Probation Officer Paper II: Psychology · 14 Social Behaviour · APPSC Paper I
14.1 Social behaviour notes
2 notes, in reading order.
- 14.1.1Attitudes and attitude scales
An attitude is a learnt, fairly lasting state of mind towards an object, person, group or idea, made of feelings (A), action tendencies (B) and beliefs (C); attitudes form through association, reward, modelling and group norms, change through balance, dissonance and persuasion, predict behaviour only under some conditions, and are measured by scales such as Thurstone (1929), Likert (1932), Bogardus (1925), Guttman (1944) and the semantic differential (1957).
Standard · 13 min · Read here - 14.1.2Social cognition, person perception, stereotypes and prejudice
Social cognition is how we take in, store and use information about people, using schemas, prototypes and stereotypes; we form impressions (shaped by the perceiver, the target and the situation, and by implicit theories of which traits go together), explain behaviour through internal or external attributions with predictable errors, and prejudice (an attitude) can turn into discrimination (behaviour) unless reduced by education, contact, superordinate goals and a wider identity.
Standard · 13 min · Read here
Practise Social behaviour. Questions with answers explained, from the same topics.
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