SP Attitudes Critical Analysis

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  • Created by: Psych951
  • Created on: 03-05-19 17:37

SP Attitudes Critical Analysis

Advantages

  • Comprehensive understanding of attitudes in a range of situations
  • Highlights the complexity of attitudes
  • Changes in processing of attitudes is accounted for, providing better persuasion techniques
  • Attitudes have top-down influence on social behaviour, providing a way to respond to social world
  • Inconsistency between attitude-behaviour can be helpful in cases of social conventions and harmony
  • Can encourage prosocial behaviour that helps individuals and collective
  • Many different measures to capture different aspects of attitudes

Disadvantages

  • Predictions and understanding of attitudes causing social behaviour is dependent on wider factors
  • Attempts to change attitudes are dependent on other factors
  • Persuasion techniques can backfire if not used appropriately, this limiting their wide application
  • Ethical issues of nudging and manipulation
  • Relies on self-report, inferences and good meta-cognition, thus questioning reliability of measures

Evaluation

The link between attitudes and behaviour is complicated by mediating factors, and there are ethical concerns around attitude change. However, theories of attitudes provide a comprehensive understanding that can be utilised to increase prosocial behaviour and social harmony, providing a unique top-down understanding of social behaviour 

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