Sunday, March 14, 2010

Social Cognition : Attitude Formation

Factors influencing attitude:

1)Mere/indirect exposure
Formed in a less personal way. (Advertisers)
Too much exposure can have negative effect
Must initially be neutral/not overexposed

2)Direct experience
Actually experiencing something, forming attitude towards it.
Very powerful.
Important in traumatic/frightening experiences.
Often becomes strongly held, affects behavior
More likely to seek out information that confirms these attitudes
Resistant to change

3)Learning
Learned via association, reward/punishment or imitation.

Association:
Associating object with positive or negative feelings
Powerful impact on formation of stereotypes
Researchers suggest repeated association of neutral with positive/negative leads to same feelings

Reward/Punishment:
Adopting attitudes to gain favor

Imitation(modeling):
Observing and copying those we admire

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