Attitudes and Attraction: Optimism and Weight as Explanations for the Similarity–Dissimilarity Asymmetry

The positive link between attitude similarity and attraction is one of the fundamental outcomes in social psychology. However, attitude dissimilarity seems to be a stronger driver of this relationship than attitude similarity. The authors review the evidence on this similarity–dissimilarity asymmetry, and discuss two explanations. One is that people generally enter into interactions with optimism, and so supposedly neutral partners are often seen as mildly positive. Another is that dissimilar attitudes carry greater weight than similar attitudes in cognitive processes. Implications of these mechanisms for wider issues in person perception and attitude structure are discussed, connecting them with more recent theories of attitudinal ambivalence and evaluative space.     

Experimental psychology and the courtroom

Experimental social and cognitive psychology cover a range of topics such as attitudes, attribution, decision making, perception, memory, comprehension, and reasoning. The relevance of these topics to the law is apparent in such domains as jury selection, jury behavior, plea bargaining, eyewitness testimony, sentencing, and police investigation strategies. Despite early attempts to apply experimental psychology to law (circa 1900–1920), it was not until the mid 1970s that a robust law-relevant literature in experimental psychology began to unfold. The experimental psychology/law interface continues to experience some problems in (1) generalizing from specific research experiments to real-world conditions, and (2) identifying solutions rather than just problems.     

Attitudes in social context: A social identity perspective

Research on attitudes and attitude phenomena occupies a central place in social psychology, but tends to focus mainly on cognitive, intra-individual, and interpersonal dimensions. The normative, group membership, and identity dimensions of attitudes tend to attract less attention. This article approaches attitudes from the perspective of research on group processes, intergroup relations, and social identity, and conceptualises attitudes and attitude phenomena in terms of their group normative properties and dynamics. Our perspective is explicitly framed and focused by contemporary social identity theory—a theory that has a great deal to contribute to attitude research, but often does not talk directly about attitudes. We discuss attitudinal influence and change, how people perceive normative attitudes, and how attitudes relate to action.     

现代神经科学发展述略

现代神经科学的产生是神经解剖学、神经生物化学、神经生理学等传统生物学科与神经心理学、认知心理学等行为科学之间不断融合的结果。在神经科学产生与发展历程中,有许多值得研究总结的方法论问题。     

Contributions of Social Psychology to the Study of Appetltive Behaviors1

Social psychology has contributed substantially to the study and understanding of appetitive behaviors. This paper focuses on three major lines of social psychological research that have made particularly important contributions to appetitive behaviors: Hovland's work on attitudes and attitude changes, Bandura's social learning theory, and Schachter's studies of obesity and cigarette smoking. The relevant work of these three social psychologists and the research following from each line of inquiry are reviewed. Additional potential applications of these social psychological approaches to the study of appetitive behaviors are discussed.     

谈判心理研究发展述评

20世纪60年代和70年代,谈判是社会心理学研究中一个非常活跃的领域。但70年代后期,谈判研究因认知心理学的兴起而衰落。80年代早期,谈判这一领域在心理学研究中再度兴起,谈判的行为决定研究成为这一时期主流。但90年代后期谈判的社会心理学研究复兴,一度消失的社会因素再次成为谈判研究的热点。该文回顾了西方谈判心理研究的发展,探讨了导致谈判心理研究发展中所发生的诸多变化的原因,并展望了其将来的发展方向。     

Situations matter: teaching the Lewinian link between social psychology and rehabilitation psychology

A little-recognized fact is that social psychology and rehabilitation psychology share a common theoretical ancestry in the situation perspective of Kurt Lewin. Theory and research in both fields assumes that situational influences often override the impact of personal factors, including dispositions. Situational analyses led to the development of a variety of cognitive explanations capturing people's phenomenal accounts for the causes of behavior and concomitant interpretation of social problems. Teachers can explore reasons why, despite the fields' having a shared theoretical perspective and topics of common interest (e.g., attitudes, prejudice, discrimination), little scholarly intradisciplinary contact currently occurs between them.     

