CHAPTER 17

ATTITUDES,
ATTRIBUTIONS AND
SOCIAL COGNITION
 Chapter plan
 INTRODUCTION
 ATTITUDES
 How do you measure an attitude?
 The three components of attitude
 How do attitudes influence behaviour?
 Forming and changing attitudes
 ATTRIBUTIONS
 Early theories of attribution
 The effects of bias
 Cultural differences
 SOCIAL COGNITION
 Social schemas
 Categorization and stereotyping
 How do schemas work?
 Recent research into social processing
 The power of stereotypes
 SUMMARY
 People often try to influence others.
 Salespeople urge customers to buy goods or
services; politicians exhort people to vote for them;
dating partners try to make a good impression on
each other; managers attempt to maintain
employees’ dedication to work; and advertisers try
to raise interest in consumer products.
 In all of these examples, people try to make others
like or dislike particular objects, ideas, individuals,
groups or tasks.
 Attitudes are tendencies to like or dislike something
– such as an idea, person or behaviour – and the
object of these tendencies (the thing being liked or
disliked) is often called the attitude object.

 Attitudes indirectly or directly affect behaviour in

virtually every social interaction.
 Attribution theory is the process of deriving causal
explanations for events and behaviour – an
important field of investigation in social
psychology.

 The Austrian psychologist Fritz Heider (1958) saw

this process as part of a commonsense or naive
psychology – a basic property of human thinking
that fulfils a need to predict and control the
environment.
 Attitudes and attributions summarize vast amounts
of information from our complex social world.

 How do we process this information? And how do

we use it to make judgements and draw
inferences? These questions are central to the
study of social cognition.

 Many of the concepts and experimental methods

central to this field have been borrowed from work
in cognitive psychology.
 Attitudes
How do you measure an attitude?

 An attitude cannot be recorded directly.

 We cannot view someone’s tendency to like

something in the way we can see physical
attributes, such as eye colour or running speed.

 Another difficulty is that attitudes can be

expressed through many behaviours.
Sample semantic-differential scale. (Fig.
17.1)
 One general approach is to examine one or more
specific behaviours that are seen as directly
reflecting an attitude.

 Another general approach employs self-report

questionnaires, which ask participants to express
their attitude towards the particular object.
 Of course, self-report measures can be affected by
people’s desire to state socially desirable attitudes.

 So while our respondents above may reveal

negative attitudes towards immigrants in their
behaviour, their self-reports may appear more
positive because they are reluctant to seem
prejudiced.

 Contemporary research therefore frequently uses

non-self-report measures in cases like this – i.e.
when people’s ability to rate their attitudes
accurately is questionable.
 Despite this weakness, self-report measures have
predicted a variety of relevant behaviours in past
research, which suggests that we are at least
somewhat accurate in reporting our own attitudes.

 Other measures elicit attitudes without relying on

self-reports and without relying on overt
behaviours towards the attitude object.
The three components of attitude
 An important feature of attitudes is their ability to
sum up several types of psychological information.

 The three-component model of attitude structure,

which states that beliefs, feelings and behaviours
form three distinct types of psychological information
that are closely tied to attitudes (figure 17.2).
The three-component model of attitudes. (Fig.
17.2)
 Anti-smoking advertisements aim to change
people’s beliefs about the consequences of
smoking as a way of changing their attitudes. (Fig.
17.3)
 Effects of beliefs
 Even second-hand information about others can
have a powerful effect on our attitudes towards
them.

 When prejudice has arisen largely from indirect

information, interventions encourage direct,
positive interactions to change beliefs and reduce
the prejudice.
 Effects of feelings
 As you might expect, results typically indicate that
people come to like objects that are paired with
positive stimuli more than those that are paired with
negative stimuli.

 This effect occurs even when the attitudes are

measured in a different context.
Classical conditioning approach to attitude
formation. (Fig 17.4)
 Effects of behaviour
 For many decades, the general effect of behaviour
on attitude has captured a great deal of interest.

 Researchers first began to notice an interesting

effect arising from role-playing.

