PS470 Lecture 3: Wilson - Study 2
Document Summary
Examined college students" choices of which courses to take and compared these choices with. Study 2: various kinds of expert opinion about what the best choices were. Expected that control group would register for the courses with the highest ratings, as recommended by previous students. Expected that the reason analysis group would change the criteria they used to make their decision and thus be less likely to sign up for the highly rated ones. Some subjects were asked to consider how every attribute of every course (topic matter, time it met) influenced their preferences. This change in subjects" weighting scheme was expected to change their decisions about which courses to take, possibly in a non optimal direction. Long-term measure of subjects" behaviour was included to see if students stayed in these courses or switched out. However, analyzing reasons highlights the cognitive component of attitudes and these cognitively based attitudes will determine behaviours that are more cognitively than affectively based.
