Attitude and Social Cognition

The One Thing

Attitudes and social cognition shape how people interpret the social world and behave within it. Although attitudes influence behaviour, social norms, group membership, situational pressures, and cognitive biases also affect social behaviour; prejudice and discrimination can therefore be reduced through awareness, education, cooperation, and constructive attitude change.

Who and What

• Attitude: A relatively lasting tendency to evaluate a person, object, group, idea, or event positively or negatively. Attitudes may be positive, negative, or neutral, and may differ in strength, accessibility, stability, and importance.
• Cognitive Component: The beliefs, thoughts, and ideas held about the attitude object.
• Affective Component: The emotions and feelings associated with the attitude object.
• Behavioural Component: The tendency or intention to act in a particular way toward the attitude object.
• ABC Model of Attitude: The three components of attitude: Affective, Behavioural, and Cognitive. This can be expressed as: Attitude = Cognition + Affect + Behavioural tendency.
• Attitude Object: The person, group, object, issue, or situation toward which an attitude is directed.
• Social Cognition: The mental processes used to understand oneself, other people, relationships, and social events.
• Schema: An organised mental framework containing knowledge and expectations about people, objects, or situations. Schemas and cognitive shortcuts allow rapid information processing but may also produce errors, stereotypes, and biased judgments.
• Social Categorisation: The process of placing people or events into groups based on shared characteristics.
• Stereotype: A fixed and oversimplified belief about the characteristics of members of a social group.
• Prejudice: A negative or positive attitude, usually unfavourable, toward a person because of membership in a particular group.
• Discrimination: Unfair or unequal behaviour toward individuals or groups based on group membership. It may be direct or indirect and may occur in education, employment, housing, healthcare, social relationships, and access to opportunities.
• In-group: A group to which a person feels that they belong.
• Out-group: A group to which a person does not feel that they belong.
• In-group Bias: The tendency to favour members of one’s own group over members of other groups.
• Attribution: The process of explaining the causes of one’s own or another person’s behaviour.
• Internal Attribution: Explaining behaviour through personal factors such as ability, effort, personality, or intention.
• External Attribution: Explaining behaviour through situational or environmental factors.
• Fundamental Attribution Error: The tendency to overestimate personal causes and underestimate situational causes when explaining another person’s behaviour.
• Self-Serving Bias: The tendency to attribute one’s successes to internal factors and one’s failures to external factors.
• Attitude Formation: The development of attitudes through learning, family and peer influence, culture, media, personal experience, and observation. Attitudes are generally learned rather than inherited.
• Classical Conditioning: Attitude learning that occurs when an attitude object becomes associated with positive or negative experiences.
• Operant Conditioning: Attitude learning in which rewards strengthen and punishments weaken particular responses or evaluations.
• Observational Learning: Learning attitudes by observing and imitating parents, peers, teachers, media figures, or other models.
• Attitude-Behaviour Relationship: The connection between what people think or feel and how they act. An attitude does not always predict behaviour; prediction improves when the attitude and behaviour are specific, the attitude is strong and personally important, easily recalled, and situational pressures are low.
• Cognitive Dissonance: Psychological discomfort caused by inconsistency among thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behaviour.
• Attitude Change: A modification in the direction, strength, or components of an existing attitude.
• Persuasion: The process of changing attitudes through communication or messages.
• Source of Persuasion: The communicator of a message. Credibility, attractiveness, expertise, and trustworthiness can affect its impact.
• Message Factors: Features of communication, such as clarity, emotional appeal, evidence, length, and whether one or both sides of an issue are presented.
• Target Factors: Characteristics of the audience, including age, intelligence, self-esteem, prior attitudes, and involvement in the issue.
• Elaboration Likelihood: The extent to which a person carefully thinks about the content and quality of a persuasive message.
• Balance Principle: The tendency to prefer consistency and balance among attitudes toward oneself, other people, and objects.
• Contact Hypothesis: The view that prejudice can be reduced when members of different groups interact under conditions of equal status, cooperation, common goals, and institutional support.
• Social Influence: Changes in thoughts, feelings, or behaviour caused by the real or imagined presence of other people.
• Conformity: Changing one’s behaviour or opinions to match those of a group or social norm.
• Compliance: Changing behaviour in response to a direct or indirect request.
• Obedience: Following an order or instruction given by an authority figure.
• Prosocial Behaviour: Voluntary behaviour intended to benefit or help another person or group.
• Helping Behaviour: Actions performed to provide assistance, support, protection, or comfort to others.

