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Attitudes: Evaluating the Social World
Chapter Objectives
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After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
- Describe what attitudes are and why they are of interest to social psychologists.
- Outline the ways in which we may acquire attitudes through learning.
- Identify the role that genetics plays in attitude acquisition.
- Discuss the basic functions that attitudes may serve.
- Outline when and how attitudes may affect behavior from both a historical and contemporary social psychological perspective.
- Describe the aspects of attitudes themselves and how they may influence behavior.
- Summarize how the theories of reasoned action and planned behavior and the attitude-to-behavior process model try to understand the attitude-behavior link.
- State the key factors that social psychologists have historically believed lead to successful persuasion.
- Contrast systematic and heuristic processing in terms of how they relate to persuasion.
- Describe why and how we may resist persuasion by discussing reactance, forewarning, selective avoidance, biased assimilation, and attitude polarization.
- Consider when we experience cognitive dissonance, how we can reduce it, and whether it is unpleasant for most individuals.
- Understand the less-leads-to-more effect by paying particular attention to the famous Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) study.
- Explain how hypocrisy can be used in a manner that produces beneficial effects for an individual.
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