Ch 6: Attitudes Part 1: Oct. 4, 2010

Attitude defined: 3 dimensions of attitudes – Affect – Behavior – Cognition – How can we assess attitudes?

Attitude Assessment The problem: Our attitudes don’t always match our behaviors – LaPiere’s early study of self-reported prejudice & observed discrimination Self-reports – Try to boost accuracy of self-reports through ‘bogus pipeline’ method – Fishbein & Ajzen’s research: see Fig 6.4 1) Principle of Aggregation – What does it predict? 2) Level of Specificity – Importance of level of measurement of attitudes & behaviors

Fishbein & Ajzen’s model (cont.) – Importance of social norms – What is the best predictor of a behavior? Covert measures – Facial assessments – Implicit Attitude Tests

Role Playing Stanford Prison Experiment as example… – Details of the study How participants were recruited – How participants were assigned to ‘guard’ or ‘prisoner’- How participants were treated – Situation  authority differences and anonymity

Differences in groups’ behaviors by Day 2: How/why did the experiment end? Lessons from the SPE: – Power of the situation in determining behavior. – Possibility of behavior first, then attitude? – Similarity to hostage situations