 For example, participants assigned to play the role

of a person diagnosed with terminal lung cancer
later reported more negative attitudes towards
smoking than those who had listened to an
audiotape of the roleplay (Janis & Mann, 1965).
 What if the role-playing task explicitly requires
counter-attitudinal advocacy – presenting an
attitude or opinion that opposes the person’s
previous attitude?
 Participants still tend to change their attitudes
towards the position they have advocated (see
Cooper & Fazio, 1984; Harmon-Jones & Mills,
1999).
 Another interesting finding is that this attitude
change is more likely when participants are given
only a small incentive to argue the counter-
attitudinal position than when they are given a
large incentive.
 Several theories help to explain this effect (e.g.
Schlenker, 1982; Steele, 1988), but two are
particularly prominent.

 On the one hand, cognitive dissonance theory

suggests that a small incentive makes people feel
guilt or tension from having acted, behaviourally,
against their original attitude without sufficient
reason.

 To reduce their discomfort, they change their

attitude (Festinger, 1957).
 On the other hand, self-perception theory
suggests that small incentives cause people to
assume that their attitude must actually match the
position they have advocated (Bem, 1972),
because they can see no external reasons why
they performed the behaviour.

 Current evidence suggests that both cognitive

dissonance and self-perception theories have
some validity.
 How do attitudes influence
behaviour?
 Ever since the beginning of attitude research,
investigators have puzzled over the relation
between attitudes and behaviour.

 Why do people sometimes say they like something

and then act as if they do not? Are these instances
much less frequent than instances where the
attitude and behaviour match perfectly?
 Measuring the
attitude–behaviour link
 Researchers were intrigued by the results of some
early research that revealed very weak relations
between attitudes and behaviour (e.g. LaPiere,
1934).

 This raised some doubts about the ability of

attitudes to predict behaviours.

 There were many methodological limitations to

LaPiere’s study, however (Campbell, 1963).
 Subsequent studies used more stringent
procedures (see Wicker, 1969).

 Using a correlational technique, these studies

tested whether people with positive attitudes
towards a particular object exhibit more
favourable behaviour towards the object than do
people with negative attitudes towards the object.

 Even so, until 1962, researchers still found only

weak relations between attitudes and behaviour.
 The consistent failure to find strong attitude–behaviour
correlations led researchers to search for explanations.
Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) pointed out that past
research often failed to measure a behaviour that
directly corresponded to the attitude being measured.
 To better measure ‘general’ behaviour, Fishbein and
Ajzen (1975) proposed the multiple act criterion,
which involves measuring a large number of
behaviours that are relevant to the general attitude
being studied.
 Weigel and Newmann (1976) did just this and found
much stronger attitude–behaviour relation by taking an
average measure of all of the behaviours, rather than
any single behaviour (figure 17.6).
 Correlations between attitudes towards
environmental preservation and measure of
environmental behaviour. (Fig. 17.6)
 Predicting behaviour
 Behaviour is normally influenced by more than
attitudes alone.

 Ajzen (1975) developed a model of attitude–

behaviour relations that recognized the impact of
social norms.