Putting the onus on authority: A review of obedient behavior and why we should move on

The obedience to authority domain arose in psychological research between the 1950s–1960s as a combination of interest in obedience, conformity, and compliance that expanded after Milgram's shock experiments. Each of these components compared different forms of submissive behavior as a response to authority and social pressure, but over the past fifty years the domain has merged these three components and become more centered around the shock of submissive behavior than the authority that causes it. As a result, many modern investigations use inconsistent understandings of these constructs and often leave out manipulation of the second half of the paradigm – authority. If we reintroduce the distinctions for each form of submissive behavior, we can notice patterns of how each is related to differences in authority and the systemic benefits of studying the nuances of authoritative systems. Understanding the impact of power dynamics on submissive behavior and what truly separates obedience from conformity and compliance not only allows for a more dualistic approach to this discipline, but allows the authority domain to provide insight into other domains such as education, workplace behavior, and conformity to mass media.     

The structure of social attitudes in three countries: Tests of a criterial referent theory(1)

A criterial referents theory of attitudes was tested cross-culturally by administering a social attitude referents (single words and short phrases) summated-rating scale, suitably “transformed”, to 500 graduate students of education in the United States, 470 mature students of psychology in Spain, and 270 students of the social sciences and a stratified random sample of 685 persons in the Netherlands. The theory claims a dualistic (two second-order factors) structure of social attitudes, thus challenging the common assumption of attitude bipolarity, which arises from the notion that differing attitude orientations oppose each other, e. g., conservatism versus liberalism. First-order factor analysis of the correlations among the items and second-order factor analysis of the correlations among the first-order obliquely rotated factors supported the theoretical predictions with certain exceptions. In general, the first-order factors of the referents scales contained only conservatism or only liberalism items; negative loading were mostly low in magnitude. Four similar conservative factors and four similar liberalism factors appeared in the three countries, with one, two, or three unique factors in each sample. The second-order factor analyses yielded two main orthogonal factors, one identifiable as conservatism, the other as liberalism; a third factor was complementary to one of the two main factors. Bipolarity was a relatively minor phenomenon. Thus the results indicated the empirical cross-cultural validity of the theory, but also the need for its further specification.     

The Role of Conviction in Personal Disease Risk Perceptions: What Can We Learn From Research on Attitude Strength?

Perceived risk for disease is included as a predictor of intentions and behavior in many health behavior theories. However, perceived risk is not always a strong predictor of intentions and behaviors. One reason may be suboptimal conceptualization and measurement of risk perceptions; in particular, research may not capture the conviction and certainty with which a risk perception is held. The rich and independent literature on attitudes might be leveraged to explore whether conviction is an important moderator of the effects of risk perceptions on intentions and behavior. Attitudes are more predictive of intentions when they are high in multiple aspects of attitude strength, including attitude certainty and being more accessible and stable over time. Working from the assumption that risk perceptions have a similar structure and function to attitudes, we consider whether factors known to strengthen the attitude–behavior correspondence might also strengthen the risk perception–behavior correspondence. Although by strict definition risk perceptions are not evaluations (a critical component of attitudes), the predictive validity of risk perceptions may be increased by attention to one's “conviction” or certainty of perceived risk. We also review recent strategies designed to improve risk perception measurement, including affective and experiential assessments of perceived risk and the importance of allowing people to indicate that they “don't know” their disease risk. The aim of this paper is to connect two disparate literatures – attitudes and persuasion in social psychology with risk perceptions in health psychology and decision science – in an attempt to stimulate more work on characteristics and proper measurement of risk perceptions.     

