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Class 12 Attitude and Social Cognition: cheat sheet
CBSE Psychology. The A-B-C components and properties of attitudes, how attitudes are learned and changed, balance, cognitive dissonance, the two-step concept, and when attitudes predict behaviour.
Key ideas
- An attitude is a set of views about an object with a feeling and a tendency to act; an opinion is only the thought.
- Attitudes are learned by association, reward and punishment, modelling, group norms and information, shaped by family, school, reference groups, experience and media.
- Heider’s balance: in the P-O-X triangle an imbalance is uncomfortable, so an attitude shifts until balance returns.
- Festinger’s cognitive dissonance: when thoughts clash, we change one of them to reduce the discomfort.
- Mohsin’s two-step concept: the target first identifies with a liked source, then copies the source’s changed behaviour.
- Change depends on the source (credibility, attractiveness), the message (information, rational or emotional appeal) and the target (persuasibility, openness).
- Attitudes predict behaviour best when they are strong and central, and outside pressure is low.
Remember
| A-B-C components | Affective (feeling), Behavioural or conative (action), Cognitive (thought) |
| Properties | valence, extremeness, simplicity or complexity, centrality |
| Balance in P-O-X | multiply the signs: + result = balanced; two + and one −, or three −, = unbalanced |
| Festinger and Carlsmith | students paid $1 rated the boring task more interesting than those paid $20 |
| Kinds of change | congruent (same direction, easier) vs incongruent (opposite direction) |
| Values | attitudes with a “should” or “ought” aspect |
Watch out
- Calling an opinion an attitude: an attitude also has a feeling and an action part.
- Thinking three negatives balance a P-O-X triangle: the product is negative, so it is unbalanced.
- Expecting the $20 group to change more: the $1 group had no outside reason, so felt more dissonance.
Worked example
Ananya likes Isha, Isha likes a nature trail, but Ananya dislikes a nature trail. Is the P-O-X triangle balanced? Name two ways balance could be restored.
Working: one negative side: imbalance
Answer: Unbalanced (two positives and one negative); Ananya could start liking a nature trail, Isha could start disliking a nature trail, or Ananya could start disliking Isha
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