 According to this theory of planned behaviour

(figure 17.7), actual behaviour is influenced by
behavioural intentions – intentions to perform or
not to perform the behaviour.
 These intentions, in turn, are influenced by:
a) the attitude towards the behaviour – the individual’s
evaluations of the positive and negative consequences
of performing the behaviour;
b) the subjective norms regarding the behaviour – the
individual’s desire to behave in the same way as people
who are important to him think he should behave;
c) perceived control over performance of the behaviour
– the extent to which the individual believes he can
control whether he performs the behaviour.
 According to the theory, when attitudes and
subjective norms support a target behaviour and
perceived control over the performance of the
behaviour is high, intentions to perform the
behaviour should be stronger.
 Abundant research has supported these predictions
(see Conner & Armitage, 1998), while also making
it clear that the theory neglects several additional
important predictors of behaviour – such as a sense
of moral obligation to perform the target behaviour
(Schwartz, 1977) and the pattern of the individual’s
past behaviour in similar situations (Ouellette &
Wood, 1998).
 The theory of planned behaviour. The dashed
line indicates that the effect of perceived control
on behaviour occurs only when perceived
control matches actual control. (Fig 17.7)
 Accessible vs. inaccessible
attitudes
 According to Fazio (1990), attitudes often influence
behaviour through a spontaneous process.
 Effects of attitudes can occur quickly, but only for
people whose attitude is accessible (easy to retrieve).
 When attitudes are accessible, they come to mind
instantly when we see the attitude object; the attitude
then influences how we behave towards the object.
 If the attitude is less accessible, it doesn’t come to
mind, and so it doesn’t influence our behaviour.
 Forming and changing
attitudes
Incentive for change
 To understand how attitudes can be changed, it is
first important to understand attitude functions –
the psychological needs that attitudes fulfil (Maio
& Olson, 2000).
 In the earliest model of attitude change, Hovland,
Janis and Kelley (1953) suggested that persuasive
messages change people’s attitudes when they
highlight some incentive for this change.
 Hovland et al.’s theory also suggests that
processing of any message must occur in stages if
it is to be successful.

 The intended audience must:

1. pay attention to the message,
2. comprehend the message; and
3. accept the message’s conclusions.
 McGuire (1969) extended this theory further.
According to his model, a message will elicit the
desired behaviour only if it succeeds at six stages
(figure 17.9).
People must:
1. encounter the message (presentation stage);
2. attend to it (attention stage);
3. understand it (comprehension stage);
4. change their attitude (yielding stage);
5. remember their new attitude at a later time
(retention stage);
6. the new attitude must influence their behaviour
(behaviour stage).
 Interestingly, even if the odds of passing each stage
are quite good, the chances of completing all the
stages can be low.
 In reality, the odds of completion of each stage
(especially yielding and behaviour) may be far
lower, creating even lower chances of success
(possibly less than 1 per cent).
 For this reason, modern marketing initiatives take
steps to compel completion of each stage, where
this is possible.
 So advertisers will present the message many times,
make it attention-grabbing and memorable, and
make the message content as powerful as they can.
Seminal theories of attitude function. (Table 17.1)
Advertisements
often highlight the
social benefits of
buying their
product. (Fig 17.9)
 Motivation and ability
 Two newer models of persuasion, the ‘elaboration
likelihood model’ (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) and the
‘heuristic–systematic model’ (Chaiken, Liberman
& Eagly, 1989), predict that the effects of
persuasive messages depend on people’s motivation
and ability to think carefully about them.
 Many variables influence motivation and ability.
 Motivation is high when the message is relevant to
personal goals and there is a fear of being wrong;
ability is high when people are not distracted and
when they possess high cognitive skills.
McGuire’s (1969) information-processing
approach to persuasion. (Fig. 17.8)
 Early theories of attribution
 Heider differentiated between two types of causal
attribution – personal and situational.

 Personal attributions refer to factors within the

person, such as their personality characteristics,
motivation, ability and effort.

 Situational attributions refer to factors within

the environment that are external to the person.
 Heider noted that we tend to overestimate internal
or personal factors and underestimate situational
factors when explaining behaviour.

 This tendency has become known as the

fundamental attribution error.

 In a similar vein, Jones and Davis (1965) found

that we tend to make a correspondent inference
about another person when we are looking for the
cause of their behaviour.
 Jones and Davis argued that this tendency is
motivated by our need to view people’s behaviour
as intentional and predictable, reflecting their
underlying personality traits.

 But in reality, making correspondent inferences is

not always a straightforward business.

 The information we need in order to make the

inferences can be ambiguous, requiring us to draw
on additional cues in the environment, such as the
social desirability of the behaviour, how much
choice the person had, or role requirements.
 Like Heider, Kelley (1967) likened ordinary
onlookers to naïve scientists who weigh up several
factors when attributing causality.

 Kelley’s covariation model of attribution states

that, before two events can be accepted as causally
linked, they must co-occur.

