PSY220H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Asteroid Family, Theodore Newcomb, Terror Management Theory
Document Summary
Utilitarian function: an attitudinal function that serves to alert people to rewarding objects and situations they should approach and costly or punishing objects or situations they should avoid. Food preferences: dietary likes and dislikes help us eat food beneficial to survival. We prefer natural settings because in the past water, trees, open space, ground cover, and distant views of the horizon offered ancestors water, hunting and gathering food, shelter thus we have a positive attitude towards it. When our attitudes on fairly neural objects as paired with emotionally arousing stimuli, our attitudes can be modified ex: car and model. Ego-defensive function: an attitudinal function that enables people to maintain cherished beliefs about themselves and their world by protecting them from contradictory information. Terror management theory: due to our fear of dying we cling to attitudes reflecting cultural world-views in hopes of surviving death: since death is one of life"s uncertainties we hold strong attitudes and deep values towards it.