Class 12 Physology Notes Chapter 6 (Attitude and Social Cognition) – Physocology Book

Detailed Notes with MCQs of Chapter 6: 'Attitude and Social Cognition'. This is a crucial chapter, not just for your exams but also for understanding how we navigate our social world. Pay close attention to the key concepts and theories.

Chapter 6: Attitude and Social Cognition - Detailed Notes for Government Exam Preparation

1. Introduction to Social Cognition:

• Definition: Refers to all mental processes (perceiving, remembering, thinking, interpreting) that deal with social information – information about social objects like people, groups, social relationships, and social issues.
• Core Idea: How we think about ourselves and others, and how these thoughts influence our behaviour and judgments in social situations.
• Schemas: Mental structures or frameworks that organise our knowledge about the social world. They help us process information quickly but can also lead to biases.
  • Prototypes: Schemas defining the clearest or most representative examples of a category (e.g., your prototype of a 'leader').
  • Stereotypes: Overgeneralized and often inaccurate schemas about members of a specific social group. They are resistant to change even with contrary information.

2. Impression Formation and Attribution:

• Impression Formation: The process through which we form overall impressions of others. Key factors include:
  • Information Selection: We choose cues to focus on.
  • Information Organisation: We integrate cues systematically (e.g., averaging vs. adding).
  • Primacy Effect: Information presented first has a stronger impact than later information.
  • Recency Effect: Later information has a stronger impact (less common than primacy).
• Attribution: The process of assigning causes to behaviour – our own or others'.
  • Internal (Dispositional) Attribution: Inferring behaviour is due to personal factors (traits, abilities, feelings).
  • External (Situational) Attribution: Inferring behaviour is due to situational factors or external constraints.
  • Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE): The tendency to overestimate the role of internal factors and underestimate situational factors when explaining others' behaviour. (E.g., Someone trips, we think "clumsy" before considering an uneven pavement).
  • Actor-Observer Effect: Tendency to attribute our own behaviour primarily to external (situational) factors, while attributing others' behaviour to internal (dispositional) factors.

3. Attitude: Nature and Components

• Definition: An attitude is a state of mind, a set of views or thoughts, regarding a particular topic (the 'attitude object'), which has an evaluative feature (positive, negative, or neutral). It predisposes us to respond in a certain way.
• A-B-C Components (Affective-Behavioural-Cognitive):
  • Affective Component: Feelings and emotions associated with the attitude object (e.g., fear, liking, hatred).
  • Behavioural Component: Tendency or predisposition to act in certain ways towards the attitude object (e.g., signing a petition, avoiding someone).
  • Cognitive Component: Beliefs, thoughts, and ideas associated with the attitude object (e.g., "Smoking is harmful," "Democracy is good").
• Features of Attitudes:
  • Valence: Refers to whether the attitude is positive, negative, or neutral.
  • Extremeness: Indicates how positive or negative an attitude is (intensity).
  • Simplicity vs. Complexity (Multiplexity): Simple attitudes have few components; complex attitudes involve many interconnected components.
  • Centrality: The role of a particular attitude within the broader attitude system. Central attitudes influence other attitudes significantly.

4. Attitude Formation

Attitudes are generally learned through various processes:

• Learning by Association (Classical Conditioning): Pairing a neutral object repeatedly with an object that already evokes positive/negative feelings can make the neutral object evoke similar feelings.
• Learning through Reinforcement/Punishment (Instrumental Conditioning): Attitudes followed by positive outcomes are strengthened; those followed by negative outcomes are weakened.
• Learning through Modelling (Observational Learning): Acquiring attitudes by observing others (parents, peers, role models) being reinforced or punished for expressing certain attitudes.
• Learning through Group or Cultural Norms: Attitudes learned through adherence to group standards and societal values. Reference groups (groups whose norms we identify with) play a significant role.
• Learning through Exposure to Information: Media, books, and direct experience provide information that shapes our attitudes. The Mere Exposure Effect suggests that repeated exposure to a stimulus can enhance liking for it.

5. Attitude Change

Attitudes can change over time. Factors influencing change include:

• Source Characteristics:
  • Credibility: How believable/expert the source is perceived to be.
  • Attractiveness: How physically appealing or likeable the source is.
• Message Characteristics:
  • Rational vs. Emotional Appeal: Whether the message uses logic/facts or evokes feelings.
  • Motives: The underlying intention perceived in the message.
  • Mode of Spreading: Direct (face-to-face) vs. indirect (mass media).
• Target Characteristics:
  • Persuasibility: Some individuals are more easily persuaded than others.
  • Strong Pre-existing Attitudes: Harder to change.
  • Self-Esteem: Low self-esteem individuals may change attitudes more easily, but high self-esteem individuals are more confident and may resist change unless the message is strong.
• Theories of Attitude Change:
  • Concept of Balance (Fritz Heider): Focuses on cognitive consistency. Represented by the P-O-X triangle (P=Person, O=Other person, X=Attitude object). Imbalance (e.g., P likes O, O dislikes X, but P likes X) creates tension, motivating a change towards balance.
  • Cognitive Dissonance (Leon Festinger): Occurs when an individual holds two conflicting attitudes or when attitude conflicts with behaviour. This creates psychological discomfort (dissonance), motivating the individual to reduce it by changing either the attitude or the behaviour to achieve consistency.
  • Two-Step Concept (S.M. Mohsin): Attitude change involves two steps:
    1. The target identifies with the source (liking/trust).
    2. The target adopts the attitude/behaviour of the source. Emphasizes the importance of the target's perception of the source.

