Obviously, the number of specific causes behind others behavior is very large. To make the task manageable we should know whether others behavior stem mainly from internal causes i. their own traits, motives, intentions, mainly from external causes some aspect of the social or physical world; or from a combination of the two.
The co variation model of Kelley (1967) focuses on how people decide whether to make an internal or an external attribution and on instances where there are multiple observations of behavior. It explains the attribution process as a search for information about what a particular behavior is correlated (co varies) with: When behaviour is correlated with the Situation it is called external attribution. When behavior is correlated with the person it amounts to internal attribution. According to Kelley, in our attempts to answer the
why question about others behavior, we focus on three major types of information/ causal factors.
- First, we consider consensus—the extent to which other people react to a given stimulus or event in the same manner as the person we are considering. The higher the proportion of people who react in the same way, the higher the consensus.
- Second, we consider consistency—the extent to which the person in question reacts to the stimulus or event in the same way on other occasions, over time.
- And third, we examine distinctiveness—the extent to which this person reacts in the same manner to other, different stimuli or events.
According to Kelley’s theory, we are most likely to attribute another’s behavior to internal causes under conditions in which consensus and distinctiveness are low but consistency is high. In contrast, we are most likely to attribute another’s behavior to external causes when consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness are all high. Finally, we usually attribute another’s behavior to a combination of internal and external factors when consensus is low but consistency and distinctiveness are high.
Application of Attribution Theory:
Here we examine how attribution theory has been
applied to understanding one key aspect of mental
health: depression and also helps us to understand why people have prejudices.
- Attribution and Depression: Depression is the most common psychological disorder. It has been estimated that almost half of
all human beings experience such problems at
some time during their lives. Although many factors
play a role in depression, one that has received
increasing attention is termed a self-defeating
pattern of attributions. In contrast to most people, who show the self-serving bias depressed
individuals tend to adopt an opposite pattern. They
attribute negative outcomes to lasting, internal
causes such as their own traits or lack of ability, but
attribute positive outcomes to temporary, external causes such as good luck or special favours from
others. As a result, such people perceive that they
have little or no control over what happens to them
—they are simply being blown about by the winds of unpredictable fate. And once they are depressed, the tendency to engage in this self- defeating pattern is strengthened, and a vicious cycle is often initiated.
- Attribution and prejudice: A prejudice is a negative belief or feeling about a particular group of individuals. Prejudices are often passed on from one generation to the next.
Prejudices in workplaces affect how people perceive sexual harassment. Men are more likely than women to attribute blame to the victim. Changing men’s attributions regarding sexual harassment may help to prevent it. The theory also helps in criminal law to understand the psychology of criminals. In today's world, with the increase in crime and global terrorism understanding criminal psychology has become essential.
ATTRIBUTION ERROR:
Our efforts to understand other people—and ourselves —are subject to several types of errors that can lead us to false conclusions about why others have acted as they have and how they will act in the future.
In psychology, an attribution bias is a cognitive bias that affects the way we determine who or what was responsible for an event or action (attribution). It is natural for us to interpret events and results as the consequences of the purposeful actions of some person or agent. This is a deep-seated bias in human perception which has been present throughout human history. Attribution biases are triggered when people evaluate the dispositions or qualities of others based on incomplete evidence. Attribution biases typically take the form of actor/observer differences: people involved in an action (actors) view things differently from people not involved (observers). These discrepancies are often caused by asymmetries in availability (frequently called "salience" in this context). The attribution bias causes us to under-estimate the importance of inanimate, situational factors over animate, human factors. For
not very accurate. However, the better we get to know someone, the more accurate we will be about them.
One reason our impressions are wrong is because of the
mental shortcuts we use in forming social judgments.
Another reason our impressions can be wrong concerns
our use of schemas, such as relying on implicit theories of personality to judge others. Attribution errors are the
most pervasive and ultimately the most destructive of
the cognitive deficits.
Avoiding the attribution bias can be difficult.
Strategies to avoid attribution bias:
One strategy is to simply give other people the benefit of the doubt. Another would be to inquire into the background behind the circumstances of a situation, to clarify whether a dispositional explanation is really most plausible.
