SOCY 273 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Institutional Racism, Social Forces, Contact Hypothesis

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Social Sci, Edu and Soc Work - Sociology
• Course: SOCY 273
• Professor: Lisa Carver

Document Summary

Attitudes are the positive or negative evaluations of an object, a person or group, or an idea. Sociologists examine how our position in society affects attitude formation. The social psychological study of attitudes seeks to explain how social forces affect individuals" attitudes and how these attitudes, in turn, relate to behavior. There is a small relationship between attitudes and behaviour due to: One of the earliest uses of public opinion surveys was to predict how people would actually vote. Relationship between attitudes and behaviour is typically small, about 0. 38. To increase possibility to find a strong relationship: Be very specific about the attitudes and behaviours in question. Asking about abortion generally, for example, will elicit different responses than when asking about abortion when the mother"s life is at risk. One major application of symbolic interaction to the study of attitudes and behaviours is the understanding of prejudice. The study of racial prejudice originated from web du bois" observations of prejudice.