Social Thinking - Attitudes and Actions
In the course of a day, you likely interact with other people quite a bit. At school, at work, shopping, driving, or even vacationing, you will need to make snap judgments about the people you encounter, quickly determine their intentions, guess why they act in the way that they do, and figure out how they might act in the future. This is a skill of social cognition, or social thinking. It comes so automatically to you that you rarely think about how you do it. Yet breaking down the process of social thinking is one of the first tasks of social psychology.
Attributions
One of the most important and basic findings of social psychology research examines the ways in which you attribute the actions and behaviors of others around you. In this interactivity you will explore the difference between dispositional attributions and situational attributions. Click the player to begin.
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Attitudes and Behaviors
In social psychology, attributions are just one type of attitude. Social psychologists define attitudes as being made up of two parts: both a belief (a cognitive component), and a feeling (an emotional, or affective component). Beliefs and feelings combine to predispose you to respond in a particular way to an object, person, idea, or event.
How Does Attitude Influence Behavior?
You likely know that a person's attitude influences his or her behavior. For example, if Jody thinks that playing video games is a waste of time, he is unlikely to spend several hundred dollars on the next gaming system to hit the shelves. Attitudes, however, do not always stay the same, and sometimes are not even conscious. In this interactivity, you will discover information about explicit and implicit attitudes, and how each has an influence on behaviors. Click the player to begin.
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To decrease the chances of the social-desirability bias, many social psychologists examine people's implicit attitudes through the use of an implicit association test (IAT). Take a moment to explore Project Implicit and learn more about the IAT.
How Does Behavior Influence Attitude?
It is not controversial or surprising that explicit or implicit attitudes tend to influence behavior. However, social psychologists have found that the interaction between attitudes and behaviors works in the other direction as well. In this interactivity, you will explore how actions often influence attitudes. Click the player to begin.
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Zimbardo's Prison Experiment
The tendency to adapt one’s attitudes to fit a role is not always positive, as one of the most famous studies in social psychology demonstrated. In 1971, Philip Zimbardo, then a young professor at Stanford University in California, recruited a group of young men from the university to participate in a “prison experiment.” After randomly assigning the men into groups of “prisoners” and “guards” in a makeshift cell block in the psychology building, Zimbardo hoped to see how the men would navigate these assigned roles. What he found was that the prisoners almost immediately began to rebel against their conditions, and the guards quickly united against them, often devising cruel punishments and humiliating them. Although Zimbardo had planned to run the study for two weeks, he was convinced to call off the experiment by day six due to the extreme aggressiveness of the guards, and the psychological distress of the prisoners. The roles assigned to the prisoners and guards were entirely random, but by acting out the roles, dangerous and problematic attitudes quickly followed.
Take a moment to learn more about Zimbardo's experiment by exploring the website The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Simulation Study on the Psychology of Imprisonment.
Persuasive Techniques for Changing Others' Attitudes
Changing your own attitude is one thing, but getting others to change their attitudes is an entirely different scenario. Just ask an experienced salesperson! Social psychologists have found several techniques that often prove helpful in getting others to change their attitudes. In this interactivity, you will explore persuasive techniques. Click the player to begin.
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Social Thinking - Attitudes and Actions Review
Now that you have learned about social thinking, review your knowledge in this non-graded activity. Click the player to get started.