Yet another would be to ask oneself how one
would behave in a similar situation.
Eliminating the attribution bias completely seems impossible, as it is built into human nature. However, through reflective thinking, it appears possible to minimize its effects. To improve accuracy of your attributions and impressions, remember that the correspondence bias, the actor/observer difference, and defensive attributions exist and try to counteract these biases.
ATTITUDE AND BEHAVIOUR:
Attitude is a word that is part of our commonsense language. It was derived from the Latin aptus, which means ‘fit and ready for action’. This ancient meaning refers to something that is directly observable, such as the way a fighter moves in a boxing ring. However, attitude researchers now view ‘attitude’ as a construct that, although not directly observable, precedes behaviour and guides our choices and decisions for action.
DEFINITION: Attitudes can reflect evaluations of any aspect of the world. (Baron)
A favourable or unfavourable evaluative reaction toward something or someone (often rooted in one’s beliefs, and exhibited in one’s feelings and intended behavior).
A relatively enduring organisation of beliefs, feelings and behavioural tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events or symbols. (b) A general feeling or evaluation – positive or negative – about some person, object or issue.- Michael A. Hogg, Graham M. Vaughan, 2010).
COMPONENTS: Components attitude has three components: (1) beliefs or cognitions, (2) affect or an evaluation, and (3) a behavioral predisposition. Cognition: An attitude is based on a set of cognitions or knowledge structures associated with the attitude object. These include the knowledge about the object, as well as beliefs, ideas, memories and images. For example, if we are positive about a particular player or team, we would gather a variety of knowledge about him/her or them and will remember a lot about them or their performances. Affect: An attitude also has an evaluative or affective component. The core involves affect, this is the emotional reaction to the object concerned. This can be described as the extent to which we like or dislike an object, for example, politicians, certain type of food, shoes, etc. In fact, all objects do trigger some kind of a positive or negative emotion. This is the feeling component of an attitude. An attitude is not just based on what people think but also how they feel about an object. The evaluative component has both a direction positive or negative and an intensity ranging from very weak to very strong. Stronger negative emotions include dislike, hatred, or even loathing. Behavioral Predisposition: An attitude also involves a predisposition to respond or a behavioral tendency toward the object. As a rule, when our attitudes are brought to mind, we are more likely to behave in accordance with the attitudes that we hold, rather than act inconsistently. "It's boring"
implies a tendency to avoid the class. "I like my job" suggests an intention to go to work. People who hold a specific attitude are inclined to behave in certain ways that are consistent with that attitude.
Nature: Attitudes help us understand people’s responses to new stimuli. Attitudes toward new topics can be shaped by long-term values, including religious beliefs. Attitudes can be explicit—conscious and easy to report—or implicit—which implies they are uncontrollable and potentially not consciously accessible. The Implicit Association Test is often used to assess whether the associations people have between a groups or object are positive or negative. Attitudes are acquired from other people through social learning processes. Such learning can involve classical conditioning, instrumental conditioning, or observational learning. Attitudes can be classically conditioned even without our awareness —via subliminal conditioning and mere exposure. Attitudes that are acquired through instrumental conditioning stem from differential rewards and punishments for adopting particular views. Attitudes shift as people enter new social networks composed of individuals who hold diverging attitudes. Because we compare ourselves with others to determine whether our view of social reality is correct or not, we often adopt the attitudes that others hold. As a result of the process of social comparison, we tend to adopt the attitude position of those we see
as similar to ourselves but not of those we see as dissimilar. When we identify with a group, we expect to be influenced by messages that are aimed at our group. We do not expect to be influenced when we do not identify with the group to which the attitude-relevant message is aimed.
