PSYC 2360 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Seat Belt, Observational Learning, Attitude Change
Document Summary
Attitudes are formed very quickly, often without conscious awareness. Just making certain things salient can have an effect: describing an old vs. young woman - after the fact, have attitudes more consistent with those of the person they described (old vs. young) People often form attitudes through info received from their social environment: children basing attitudes off of those of their parents. Though positive and negative info influences people"s evaluations, negative info has a stronger influence - nega- tivity bias: more important to our survival - respond more quickly to pain. Attitudes can be formed based on an association btwn an object/person and a pleasant/unpleasant event. Classical conditioning: learning where a neutral stimulus leads to a specific reaction after the stimulus is repeat- edly paired with a biological stimulus. This is an example of the power of simply being exposed to something repeatedly.