PSYC 215 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: System Justification, Terror Management Theory, Mortality Salience

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 215
• Professor: John Lydon

Document Summary

Attitudes can influence behavior and behavior can influence attitudes. Attitudes on behavior is weaker than most suspect, and behavior on attitudes is stronger. Attitude: and evaluation of an object in a positive or negative fashion that includes the three elements of effect (how much people like or dislike and object), cognition (thoughts that typically reinforce a person"s feelings. Include knowledge, beliefs, associated memories and images about an object) and behavior. Our attitudes activate particular areas of the motor cortex that support specific actions. Likert scale: a numerical scale used to assess people"s attitudes; it includes a set of possible answers with labeled anchors on each extreme. This scale can lack the ability to differentiate between the strengths of people"s attitudes, so a method to help this is to measure the accessibility of the attitude. This is known as response latency: the time it takes an individual to respond to a stimulus, such as an attitude question.