FUNCTIONS OF ATTITUDE:
Every attitude serves some purpose or the other. Simply, they motivate and guide behaviour. Besides this A. Eagly and S. Chaiken (1998) have identified four functions of an attitude that are as follows: (i) Knowledge function: This helps us to organize our understanding of the social world. This is the basis of how we attend to store, remember and retrieve information pertaining to a given object. This leads to better speed and efficiency in processing social information. This function also leads us to seek and selectively attend to information that supports our pre-existing attitudes. Self-evaluation also follows this function of attitudes. Prejudice also follows the same principle. Once attitudes have been acquired, they influence how information is gathered and processed. (ii) Value expressive function: Attitudes help us to express our cherished values. This is usually carried out in groups made up of people who reinforce and support the attitudes. For example, groups who play or watch cricket, fans of Michael Jackson, groups of particular political leanings, etc. Value expression occurs in the context of reference groups. Such groups are those whose opinions matter and affect our attitudes significantly. This function is inherently satisfying to the holder of a particular attitude. By expressing a value that is in agreement with the attitude held, people find a sense of joy and commitment to the opinions held. One is inclined to view people and groups holding similar attitudes more favourably. The type of college one joins, the subject of study one chooses, etc., also reflect the operation of the value expressive function of an attitude. (iii) Ego-defensive function of attitudes: This function protects us from awareness of our own negative attributes and impulses, for example, our
Attitudes are learned from society and this is why children do not show social discrimination. Social learning theory or SLT is the theory that suggests that people learn new behaviour through observational learning of the social factors in their environment. If people observe positive, desired outcomes in the observed behaviour, then they are more likely to model, imitate, and adopt the behavior themselves.
Attitudes acquired from other persons The processes underlying the learning of attitudes have been identified by psychologists and are as follows: (i) Classical conditioning (ii) Instrumental conditioning (iii) Modelling (i)Classical Conditioning: A basic form of learning in which one stimulus, initially neutral, acquires the capacity to evoke reactions through repeated pairing with another stimulus. In a sense, one stimulus becomes a signal for the presentation or occurrence of the other. Classical conditioning is learning by association. The principle involved here is that when one stimulus occurs first and this is then consecutively followed by another, then the appearance of the first becomes the signal that the second would also occur. Soon, the same reactions that have been occurring to the first stimulus would also occur to the second stimulus. This would be more so if the second stimulus by itself is capable of evoking strong reactions.
- CS = Conditioned stimulus
- UCS = Unconditioned Stimulus
- UCR = Unconditioned Response
- CR = Conditioned Response This process of classical conditioning can be seen as the basis for acquiring attitudes as well. Staats et al (1962) found that initially neutral words when paired with words or stimuli that tend to elicit strong negative reactions (like electric shocks or harsh words, etc.) acquire the capacity to elicit strong negative or unfavourable reactions. Evaluations form the core of attitudes Judgments or evaluations occur all the time during social interactions. In real-life conditions, the classical conditioning model can be seen to apply directly to the process of acquiring attitudes. For example, a child repeatedly sees the mother’s frowning or avoiding members of a particular social group, each time she meets them. At first, the child is indifferent to the members of this group and shows no reactions. The child does not identify characteristics associated with this group (hair, clothing, language, etc.). However, as a result of the repeated pairing of this group and its members with the mother’s negative reactions; the child now starts associating certain obvious characteristics
with the members belonging to this group. Gradually, the child also comes to react negatively to these identifiable characteristics and thereafter to the group members, associated with these traits. This is the process by which attitudes are learned.
Since language is also part of the evaluation process and negative statements accompany negative reactions involving specific group members, the verbal responses are also acquired for description. Thus, both language and behavior besides thoughts and feelings are also learned. So, all the three components of an attitude, thought, feeling and behaviour are learned through classical conditioning processes, involving association.
Attitude learning occurs, even when people are not fully aware of the stimulus. Here, the explanation of acquiring negative attitudes in based on the unconscious association that occurs as a result of repeated pairing. When affect arousing stimuli are presented only for a very short duration, the recognition may not occur. The emotions, specially the negative ones, associated with the stimuli are aroused. So conditioning occurs even outside of conscious awareness.
Attitudes are aroused by emotions, even when the object of affect is not well recognized. In terms of attitude learning, this means even before our object is recognized, the negative emotions associated with it are aroused; for example, the names of people belonging to a particular group could arouse negative emotions long before the members of the group are even encountered. This is known as subliminal conditioning (Classical conditioning of attitudes by exposure to stimuli that are below individuals’ threshold of conscious awareness).