 Kelley argued that we systematically analyse

people- and environment-related information, and
that different combinations of information lead to
different causal attributions.
 For example, while attributing causality for
behaviour like ‘John laughed at the comedian’, we
would run through the following considerations:

1. If John always laughs at this comedian, then his

behaviour is highly consistent.
2. If John is easily amused by comedians, then his
behaviour has low distinctiveness.
3. If practically no one else in the audience
laughed at the comedian, then his behaviour has
low consensus.
 The effects of bias
 Empirical research has discovered persistent biases in
the attributional processes.

 According to Fiske and Taylor (1991), bias occurs if

the social perceiver systematically distorts (i.e. over-
uses or under-uses) what are thought to be correct and
logical procedures.

 Four of the most pervasive biases are: the fundamental

attribution error, the actor–observer effect, the
selfserving bias and the ultimate attribution error.
The fundamental attribution error
 Ross (1977) defined the fundamental attribution
error (FAE) as the tendency to underestimate the
role of situational or external factors, and to
overestimate the role of dispositional or internal
factors, in assessing behaviour.

 Heider put forward a largely cognitive explanation

for the FAE; he suggested that behaviour has such
salient properties that it tends to dominate our
perceptions.
 Supporting this cognitive explanation, Fiske and
Taylor (1991, p. 67) argued that situational factors
such as social context, roles and situational
pressures are ‘relatively pallid and dull’ in
comparison with the charisma of the dynamic actor.

 While this is a commonsense and intuitive

explanation, this bias is only pervasive in Western
individualistic cultures.

 So the FAE turns out to be not so fundamental after

all.
 The actor–observer effect
 While we tend to attribute other people’s
behaviour to dispositional factors, we tend to
attribute our own behaviour to situational factors
(Jones & Nisbett, 1972).

 This is called the actor–observer effect (AOE).

 Consider how easily we explain our own socially
undesirable behaviour (such as angry outbursts) to
extenuating, stressful circumstances, and yet we
are less sympathetic when others behave in this
way; instead, we often conclude that the person is
intolerant, impatient, unreasonable, selfish, etc!

 There are several competing explanations for the

AOE - two of them are outlined next.
1. Perceptual salience
As for the FAE, one explanation is perceptual and
essentially argues that actors and observers quite
literally have ‘different points of view’ (Storms, 1973).

2. Situational information
Another explanation for the AOE focuses on
information; actors have more information about the
situational and contextual influences on their behaviour,
including its variability and flexibility across time and
place – but observers are unlikely to have such detailed
information about the actors unless they know them
very well…
 A schematic figure of a study that attempted to test the perceptual salience
hypothesis. Two confederates sat facing each other and were engaged in
conversation. They were observed from three different vantage points – from
behind Confederate A, from behind Confederate B, and from midway between A
and B. Consistent with the perceptual salience hypothesis, the results showed that
observers sitting behind A, watching B, rated B as more casual, while those sitting
behind B, watching A, saw A as more casual. The observers watching from
midway between A and B rated both as equally influential. Based on Taylor and
Fiske, 1975. (Fig. 17.11)
 The self-serving bias
 It is well known that people tend to accept credit
for success and deny responsibility for failure.

 More generally, we also tend to attribute our

success to internal factors such as ability, but
attribute failure to external factors such as bad
luck or task difficulty.

 This is known as the self-serving bias.

 The usual explanation is motivational factors: that
is, the need for individuals to enhance their self-
esteem when they succeed and protect their self-
esteem when they fail.

 Attributing success to internal causes has been

referred to as the self-enhancing bias, and
attributing failure to external causes as the self-
protection bias (Miller & Ross, 1975).
 The prevailing consensus is that both motivational
and cognitive factors have a part in the self-
serving bias (Ross & Fletcher, 1985).

 The motivation for self-enhancement is also linked

to achievement attributions.

 According to Weiner’s (1985; 1986) attributional

theory of motivation and emotion, the attributions
people make for success and failure elicit different
emotional consequences, and are characterized by
three underlying dimensions – locus, stability and
control (table 17.2).
Achievement attributions for success and failure, and
their characteristics on the three underlying
dimensions of locus, stability and control. (Table
17.2)
 The tendency to attribute negative outcomes and
failure to internal, stable and uncontrollable causes is
strongly associated with clinical depression and has
been referred to as a depressive attributional style.

