Deck 10: Section 2: Cognitive Processing of Attitudes

Question 1

Describe McGuire's "chain of cognitive responses." How does it fit with the study of social cognition?

Answer 1

a. Exposure, attention, comprehension, yielding, retention, retrieval, decision, and behavior.
b. Cognitive steps $\rightarrow$ behavior fits with social cognition).
c. Cognitive theories of processing and attending to information.

Question 2

Describe Chaiken's heuristic-systematic model and how it relates to information processing. What are some factors that influence people's information processing, and in what direction is that influence?
a. People only engage in more thoughtful systematic) processing when they are motivated and have mental capacity to do so - influenced by personal relevance of message, importance of decision's consequences, responsibility.
b. Systematic processing sensitive to valence and quality of message, issue-relevant thoughts, enhanced recall for the arguments.
c. Faster, heuristic processing = learned from experience, quick judgments on limited capacity.

Answer 2

Not Answer

Question 3

What does it mean for an attitude to be "accessible?" What are some of the consequences good or bad) of an attitude being more accessible? Provide an example.

Answer 3

Not Answer

Question 4

What are some of the factors that would make an argument maximally persuasive? Describe at least four.
a. Good arguments, some repetition but not too much), understandable, distraction-free atmosphere.

Question 5

Several characteristics about a person, namely their levels of need for cognition, uncertainty orientation, and need to evaluate, affect how likely they are to be persuaded in different ways. These characteristics sound similar, but there are important differences between them. Please comment on their similarities and differences.

Question 6

Briefly describe the IAT. What is the basic task? What does it measure? What are the implications? Mention some criticisms of the task, and also some responses to those criticisms.
a. Participants must quickly associate concepts usually positive and negative) with two groups usually blacks and whites), by striking keys on a keyboard. People are generally quicker to associate an ingroup with positive/outgroup with negative than ingroup with negative/outgroup with positive.
b. Criticisms: measures associations, not necessarily endorsement of them can be knowledgeable about a stereotype but not necessarily agree with it); is it really implicit if its scores can be contextually manipulated?
c. Predictive validity for behaviors, physiological measures, judgments.

Question 7

Briefly describe the difference between systematic processing and heuristic processing. Give examples of factors that increase engagement in the two different types of processing.
a. Systematic: thoughtful processing of attitude-relevant information, includes evaluation of pros/cons of an argument.
i. Factors that increase: anything that tends to increase motivation high relevance, important consequences, personal responsibility, disagreement with majority).
b. Heuristic: rapid, easy shortcuts to avoid effortful processing of actual message content.
i. Factors that increase: reduction of cognitive capacity.