(ii) Instrumental conditioning: Studies on instrumental conditioning have been derived from the work of Bekhterev and Thorndike. Here, the subject’s or person’s behaviour is instrumental to the gaining of a reward or avoidance of punishment, therefore the name, instrumental conditioning. Since there is an
operation involved it is also known as operant conditioning.
E. Thorndike (1911) distinguished between satisfiers and annoyers or positive and negative reinforcers. A satisfying state of affair is one wherein a person does something to gain a reward or benefit. A negative or dissatisfying state is one wherein a person is motivated to avoid some situation.
Four instrumental conditioning procedures have been proposed by Krosnick (1948), which are as follows: (i) Reward training: It is a type of box apparatus used for training. Here, a pigeon is presented with a light source and a key for pecking. The bird is rewarded with food for pecking the key as soon as the light appears. (ii) Avoidance training: Here, the subject can avoid any noxious stimulus by responding to a signal in a given manner. Bekheterev (1932) used conditioned withdrawal responses of hand or foot after being delivered an electric shock, by pressing on a bar or lifting a hand or foot, from a pedal or grid. Sometimes, turning off a noxious stimulus by operating a switch also constituted a form of avoidance training. (iii) Omission training: In this type of learning, a positive reinforcement occurs when a particular response fails to appear. In daily life the best known example would be one where food is given only when the dog does not jump on to the sofa or bed in a house. The training is to omit the dog’s behaviour of jumping on to the bed/sofa. (iv)Punishment training: In this type of training a shock or any other form of punishment follows the occurrence of a specified response; for example, a child is rebuked or whacked for disobeying the adult command. This type of training is generally used for extinction of a given, undesirable response. (iii)Observational Learning ( Modelling): The third type of learning is modelling. A class watches the teacher draw a particular figure. Later, when the children are given paper and crayon they also try to draw a similar figure. Here, both
COGNITIVE APPROACH TO PERSUASION:
DUAL-PROCESS ROUTES TO PERSUASION:
Cognitive processes that are fundamental to how we respond to the content of persuasive messages have been clarified in the last two decades. Slightly different approaches have emerged: the elaboration–likelihood model and the heuristic– systematic model. Both postulate two processes and both deal with persuasion cues. Sometimes it may not be the quality and type of the persuasion cues that matter but rather the quantity of message processing that underlies attitude change.
ELABORATION–LIKELIHOOD MODEL According to Richard Petty and John Cacioppo’s elaboration–likelihood model (ELM: Petty and Cacioppo’s model of attitude change: when people attend to a message carefully, they use a central route to process it; otherwise they use a peripheral route. This model competes with the heuristic– systematic model), when people receive a persuasive message they think about the arguments it makes. However, they do not necessarily think deeply or carefully about the arguments, because to do so requires considerable cognitive effort. The ordinary person is a cognitive miser who is motivated to expend cognitive effort only on issues that are important to them. Persuasion follows two routes, depending on whether people expend a great deal or very little cognitive effort on the message. If the arguments of the message are followed closely, a central route is used. We digest the arguments in a message, extract a point that meets our needs and even indulge mentally in counter- arguments if we disagree with some of them. If the central route to persuasion is to be used, the points in the message need to be put convincingly, as we will be required to expend considerable cognitive effort – that is, to work hard – on them. For example, suppose that your doctor told you that you needed major surgery. The chances are that you would take a considerable amount of convincing, that you would listen carefully to what the doctor says, read what you could about the matter and even seek a second medical opinion. On the other hand, when arguments are not well
attended to, a peripheral route is followed. By using peripheral cues we act in a less diligent fashion, preferring a consumer product on a superficial basis, such as an advertisement in which the product is used by an attractive model.
HEURISTIC–SYSTEMATIC MODEL
Shelley Chaiken’s (1980) heuristic–systematic model (HSM: Chaiken’s model of attitude change: when people attend to a message carefully, they use systematic processing; otherwise they process information by using heuristics, or ‘mental short cuts’. This model competes with the elaboration– likelihood model.) deals with the same phenomena using slightly different concepts, distinguishing between systematic processing and heuristic processing.
