Social Atti

What are attitudes?

• psychological tendancy expressed by evaluating particular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour 
• organisation of beliefs, feelings and behavioural tendancies towards socially signifiant objects, groups or events

What are attitudes for?

• Rapid and automatic evaluation of rewarding or harmful objects confers a survival advantage
• Zajonc said attitudes are primitive basic responses to environment 
• Roskos-Ewoldsen & Favio (1992) viewed attitudes as mental shortcuts whih focus attention on salient objects influence info interpretation, guide behaviour
• Katz (1960) four functions - knowledge (provide info about environment), utilitatian/instrumental (maximise gains and minimise losses), value expressive (provide sociasl role by communicating social values) ego defensive (protect ones' self confidence by resisting damaging truths 

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