Emotions as ecosystemic adaptations

Despite Gregory Bateson's interest in emotion and culture, the potential for understanding emotion systemically and culturally was lost very early in the mainstream development of family therapy, partly as a reaction to the dominant psychiatric‐psychoanalytic paradigm of North America at the time. In those pioneering years, to take emotion seriously was to risk appearing stuck in a one‐person psychology. In an interesting paradox, it is relational psychoanalysts and parent–infant researchers such as Beatrice Beebe and Frank Lachmann who have recently turned to systems theory to give a fuller account of emotions and emotional regulation in self and relationships. The author draws on their ideas together with the work of Peter Fonagy, Patricia Crittenden, Jessica Benjamin, Britt Krause and others to sketch briefly an ecosystemic theory of emotional expression. This sketch is used to give contextual meaning to two contrasting clinical topics in relation to anger: self‐harm and conduct ‘disorder’.     

Methods matter: A review of Scientific Method: How Science Works,Fails to Work,and Pretends to Work by John Staddon,Routledge Press, 2018

The short and engaging book, How Science Works by John Staddon, reviews ways in which social and behavioral sciences arrive at decisions and how those decisions can best influence public policy. It is a provocative book that takes on controversial topics, including a critique of null hypothesis statistical testing, classical economic theories of supply and demand, limitations of Prospect Theory and behavioral economics, and evidence behind the health effects of smoking. A key theme running throughout is the idea that the theories and quantitative models used in the social sciences capture behavior and attitudes as fixed in time and fail to address the important issue of how behavior arose and how pliable it might be. The book will be of interest to scientists of all types as well as advanced students of psychology and other behavioral scientists.     

Reflections on intersections between cognitive and social psychology: A personal exploration

I appreciate the opportunity offered by the editor to reflect on the relationship between cognitive and social psychology. This topic has interested me my entire professional life, because I was admitted to graduate school to study social psychology and then eventually migrated to cognitive psychology. The organization of this paper is as follows: I first relate my (somewhat puzzling) personal experiences that led me to wonder about relations between cognitive and social psychology. I suggest that, for many topics, the placement of a topic of study in one field or the other is arbitrary. Next I selectively review some common historical influences on the development of both fields, ones that have made them similar. Both grew from common seeds, which include Gestalt psychology as it became applied to a wider array of topics, experimental psychologists becoming interested in attitude change during and after World War II, and Bartlett's famous book on Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Next I review some research from my lab that picked up themes from Bartlett's work and that, in some aspects, combines cognitive and social approaches. I also discuss the issue of memory conformity or the social contagion of memory, and conclude with thoughts about how social and cognitive psychologists might collaborate on an exciting new arena, creating empirical studies of collective memory. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Kurt Lewin

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) is often called the father of social psychology, although this can be disputed. Lewin established a reputation in Germany for his work on affect and motivation when these topics were considered to be outside the scope of psychological research. He escaped the Nazis and started work in social psychology at the University of Iowa. In 1945, he established the Research Center for Group Dynamics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with faculty and students who formed modern experimental social psychology. He also established the Commission on Community Interrelationships and helped to found the T Group movement. Lewinian Field Theory stressed that behavior is a function of the person and the environment, or B = f (p, e).     

Comparative cognition in the 1930s

According to the received view of the history of psychology, behaviorism so dominated psychology prior to the 1960s that there was little research in animal cognition. A review of the research on animal cognition during the 1930s reveals a rich literature dealing with such topics as insight, reasoning, tool use, delay problems, oddity learning, abstraction, spatial cognition, and problem solving, among others. Material on “higher processes” or a related topic was prominent in the textbooks of the period. Tracing academic lineages reveals such teachers as Harvey Carr, Robert M. Yerkes, and Edward C. Tolman as sources of this interest. The alleged hegemony of strict behavioristic psychology, interpreted as excluding research on animal cognition, requires revision. Some possible reasons for this neglect are suggested.     

