PSYC 215 Chapter 8: Chapter 8 summary Social Psychology

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 215
• Professor: John Lydon

Document Summary

Utilitarian function of attitudes: alert to approach rewarding objects and avoid punishing ones (association). Ego defensive function of attitudes: helps maintain beliefs about yourself and the world and protects from contradictory information. (landscapes and survival) The value-expressive function of attitudes: more social than the others. Attitudinal function where atts help people express their most cherished values (usually in groups where this can be supported and reinforced) reference groups: groups whose opinions matter and affect us and our opinions and beliefs. People tend to overestimate the similarity of their group"s thinking and theirs. The knowledge function of attitudes: atts help organize people"s understanding of the world guiding how they attend to, store, and retrieve info. (debate before elections) Our atts lead us to seek out and attend to information that bolsters our preexisting atts. A two process approach to persuasion: heuristic-systematic model: systematic and heuristic routes for persuasion, elaboration likehood model (elm) : central route and peripheral route for persuasion.