Definition of Attitudes
Attitudes have two components: belief and feeling
Cognitive and affective
1. beliefs: mental association with a concept
2. affect: a feeling component
Attitudes are normative.
Very important forms of attitudes are about social identities.
The first Component of an Attitude: Belief
Beliefs associated with an identity are often stereotypical:
A) sociodemographic differences of a person.
B) personal experience
Norm Formation (Sherif 1936)
How are the standards for a norm set?
Experiment: Take a ambiguous (vague) object and lets let people set norms.
Sherif used the autokinetic effect. This is a small, fixed spot of light that appears to be moving. People differ in their estimates of the moves of the point.
Tested by themselves subjects, each subject came up with a different (characteristic) estimate of the move, a range.
This range was used as a reference point for this subject.
Sherif then brought together subjects that had very different ranges as reference points. They had to report their appraisal for the light movement. Coacting actors soon came up with a common standard for the moves. => norm formation
Later, individuals were tested by themselves. They estimated the same range that was set in the group session. The norm persisted.
Figure: Norms arise following a Funnel effect or Convergence effect
Norm Conformity (Asch 1953)
Asch's experiment was conducted to test how people show conformity to existing norms. This is a different interest than in Sherif's experiment.
Norms within the situation are clear. Lines of the same length have to be matched. norm: length of line.
Ash had a group of stooges (confederates of the experimenter) and one real subject. Everyone had to speak out his/her judgements about the obvious similarity or difference aloud.
Result: 2/3 of the naive subjects judged identical or in the direction of the errors of the majority.
What would happen if they had to estimate the similarity of lines by themselves again?
Overhead
Ash conducted follow-up interviews with the same subjects. He concluded that there are three possible conditions under which naive subjects complied with the majority:
1. Distortion of judgment
2. Distortion of perception
3. Distortion of action
Overhead
Interpretations of Ash’s experiment by Scheff
Two groups that report overt shame
Comments
· I felt like a silly fool
· I suspected the others would see me as crazy
1. One group that yielded to the influence of the group avoided overt shame
· People with low self esteem are unable to manage shame in a way that leads to acknowledgment and discharge.
· If a situation evokes the threat of shame, this situation is overwhelmingly painful. People will turn the world upside down to avoid pain.
2. Another group that stayed independent from the group
· People with high self esteem are able to deal with overt shame.
· They acted upon their judgment despite their feelings of shame.
Overhead
The group that does not report shame
Comment
· I felt normal
According to Ash, these people
· granted the majority the power to see correctly
· allowed themselves to become confused
· adapted the majority judgments without permitting themselves to know of their activity.
According to Scheff, this speaks for avoidance of conflict, denial of feelings, and self deception. These are all indicators of unacknowledged or bypassed shame.
Disclaimer: The documents linked to other sources on the WWW, others than http://www2.tltc.ttu.edu/Schneider/ and its subdirectories, do not necessarily express the views of Texas Tech University or Dr. Andreas Schneider. @Copyright 2008 Andreas Schneider