大学生地域歧视现象态度量表的编制及信效度检验

地域歧视现象的存在是违背和谐社会理念的,人们对此现象是什么态度?研究以费施贝因和阿扎吉提出的理性行为模型理论为基础,选取网络上最活跃的大学生为样本,编制了大学生地域歧视现象态度量表,构建了对地域歧视现象态度、对地域歧视者态度和对被歧视者态度3个维度。通过整理访谈资料、参考相关量表、专家讨论等方法编制条目。选取358名被试进行预测试,617名被试正式测试。研究结果表明,大学生地域歧视现象态度量表建构的3个维度结构合理,量表的项目分析、探索性分析和验证性分析符合心理测量学要求,是测量中国大学生地域歧视现象态度的有效工具。     

The Pervasive Effects of Vested Interest on Attitude-Criterion Consistency in Political Judgment

The vested interest construct suggests that people act in attitudinally consistent ways on important issues of high hedonic relevance. Accordingly, vested individuals should endorse policies consistent with their attitudes. Symbolic politics holds self-interest unrelated to attitude and thus of little use. Three secondary analyses of national election data assessed the predictive utility of vested interest on policy-related issues. Consistent with expectations, Analysis 1 found vested interest to be unrelated to policy endorsement. However, Analysis 2 disclosed that vested interest significantly moderated attitude-endorsement consistency on beliefs regarding busing, health insurance, and government-guaranteed living standards. Analysis 3 investigated vested interest effects across three national election surveys and six policy issues. Without exception, vested interest significantly moderated the relationship between attitudes and policy endorsement. These results, obtained across a broad range of topics and respondents, suggest that vested interest is an important moderator of consistency between attitudes and policy endorsement.     

Attitude strength: Distinguishing predictors versus defining features

Attitudes play a fundamental role in many aspects of social psychology, but researchers have long recognized that attitudes vary in their susceptibility to change and their influence on behavior and cognitive processes. This insight lies at the heart of attitude strength, which is defined as an attitude's durability and impact. A variety of attitude attributes such as certainty and ambivalence have been shown to correlate with these aspects of attitude strength, which has made for some confusion as to what variables define strong attitudes versus predict an attitude's strength. In this article, we highlight this distinction between predictors and defining features of strength and review recent programs of research demonstrating the independence of strength‐related attitude attributes and attitude strength itself. Specifically, although some attitude attributes are associated with the attitude's durability and impact, there are conditions under which those attributes fail to predict attitude strength or even have the opposite effects. Throughout, this review reveals nuances in the attitude strength literature and provokes new questions for future inquiry.     

Previous Conceptions of the Typical Group Member and the Contact Hypothesis

Allport's (1954) contact hypothesis predicted that pleasant contact with a member of a negatively stigmatized group would change attitudes both toward the specific person interacted with (specific attitude change) and also toward the group as a whole (generalization). Many previous studies of the contact hypothesis have demonstrated specific attitude change. In previous studies that demonstrated generalization, attitude change toward the group as a whole might have occurred because participants changed their opinions about what constituted a "typical" group member. Although this postulated mechanism of attitude change is difficult to test directly, our study sought indirect support by showing that preexisting conceptions of the typical group member differ in a way that affects the extent of generalization. Students who initially conceived of the typical person with AIDS (PWA) as an abstraction displayed greater generalization following pleasant contact with a PWA than did students who initially conceived of the typical PWA as a specific person. The generalization part of Allport's contact hypothesis may thus be related to recent research on social categorization.     

Attitude and Behavior in (Classic) Social Psychology and Rabbinic Thought: Implications for Psychology of Religion Research

Certainly attitudes influence behavior; however, less intuitively obvious is the empirical literature revealing that external behavior affects internal attitudes sometimes even more powerfully. This article explores the parallel literatures about the relationship between attitude and behavior in social psychology and the rabbinic tradition. Judaism, characterized by orthopraxy, has considerably more emphasis on legislated behavior than belief, doctrine, or attitude. Moreover, rabbinic text is replete with observations that complement the empirical demonstrations of social psychology. These relate to the causal influence of behavior on attitude, behavioral factors leading to internalization or externalization, and the relationship between effort and satisfaction.