6. Attitude-Behaviour Relationship

• Attitudes predict behaviour, but the relationship is not always strong or direct.
• Factors influencing consistency:
  • Attitude Strength & Centrality: Stronger, more central attitudes are better predictors of behaviour.
  • Attitude Specificity: Specific attitudes predict specific behaviours better than general attitudes.
  • Situational Pressures: Strong external pressures can override attitude-based behaviour.
  • Awareness: Individuals aware of their attitudes are more likely to act consistently.

7. Prejudice and Discrimination

• Prejudice: An unjustified and usually negative attitude towards individuals based solely on their membership in a particular group. It has cognitive (stereotypes), affective (negative feelings), and often behavioural (discrimination tendency) components.
• Discrimination: Negative behaviour directed towards individuals based on their group membership. It's the behavioural manifestation of prejudice.
• Stereotypes: The cognitive component – overgeneralized beliefs about a group.
• Sources of Prejudice:
  • Learning: Acquired through association, reinforcement, observation, cultural norms.
  • Social Identity: Tendency to favour one's own group (ingroup) over other groups (outgroups).
  • Scapegoating: Blaming a powerless outgroup for one's own problems or frustrations.
  • Kernel of Truth Concept: Belief that stereotypes might originate from a small element of truth that gets overgeneralized.
  • Self-fulfilling Prophecy: Expectations about a group lead individuals to act in ways that elicit the expected behaviour from that group, thus confirming the stereotype.
• Strategies for Handling Prejudice:
  • Education & Information Dissemination: Challenging stereotypes with facts.
  • Increasing Intergroup Contact: Contact under conditions of equality, cooperation, and common goals can reduce prejudice.
  • Highlighting Individual Identity: Focusing on individual characteristics rather than group labels.
  • Challenging Prejudiced Norms: Promoting norms of fairness and tolerance.

Conclusion: Understanding social cognition and attitudes is fundamental to comprehending social behaviour. How we perceive, interpret, evaluate, and remember social information shapes our interactions, relationships, and societal dynamics, including issues like prejudice and discrimination.

Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs):

1. Mental frameworks that help organize social information are known as:
   (A) Attributions
   (B) Schemas
   (C) Attitudes
   (D) Dissonances

2. The tendency to overestimate internal factors and underestimate situational factors when explaining others' behaviour is called:
   (A) Actor-Observer Effect
   (B) Self-Serving Bias
   (C) Fundamental Attribution Error
   (D) Primacy Effect

3. The 'A-B-C' components of attitude stand for:
   (A) Action-Belief-Cognition
   (B) Affective-Behavioural-Cognitive
   (C) Attitude-Belief-Consistency
   (D) Association-Behaviour-Conformity

4. Which feature of attitude refers to its positive or negative direction?
   (A) Extremeness
   (B) Centrality
   (C) Complexity
   (D) Valence

5. Learning attitudes by observing others being rewarded or punished is an example of:
   (A) Classical Conditioning
   (B) Instrumental Conditioning
   (C) Observational Learning (Modelling)
   (D) Mere Exposure Effect

6. According to Fritz Heider's Balance Theory, imbalance in the P-O-X triangle leads to:
   (A) Attitude stability
   (B) Cognitive dissonance
   (C) Psychological tension motivating change towards balance
   (D) Increased prejudice

7. Leon Festinger's theory explaining the discomfort felt when holding conflicting beliefs or when attitude conflicts with behaviour is:
   (A) Balance Theory
   (B) Two-Step Concept
   (C) Elaboration Likelihood Model
   (D) Cognitive Dissonance Theory

8. Unjustified negative behaviour towards individuals based solely on their group membership is termed:
   (A) Prejudice
   (B) Stereotype
   (C) Discrimination
   (D) Scapegoating

9. Which characteristic of the source of communication enhances attitude change?
   (A) Low credibility
   (B) Unattractiveness
   (C) High credibility and attractiveness
   (D) Ambiguity of the message

10. Blaming a minority group for societal problems is an example of which source of prejudice?
    (A) Social Identity
    (B) Scapegoating
    (C) Kernel of Truth
    (D) Learning by Association

Answer Key:

1. (B)
2. (C)
3. (B)
4. (D)
5. (C)
6. (C)
7. (D)
8. (C)
9. (C)
10. (B)

Study these notes carefully, focusing on definitions, key theorists, components, and the distinctions between related concepts like prejudice, stereotype, and discrimination. Good luck with your preparation!