 The reformulated learned helplessness model of

depression (Abramson et al., 1978) views this
attributional style as directly causing depression.

 But others have argued that it is merely a symptom,

reflecting the affective state of the depressed
individual.
The ultimate attribution error
 The self-serving bias also operates at the group
level.

 So we tend to make attributions that protect the

group to which we belong.

 This is perhaps most clearly demonstrated in what

Pettigrew (1979) called the ultimate attribution
error (UAE).
 By extending the fundamental attribution error to the
group context, Pettigrew demonstrated how the
nature of intergroup relations shapes the attributions
that group members make for the same behaviour by
those who are in-group and out-group members.

 So prejudicial attitudes and stereotypes of disliked

out-groups lead to derogating attributions, whereas
the need for positive enhancement and protection of
the in-group leads to group-serving attributions.
 In a study by Hunter et al., both Catholic and
Protestant students attributed their own group’s
violence more to external causes and the opposing
group’s violence to internal causes. (Fig 17.12)
 This intergroup bias has been found in a number of
contexts (Hewstone, 1990).

 There is also substantial evidence of the tendency

to make more favourable attributions for male
success and failure: studies have found that both
men and women are more likely to attribute male
success to ability and female success to effort and
luck, especially in tasks that are perceived to be
‘male’.
 Cultural differences
 There is now strong evidence that people in non-
Western cultures do not make the same kinds of
attributions as people in Western individualistic
societies.

 Many non-Western people place less emphasis on

internal dispositional explanations, and more
emphasis on external and situational explanations
(Shweder & Bourne, 1982).
 Miller (1984) was among the first social
psychologists to suggest that differences arise from
different cultural representations of the person that
are learned during social development, rather than
from cognitive and perceptual factors.

 Western notions of the person are predominantly

individualistic, emphasizing the central importance
and autonomy of the person, whereas non-Western
notions tend to be holistic.
 Moscovici and Hewstone (1983) proposed that
attributions are not only cognitive, but also social
and cultural phenomena that are based on social
representations – consensually shared knowledge,
beliefs and meaning systems that are learned and
socially communicated through language
(Moscovici, 1984).

 People do not necessarily engage in an exhaustive

cognitive analysis to explain events around them, as
some of the early models of attribution suggest
(Kelley, 1967). Instead, they draw on socially
shared and readily culturally available explanations.
Cultural and developmental patterns of dispositional
attribution. (Fig. 17.13)
 Social schemas
 It would be very difficult to function if we went
about our everyday lives without prior knowledge
or expectations about the people, roles, norms and
events in our community.

 Social cognition research suggests that our

behaviour and interactions in the social world are
facilitated by cognitive representations in our
minds called schemas – mental or cognitive
structures that contain general expectations and
knowledge of the world.
 All schemas appear to serve similar functions –
they all influence the encoding (taking in and
interpretation) of new information, memory for
old information and inferences about missing
information.

 Not only are schemas functional, but they are also

essential to our well-being.

 A dominant theme in social cognition research is

that we are cognitive misers, economizing as
much as we can on the effort we need to expend
when processing information.
 Many judgements, evaluations and inferences we
make in the hustle and bustle of everyday life are
said to be ‘top of the head’ phenomena (Taylor &
Fiske, 1978), made with little thought and
considered deliberation.

 So schemas are a kind of mental short-hand used

to simplify reality and facilitate processing.

 Schema research has been applied to four main

areas: person schemas, self schemas, role
schemas and event schemas.
 Person schemas
 Person schemas – often referred to as person
prototypes – are configurations of personality
traits that we use to categorize people and to make
inferences about their behaviour. (The prototype is
the ‘central tendency’, or average, of the category
members.)

 In most Western cultures, we tend to categorize

individuals in terms of their dominant personality
traits.
 Trait or person schemas enable us to answer the
question: ‘what kind of person is he or she?’
(Cantor & Mischel, 1979).

