Psychology · Ch 6 — Attitude and Social Cognition
Key Terms
Key Terms
- Attitude – A learned, relatively enduring evaluation of a person, object, or issue, comprising cognitive, affective, and behavioural components.
- Social Cognition – The mental processes by which we perceive, interpret, and remember information about ourselves and others in social contexts.
- Cognitive Component – The beliefs or thoughts that form part of an attitude (e.g., “Smoking causes cancer”).
- Affective Component – The emotional feeling associated with an attitude (e.g., “I dislike smoking”).
- Behavioural Component – The tendency to act in a certain way toward the attitude object (e.g., “I avoid smokers”).
- Persuasion – The process of deliberately changing an attitude through communication, often via the central route (careful thinking) or peripheral route (superficial cues).
- Central Route to Persuasion – Attitude change that occurs when the audience thinks deeply about the message’s arguments.
- Peripheral Route to Persuasion – Attitude change based on surface features like attractiveness, credibility, or emotional appeal, not message logic.
- Cognitive Dissonance – An uncomfortable mental state caused by inconsistency between two attitudes or between an attitude and behaviour; often resolved by changing one of them.
- Balance Theory – A theory (Heider) that people seek consistency among three elements: self, another person, and an object; imbalance motivates change.
- Stereotype – A fixed, oversimplified, and often inaccurate belief about a group of people.
- Prejudice – A negative attitude (usually affective) toward a group or its members, often based on stereotypes.
- Discrimination – Unfair behaviour directed against members of a group, stemming from prejudice.
- Social Identity – The part of self-concept derived from membership in social groups (e.g., nationality, religion).
- In-group – A group to which a person belongs and with which they identify.
- Out-group – A group to which a person does not belong, often viewed as different or inferior.
- In-group Bias – The tendency to favour one’s own group over out-groups.
- Out-group Homogeneity Effect – The perception that out-group members are more alike than in-group members.
- Attribution – The process of explaining the causes of behaviour (one’s own or others’).
- Internal (Dispositional) Attribution – Explaining behaviour as due to the person’s traits, motives, or abilities.
- External (Situational) Attribution – Explaining behaviour as due to the environment or circumstances.
- Fundamental Attribution Error – The tendency to overestimate internal causes and underestimate external causes when judging others’ behaviour.
- Actor–Observer Effect – The tendency to attribute one’s own actions to external factors but others’ actions to internal factors.
- Self-serving Bias – The tendency to take credit for successes (internal attribution) and blame failures on external factors.
- Just-world Hypothesis – The belief that people get what they deserve, leading to blaming victims for their misfortune.
- Impression Formation – The process of forming an overall opinion of another person based on available information. …