Psychology 2070A/B Lecture 4: Lecture #4 - attitudes.docx

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2070A/B
• Professor: James M Olson

Document Summary

Lecture #4 chapter #6: attitudes and social behaviour. Attitudes probably the single largest topic in social psychology. Attitude" - an individual"s evaluation of a target along a good-bad dimension (ie favourable or unfavourable) o things. Implicit attitudes - automatic evaluative responses to a target, which may occur without awareness: these are largely unconscious and are automatic; how we spontaneously respond to a target, usually measured by reaction-time measures meanings. Iat assesses whether participants find it easier to associate a target with good or bad . Participants sort items from the target categories to the left or to the right at the same time as sorting words with good or bad meaning. More quickly associate something into the good category = a positive implicit attitude vs more quickly associate something into bad = negative implicit attitude. Can be used to measure attitudes toward many different targets.