 In so doing, they help us to anticipate the nature of

our social interactions with individuals, giving us
a sense of control and predictability.
 Self schemas
 Just as we represent and store information about
others, we do the same about ourselves,
developing complex and varied schemas that
define our self-concept based on past experiences.

 Self schemas are cognitive representations about

ourselves that organize and process all related
information (Markus, 1977).
 They develop from self-descriptions and traits that are
salient and important to our self-concept.
 Indeed, they can be described as components of self-
concept that are central to our identity and self-
definition.
 Different self schemas become activated depending
on the changing situations and contexts in which we
find ourselves (Markus & Kunda, 1986; Markus &
Wurf, 1987).
 You will have schemas for your real self and also for
your ‘ideal’ and ‘ought’ selves (Higgins, 1987).
 Role schemas
 The norms and expected behaviours of specific
roles in society are structured into role schemas.

 They will include both achieved roles – including

occupational and professional roles, such as doctor
or teacher – and ascribed roles, over which we
have little control – such as age, gender and race.
 The roles and expectations associated with these
categories are commonly referred to as stereotypes
– mental representations of social groups and their
members that are widely shared.

 Research on stereotypes views the process of

categorizing individuals into their respective
social groups as highly functional in that it
simplifies the inherent complexity of social
information.
 When we meet someone for the first time, we
seem to attend to obvious and salient physical cues
in guiding our interactions with them.

 With increased familiarity, the notion is that

stereotypes based on physical cues become less
important, and we may subsequently employ trait-
based or person schemas.
 Event schemas
 Commonly referred to as cognitive scripts, event
schemas describe behavioural and event sequences
in everyday activities (Schank & Abelson, 1977).

 These provide the basis for anticipating the future,

setting goals and making plans.

 We know, for example, that the appropriate

behavioural sequence for eating at a restaurant is to
enter, wait to be seated, order a drink, look at the
menu, order the meal, eat, pay the bill and leave.
 The key idea here is that our commonsense
understanding of what constitutes appropriate
behaviour in specific situations is stored in long-
term memory, and it is activated unconsciously
whenever we need it.
According to Fiske (1988) race is one of the top
three physical cues used to help us categorise
people. With increased familiarity these cues
become less important. (Fig 17.14)
 Categorization and
stereotyping
 Before we can apply a schema to a social object,
we have to categorize (or label) it as something – a
book, a tree, an animal, or whatever.

 In other words, we identify objects, people and

events as members of a category, similar to others
in that category and different from members of
other categories.
 Mostly we employ categories automatically and
with little conscious effort.

 Categories help to impose order on the stimulus

world, and are fundamental to perception, thought,
language and action (Lakoff, 1987).
 Models for social
categorization
 The categorization of social objects, people and
events is assumed to be a more complex process than
categorization of inanimate objects because social
objects are variable, dynamic and interactive.
 Nevertheless, members of a social category share
common features.
 Some instances contained in the category are
considered to be more typical than others – the most
typical, or prototypical, representing the category as a
whole.
 The more features an instance shares with other
category members, the more quickly and
confidently it is identified as a member.

 For example, you may quickly decide that Sue is a

prototypical politician because she is publicity
seeking, charming, cunning and ambitious,
whereas Paul, who is shy, indecisive, and avoids
publicity would be considered atypical of the
category ‘politician’.
 In contrast to the prototype model, an exemplar-
based model suggests that categories are represented
by specific and concrete instances (exemplars) of the
category (Smith & Zarate, 1992).

 People may rely on a combination of prototype and

exemplar based models, depending on the social
objects in question and the conditions under which
the information is processed (Brewer, 1988; Fiske &
Neuberg, 1990; Hamilton & Sherman, 1994).
 Hierarchical structure of
categories
 Categories are hierarchically structured, with more
abstract and general categories of information at
the top of a pyramid structure and more specific
categories at the bottom.

 Information can be processed at different levels of

abstraction, moving from a concrete specific
instance to a more general level of inference.
 Like natural object categories, social stereotypes
can be differentiated into lower-order sub-
categories, or sub-types (Fiske, 1998).

