Psychology 1000 Lecture 4: Lecture 4 – Chapter 6

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Ingrid L.Stefanovic

Document Summary

Lecture 4 chapter 6: attitudes and social behaviour. An individual"s evaluation of a target along a good-bad dimension: i. e. , a favourable or unfavourable evaluation of a target (there is always a target) Target of an attitude can be virtually anything: object (iphone 6s, behaviour (exercising, food (cauliflower, person (queen elizabeth, social issue (gay marriage, abstract concept (the colour yellow) Attitudes based mainly on affect: flowers, worms, dentist. Attitudes based mainly on cognition: batteries, vitamin supplements, warning labels. Sometimes we infer our attitudes from past behaviour: e. g. cockroaches make you feel gross, so when you see one you kill it. Based on cognition = does not really affect emotions. A recent distinction has been made between explicit attitudes (conscious, deliberate) and implicit attitudes (unconscious, automatic) Explicit attitudes: evaluations that people can report consciously, higher-level evaluations. Explicit attitudes are usually measured by self-report scales (see textbook)