Causes and Consequences

• Attitudes develop through learning. Family, school, peers, culture, media, direct experience, observation, and reinforcement contribute to attitude formation. Classical conditioning links an attitude object with positive or negative experiences; operant conditioning strengthens or weakens evaluations through rewards and punishments; and observational learning occurs through imitation of parents, peers, teachers, media figures, and other models.

• Attitudes influence behaviour but do not determine it completely. The attitude-behaviour relationship is stronger when the attitude is strong, specific, personally important, and easily recalled. Prediction is also improved when situational pressures are low. Behaviour reflects the interaction of attitudes with social situations, norms, perceived control, roles, rewards, punishments, and the presence of others.

• Social cognition organises complex social information. Schemas and social categorisation help individuals process information efficiently. However, reliance on mental shortcuts can produce stereotypes, biased judgments, and errors in attribution.

• Attribution processes influence social judgment. Internal attribution explains behaviour through ability, effort, personality, or intention, whereas external attribution explains it through situational or environmental factors. The fundamental attribution error occurs when people overestimate personal causes and underestimate situational causes in explaining another person’s behaviour. The self-serving bias involves attributing successes to internal factors and failures to external factors.

• Prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination are related but distinct. Prejudice is an attitude, a stereotype is a belief, and discrimination is behaviour. They may occur together but are not identical. Prejudice and discrimination are influenced by social learning, competition for resources, social categorisation, in-group favouritism, rigid thinking, perceived threat, social norms, unequal power, and biased socialisation.

• Group membership can produce unequal treatment. In-group bias encourages favouritism toward members of one’s own group and may contribute to negative evaluations of out-groups. Discrimination may be direct or indirect, affecting education, employment, housing, healthcare, social relationships, and access to opportunities.

• Cognitive dissonance creates pressure for consistency. When thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behaviour are inconsistent, psychological discomfort may result. This discomfort can be reduced by changing behaviour, changing an attitude, adding new justifying thoughts, or minimising the importance of the inconsistency.

• Persuasion can produce attitude change. Its effectiveness depends on the source of persuasion, message factors, and target factors. Credibility, expertise, trustworthiness, attractiveness, clarity, evidence, emotional appeal, message length, presentation of one or both sides, audience age, intelligence, self-esteem, prior attitudes, and involvement can all affect outcomes. Persuasion is generally more effective when the communicator is credible, the message suits the audience, communication is clear, and the audience is motivated to think about it.

• Elaboration affects the durability of attitude change. The elaboration likelihood refers to the extent to which an individual carefully considers the content and quality of a persuasive message. Attitudes based on direct personal experience are often stronger and more resistant to change than attitudes formed only through second-hand information.

• Consistency principles influence attitudes. The Balance Principle proposes that people tend to prefer consistency and balance among their attitudes toward themselves, other people, and objects. Attitude change is more likely to be lasting when individuals understand the issue, actively think about the message, experience supportive social environments, and behave in ways consistent with the new attitude.

• Intergroup contact can reduce prejudice. According to the Contact Hypothesis, prejudice is most effectively reduced when groups meet with equal status, cooperate toward common goals, receive institutional support, and develop genuine interaction. Education, rational discussion, emotional appeals, positive role models, cooperative contact, legislation, and meaningful interaction can also encourage attitude change.

• Social influence shapes behaviour. Conformity involves matching group behaviour or social norms; compliance involves responding to a request; and obedience involves following an authority figure’s instruction. Prosocial behaviour and helping behaviour demonstrate that social behaviour may also be directed toward assisting, supporting, protecting, or comforting others.

What Gets Asked

• Distinguish the cognitive, affective, and behavioural components of the ABC Model of Attitude, and apply the equation Attitude = Cognition + Affect + Behavioural tendency.
• Explain why attitudes do not always predict behaviour, including the effects of attitude strength, specificity, personal importance, accessibility, situational pressures, social norms, perceived control, and immediate circumstances.
• Compare prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination, and explain how social categorisation, in-group bias, social learning, competition for resources, perceived threat, and unequal power contribute to them.
• Distinguish internal and external attribution, and evaluate the fundamental attribution error and self-serving bias in explanations of behaviour.
• Explain how classical conditioning, operant conditioning, observational learning, direct experience, persuasion, cognitive dissonance, and the Balance Principle contribute to attitude formation or change.
• Evaluate the conditions under which the Contact Hypothesis reduces prejudice, including equal status, cooperation, common goals, institutional support, and genuine interaction.