 Listing the prototypical features of these category

sub-types is considerably easier, as they contain
more detailed information than broader and more
abstract super-ordinate categories (Andersen &
Klatzky, 1987).
 The social category ‘elderly people’
differentiated into lower-order subtypes that are
associated with distinctive personality traits.
(Fig. 17.15)
 How do schemas work?
 What do schemas do in information-processing
terms?

 How do they function as organizing structures that

influence the encoding, storing and recall of
complex social information?
 Schemas are theory-driven
 Because schemas are based on our prior expectations
and social knowledge, they have been described as
‘theory-driven’ structures that lend organization to
experience.

 We use these background theories to make sense of

new situations and encounters.
 Schemas facilitate memory
 Schemas help us process information quickly and
economically and facilitate memory recall.

 This means we are more likely to remember details

that are consistent with our schema than those that
are inconsistent (Hastie & Park, 1986; Stangor &
McMillan, 1992).
 Schemas are energy-saving
devices
 Simplifying information and reducing the cognitive
effort that goes into a task preserves cognitive
resources for more important tasks.

 Schemas, such as stereotypes, therefore function as

energy-saving devices (Macrae, Milne &
Bodenhausen, 1994).
 In ambiguous situations, schemas help us to ‘fill
in’ missing information with ‘best guesses’ and
‘default options’ based on our expectations and
previous experience.

 They can also provide short cuts by utilizing

heuristics such as representativeness (Kahneman
& Tversky, 1972, 1973).
Through schemas that serve to evaluate social
stimuli we automatically become suspicious
of the prototypic used-car salesman. (Fig.
17.16)
 Schemas are evaluative and
affective
Schemas also serve to evaluate social stimuli as
good or bad, normal or abnormal, positive or
negative.
Some contain a strong affective component, so
that when they are activated the associated
emotion is cued.
This is probably an important feature of race
stereotypes, eliciting strong negative emotions
and evaluations.
 Schemas are unified, stable
structures that resist change
 Once developed and strengthened through use,
schemas become integrated structures.

 Even when only one of its components is accessed,

strong associative links between the components
activate the schema as a unitary whole (Fiske & Dyer,
1985).
 Well-developed schemas that are activated
frequently resist change and persist, even in the
face of disconfirming evidence.

 Consistent with the ultimate attribution error

described above, instances that disconfirm the
stereotype are treated as‘exceptions to the rule’.

 This notion is consistent with the subtyping

model of stereotype change.
 This model predicts that disconfirming instances
of the stereotype are relegated to ‘exceptional’
sub-categories or subtypes that accommodate
exceptions while leaving the overall stereotype
largely intact (Weber & Crocker, 1983).

 There is considerable empirical support for the

subtyping model (Hewstone, 1994; Johnston &
Hewstone, 1992).
 Other models have received less empirical support.

 These include the book-keeping model, which

proposes that there is constant fine-tuning of a
schema with each new piece of information
(Rumelhart & Norman, 1978), and the conversion
model, which proposes that there is dramatic and
sudden change in the schema in response to salient
contradictions (Rothbart, 1981).
 Recent research into social
processing
The continuum model of processing

 We have seen how our preconceptions and prejudices

can lead to biases and distortions.

 But we don’t always behave like cognitive misers;

by contrast, in certain situations we engage in a
careful and piecemeal analysis of the ‘data’.
 Fiske and Neuberg (1990) proposed that the
processing of social information is a kind of
continuum, as we move from schema or category
based processing to more piecemeal data-based
processing.

 These authors propose that we use category-based

processing when the data are unambiguous and
relatively unimportant to us, and piecemeal
processing when the data are ambiguous, relatively
important, and the need for accuracy is high.
Continuum model of processing. (Fig 17.17)
 Fiske and Neuberg’s (1990) continuum model of
processing has led to a significant revision of the
cognitive miser model that characterized the
approach to social cognition in the 1980s.

