If Social Influence, it is about
how a group can affect our behaviour but in this section we focus on how we
perceive others, form first impressions of them and how we explain others and
our behaviour. To define it, social cognition focus on the ways in which people
think about other people and how those cognitions influence behaviour toward
those other people.
Attitude
The tendency to respond respond
positively or negatively toward a certain idea, person, objects, situations or
opinion. It is form form experiences as we live and work with other. Attitude
can also be the way we view things before we actually been exposed to them
Attitudes are actually made up of
different component and parts. This is what psychology created as The ABC Model
of Attitudes which consist of Affective, Behaviour and Cognitive Components.
Affective Components : the way a
person feel toward the object,
person or situation. For example “I Like Bicycle”
Behavioural component: the action
that a person take towards the object, person or situation. “ I ride my bicycle
to all places”.
Cognitive Component: the way a
person thinks about a person, object os situation. “I think bicycle is the
coolest form of transport.
Since attitude is form from our
experience, it means that it is also a form of learning . There are 4 type of
Attitude formation. The first one is Direct Contact where the attitude formed by direct contact with the
person, idea, situation, or object that is the focus of the attitude. The
second is Direct Instruction . Direct
instruction given by parents or some other individual (Example: Telling obesity
is dangerous & unhealthy).Next, Interaction with others where the person
attitude developed when he/she is around other people with that attitude (Example:
Living with a gym person you tend to developed negative attitudes on obesity
lifestyle). Lastly, Vicarious Conditioning (Observational Learning) when the
attitude is learned through observation of other people’s action and reactions
to various objects, people, or situations.
Attitude can also be change by Persuasion (the
process which one person tries to change the belief, opinion, position, or
course of action of another person through argument, pleading, or explanation.
There are a few factor of persuasion but you can search it on other websites
for detail.
Cognitive Dissonance
Situation involving conflicting attitudes,
beliefs and behaviors. It is the feeling of distress or sense of
emotional discomfort when people find themselves doing things and saying things
that don’t match their idea. Inconsistency in cognition occurs. For example, An
Obese person keep on eating unhealthily (Behavior) although she know that
eating unhealthily could lead to various diseases ( Cognition). There are three
ways to reduce Cognitive Dissonance:
- Change their conflicting behaviour to make it match with their attitude.
- Change their current conflicting cognition to justify their behaviour.
- Form new cognitions to justify their behaviour
Impression
The forming of the first knowledge a person has
concerning another person. We most probably form an Impression by assigning the other person to a
number of categories and drawing
a conclusions about what that person is likely to do. For you example you wear
neatly to an interview.
Attribution
The process by which we explain both of our own
behaviour and the behaviour of others. For example when a person scratch his
head, we not only explaining why he scratch his head, but also why he choose
the particular explanations of behaviour that they do.’
There are two causes of Attribution which are
Situational (causes of
behavior is assumed to come from external sources) and Dispositional (cause of
behavior is assumed to come from within the individual). There sometime would
also be Attributional Bias or Fundamental Attribution Error (tendency to
overestimate the influence of another person’s internal characteristics on
behavior and; underestimate the external/situational factors).
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