3/5: Unconscious Biases and Attitude

Accessibility and Priming

• Accessibility - easily retrieved info more  likely to be used
• form impressions, make decisions, guide behavior, social judgment
• toolbox metaphor example: use the tools on top e.g. hammer
• Higgins, Rholes, and Jones (1977) [Accessibility and Priming]
• Memory task- lists of words: priming certain traits e.g. adventurous, reckless
• second experiment- read donald paragraph, about an adventure, and rate on positive characteristics
• affected by priming? answer: yes
• Results: adventurous prime condition = rate more positive
• Bargh,, Chen, and Burrow (1996) [Accessibility and Priming]
• scrambled sentence task; primed condition:polite, rude, or neutral; does subject when done interrupt experimenter's conversation within 10 minutes
• Results- Yes, Priming influences people's behavior. Percent of subjects who interrupted:
• polite 17%
• neutral 38%
• rudeness 69%
• Murphy and Zajnoc (1993) [unseen priming]
• shown Chinese ideographs for 2 seconds ; prior to each one, happy face, angry face, or polygon for 4 milliseconds; rate each on 1-5 scale
• can priming that can't be seen with naked eye influence your behavior?
• Results: YES
• happy - 3.4
• polygon - 3.1
• angry - 2.7
• Holland, Hendriks, and Aarts (2005) [ Conditional Priming]
• complete filler questions in either no smell condition or citrus scent condition(the prime); go to another lab room to eat a biscuit; how clean do people keep the table (rated via hidden camera)
• Results: times you cleaned the crumbs from table
• Citrus scent condition- 3.54
• Control condition - 1.00
• Priming
• What it Cannot do
• implant a thought or action that person would not have done anyway
• What it Can do
• activate the easiest accessibility tool

Attitude

• Attitude- evaluative reaction that are favorable/unfavorable judgments to any stimulus
• Attitude Formation: The Factors
• Mere Exposure
• Basic Learning Processes
• Cognitive Appraisal
• Self Perception
• Physical Movement
• Genetics
• Mere exposure effect- more exposure leads to more positive feelings
• Zajonc (1968)
• 10 Chinese ideographs 2 seconds at time; presented different frequencies; subjects guessed whether they're good or bad meanings
• Results: more times, like more
• Images example: Answer Why = Familiarity
• Self likes Reverse image because used to it
• Others like Straight on image because used to it
• Minority Experiment example [Classical Conditioning]
• Prejudiced parent becomes emotionally upset seeing a minority
• Child then becomes upset because parent is upset
• After repeated encounters, child becomes upset seeing a minority without parent being present
• Observational Conditioning
• witness reward from an act, does the act