 More recent research has demonstrated that

perceivers are more like motivated tacticians
(Fiske, 1992; 1998), using processing strategies
that are consistent with their motivations, goals
and situational requirements.
 Automatic vs. controlled
processing
 While processing can take place anywhere along the
continuum just described, most person impressions
seem to be first and foremost category-based (this
kind of schematic processing apparently being the
‘default option’).

 This is why so much recent attention has focused on

the primacy and importance of stereotypes in
perception.
 In-depth processing requires controlled attention,
intention and effort, whereas it appears that
category-based perception can occur automatically
and beyond conscious awareness (Bargh, 1994;
Wegner & Bargh, 1998).

 Devine argues that, while stereotypes can be

automatically activated, what distinguishes low
prejudiced from high prejudiced people is the
conscious development of personal beliefs that
challenge the stereotype; these egalitarian beliefs
are deployed during conscious processing, and are
able to override the automatically activated
stereotype.
 Several studies now support Devine’s claim that
stereotypes of salient social groups are widely
known and shared, but there is less support for this
researcher’s claim that stereotypes are
automatically activated equally for everyone,
regardless of their prejudice levels.

 Rather, it seems that people’s attitudes and values

– in this case, low levels of prejudice – inhibit and
constrain the activation of stereotypes, not only
consciously, but also unconsciously.
 The power of stereotypes
 In our consideration of attribution theory, we
argued that attributions are not only internal
cognitive phenomena but also social and cultural
explanations shaped by widely shared
representations within a society, community or
group.

 The same can be said for the schemas, categories

and stereotypes.
 While these have been largely discussed as cognitive
constructs, it is important to recognize that they are
also essentially cultural and social in nature, i.e.
cultural knowledge that is determined by dominant
and consensual representations learned by members
of a society.

 Because they are acquired early in life, widely

shared and pervasive, stereotypes of groups are
socially and discursively reproduced in the course of
everyday communication (Augoustinos & Walker,
1998).
 Stereotypes are also ideological in nature, because
they are often used to rationalize and justify why
some groups are more powerful and more
dominant than others (Jost & Banaji, 1994).

 So social stereotypes can be used as political

weapons to justify existing group inequalities,
gender stereotypes have been used to justify
gender inequalities, and race stereotypes have
been used to justify racism and prejudice.
 Other approaches in social psychology, such as
social representations theory (Augoustinos &
Walker, 1995), social identity theory (Tajfel &
Turner, 1979) and self-categorization theory
(Oakes, Haslam & Turner, 1994), regard social
categories and stereotypes very differently from
the predominantly cognitive and information-
processing account we have outlined above.
 Summary
 Attitudes are tendencies to evaluate an object
favourably or unfavourably. They can be measured
using both non-self-report and self-report techniques.
 Useful features of attitudes are that (a) they summarize
beliefs, feelings and past behaviour regarding the
attitude objects, and (b) they can predict behaviour.
 Attitude–behaviour relations are strongest when
attitudes are measured at the same level of specificity
as the target behaviour.
 Contemporary models of attitude–behaviour
relations describe how attitudes predict behaviour in
conjunction with other variables (e.g. social norms,
perceived control) that influence behaviour.
 These models also specify how accessible attitudes
automatically influence behaviour.
 Classic theories suggest that attitudes change when
a persuasive message provides motivational
incentive to change the attitude.
 People tend to be more influenced by message
arguments when they are motivated and able to
process the arguments.
 When motivation and ability are low, people may
rely heavily on heuristic cues (e.g. source expertise)
to determine their new attitude.
 Attribution theory concerns itself with the processes
by which we use causal explanations for everyday
events and behaviour in an effort to understand and
make sense of the social world.
 A number of biases have been found to characterize
causal attributions, including the fundamental
attribution error, actor–observer effect, self-serving
bias and ultimate attribution error.
 The process of attributing causality is influenced by
internal cognitive factors, group membership and
identity and sociocultural values.
 We also come to understand the social world through
the activation and use of mental cognitive
representations called schemas.
 These contain both abstract and specific knowledge
about people, roles, social groups and events.
 Schemas help categorize, evaluate and process social
information quickly and efficiently. They are
energy-saving devices that facilitate memory and
resist change even in the face of disconfirming
evidence.