Systematic processing (or central route to persuasion): Systematic Processing can be defined as processing of information in a persuasive message that involves careful consideration of message content and ideas. This occurs when people scan and consider available arguments. central route to persuasion: Attitude change resulting from systematic processing of information presented in persuasive messages.
Heuristic processing (or peripheral route to persuasion) : In the case of heuristic processing, we do not indulge in careful reasoning but instead use cognitive heuristics, such as thinking that longer arguments are stronger. Heuristic processing can be defined as Processing of information in a
peruasive message that involves the use of simple rules of thumb or mental shortcuts. peripheral route to persuasion) : Attitude change that occurs in response to peripheral persuasion cues, which is often based on information concerning the expertise or status of would-be persuaders.
Persuasive messages are not always processed systematically. This is when people will sometimes employ cognitive heuristics to simplify the task of handling information. Heuristics are a variety of simple decision rules or ‘mental short cuts’, the tools that cognitive misers use. So, when we are judging the reliability of a message, we may resort to such truisms as ‘statistics don’t lie’ or ‘you can’t trust a politician’ as an easy way of making up our minds. This feature of judgement is actively exploited by advertising companies when they seek to influence consumers by portraying their products as supported by scientific research or expert opinion. For instance, washing detergents are often advertised in laboratory settings, showing technical equipment and authoritative-looking people in white coats.
According to Petty, people have a sufficiency threshold: heuristics will be used as long as they satisfy our need to be confident in the attitude that we adopt. When we lack sufficient confidence, we resort to the more effortful systematic mode of processing. How well we concentrate on the content of a message can be subtly affected by something as transient as our mood. Diane Mackie, for example, has shown that merely being in a good mood changes the way we attend to information (Mackie & Worth, 1989). Using background music is a widely used advertising ploy to engender a mellow feeling. There is a sneaky reason behind this – feeling ‘good’ makes it difficult for us to process a message systematically
RESISTANCE TO PERSUATION When we feel strongly about an issue we can be quite stubborn in resisting attempts to change our position. Even so, far more attempts at persuasion fail than ever succeed.
Researchers have identified three major reasons: reactance, forewarning and inoculation.
REACTANCE Negative reactions to threats to one’s personal freedom. Reactance often increases resistance to persuasion and can even produce negative attitude change or opposite to what was intended. We if we think the message is not deliberately intended to be persuasive. Think back to an occasion when someone obviously tried to change your attitudes. Perhaps you found it unpleasant and possibly hardened your existing attitude. Jack Brehm (1966) referred to this process as reactance- Brehm’s theory that people try to protect their freedom to act. When they perceive that this freedom has been curtailed, they will act to regain it underlying cause of reactance is a sense of having our personal freedom infringed.
FOREWARNING Forewarning (Advance knowledge that one is to be the target of a persuasion attempt. Forewarning often produces resistance to persuasion) is prior knowledge of persuasive intent – telling someone that an attempt will be made to influence them. Bob Cialdini and Richard Petty (1979) concluded that, when we know this in advance, persuasion is less effective, especially with respect to attitudes and issues that we consider important. When people are forewarned, they have time to rehearse counter-arguments that can be used as a defense. From this point of view, forewarning can be thought of as a special case of inoculation.
THE INOCULATION EFFECT As the term inoculation suggests -a way of making people resistant to persuasion. By providing them with a diluted counterargument, they can build up effective refutations to a later, stronger argument- is a form of protection. In biology, we can inject a weakened or inert form of disease-producing germs into the patient to build up resistance to a more powerful form. In social psychology, we might seek an analogous method of providing a defense against persuasive ideas. The technique of inoculation is initiated by exposing a person to a weakened counter-attitudinal argument.
events, horse racing, gambling and so on. Once a person has made a choice between decision alternatives, dissonance theory predicts that the person making a bet will become more confident about a successful outcome.
Module 2 Social Perception
Course: Social Psychology (PS03)
University: Jamia Millia Islamia
- Discover more from: