PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATIONS IN PHARMACY.

Accessible vs. inaccessible attitudes

Effects of attitudes can occur quickly, but only for people whose attitude is accessible (easy to retrieve). When attitudes are accessible, they come to mind instantly when we see the attitude object.

The attitude then influences how we behave towards the object. If the attitude is less accessible, it doesn’t come to mind, and so it doesn’t influence our behaviour.

Important attitude functions

Seminal theories of attitude function

Motivation and ability

Two newer models of persuasion, the ‘elaboration likelihood model’ and the ‘heuristic–systematic model’predict that the effects of persuasive messages depend on people’s motivation and ability to think carefully about them.

Many variables influence motivation and ability. Motivation is high when the message is relevant to personal goals and there is a fear of being wrong. Ability is high when people are not distracted and when they possess high cognitive skills.

Early theories of attribution

Attributions are explanations for events and behaviour. Heider differentiated between two types of causal attribution – personal and situational.

Personal attributions refer to factors within the person, such as their personality characteristics, motivation, ability and effort. Situational attributions refer to factors within the environment that are external to the person.

The covariation of events and behaviour consistency – does the person respond in

the same way to the same stimuli over time?

distinctiveness – do they behave in the same way to other different stimuli, or is the behaviour distinctively linked to specific stimuli?

consensus – do observers of the same stimuli respond in a similar way?

Our View of Self and Others

• The way we look at ourselves plays an important role in how we see the world. The way we see the world plays an important role in how we see ourselves. In this sense, our view of self and others is an ever-changing circle of influence.

• We know that those who are happy see more positive aspects of the world than those who are depressed. We also know that living in an abusive household or an overly restrictive environment can both lead to depression.

• Social psychology explores the social areas of attribution (how we interpret those around us) and attraction (what we seek in a friend or partner).

Attribution Theory

• We tend to explain our own behavior and the behavior of others by assigning attributes to these behavior. An attribute is an inference about the cause of a behavior. According to the Attribution Theory, we tend to explain our own behavior and the behavior of others by assigning attributes to these behavior.

• There are basically two sources for our behavior; those influenced by situational (external) factors and those influenced by dispositional (internal) factors. Imagine walking into your boss's office and he immediately tells you, in an angry tone, not to bother him. An external explanation of this behavior might be, "He's really a nice guy but the stress is overwhelming. He needs a vacation." On the other hand, you might see the same behavior and say, "What a jerk, I don't know why is so angry all the time." The same behavior is given two very opposite explanations.

The actor–observer effect: Perceptual salience

Fundamental Attribution Error

• This refers to the tendency to over estimate the internal and underestimate the external factors when explaining the behaviors of others.

• This may be a result of our tendency to pay more attention to the situation rather than to the individual and is especially true when we know little about the other person. For example, the last time you were driving and got cut off did you say to yourself "What an idiot" (or something similar), or did you say "She must be having a rough day."

• Chances are that this behavior was assigned mostly internal attributes and you didn't give a second thought to what external factors are playing a role in her driving behavior.

Self-Serving Bias

• We tend to equate successes to internal and failures to external attributes. Imagine getting a promotion. Most of us will feel that this success is due to hard work, intelligence, dedication, and similar internal factors.

• This bias is true for most people, but for those who are depressed, have low self-esteem, or view themselves negatively, the bias is typically opposite. For these people, a success may mean that a multitude of negatives have been overlooked or that luck was the primary reason. For failures, the depressed individual will likely see their own negative qualities, such as stupidity, as being the primary factor.

The motivation for self-enhancement

The ultimate attribution error

The self-serving bias also operates at the group level. So we tend to make attributions that protect the group to which we belong. This is perhaps most clearly demonstrated in what Pettigrew called the ultimate attribution error (UAE).

By extending the fundamental attribution error to the group context, Pettigrew demonstrated how the nature of intergroup relations shapes the attributions that group members make for the same behaviour by those who are in-group and out-group members. So prejudicial attitudes and stereotypes of disliked out-groups lead to derogating attributions, whereas the need for positive enhancement and protection of the in-group leads to group-serving attributions.

Attraction

• Why are we attracted to certain people and not others? Why do our friends tend to be very similar to each other? And what causes us to decide on a mate?

• Many of these questions relate to social psychology in that society's influence and our own beliefs and traits play an important role. Research has found five reasons why we choose our friends.

Proximity

• The vast majority of our friends live close to where we live, or at least where we lived during the time period the friendship developed.

• Obviously friendships develop after getting to know someone, and this closeness provides the easiest way to accomplish this goal. Having assigned seats in a class or group setting would result in more friends who's last name started with the same letter as yours

Association

• We tend to associate our opinions about other people with our current state.

• In other words, if you meet someone during a class you really enjoy, they may get more 'likeability points' then if you met them during that class you can't stand.

Similarity

• On the other hand, imagine that person above agrees with you this particular class is the worse they have taken.

• The agreement or similarity between the two of you would likely result in more attractiveness

Reciprocal Linking• Simply put, we tend to like those better

who also like us back. This may be a result of the feeling we get about ourselves knowing that we are likable.

• When we feel good when we are around somebody, we tend to report a higher level of attraction toward that person.

Physical Attractiveness

• Physical attraction plays a role in who we choose as friends, although not as much so as in who we choose as a mate.

• These points are divided into categories such as physical attractiveness, sense of humor, education, and wealth.

• We rate ourselves on these same categories and, at least at some level, know our score. We tend to then pick friends and partners who have a similar score that we do.

Obedience and Power

• Power is typically thought of has having a certain attribute which gives one person more influence over another. This attribute could be intelligence or experience, it could be job title, or perhaps money.

• According to most social psychologists, there are five types of power: coercive, reward, legitimate, expert, and referent.

• Coercive power means the power punish. Parents are said to have coercive power because they can place their child in time-out, for example; bosses have coercive power because they can fire an employee or assign an employee a less pleasing job.

• Reward power is almost the opposite; it is the power to reward. In that sense parents and bosses have this type of power as well, as do many others in our lives.

• Legitimate power refers to the power granted by some authority, such as the power a police officer has due to the local or state government or the power a professor has due to the rules of a college or university.

• Expert power results from experience or education. Those individuals with more knowledge tend to have more power in situations where that knowledge is important. For instance, the physician will have more power in a medical emergency than the plumber. But, when the pipes explode and the house is being flooded, the physician is not the person to call.

• Finally, referent power refers to admiration or respect. When we look up to people because of their accomplishments, their attitude, or any other personal attribute, we tend to give them more power over us. Imagine being asked to do something by your "hero" or your favorite movie star; we are very likely to comply out of admiration or respect.

The Role of Groups

• We are concerned with our social image or how other people see us.

• When alone, we tend to be more relaxed, less concerned with the outward expression of our behavior, and are basically 'ourselves.'

• We tend to perform better at tasks that are well learned or simple. When completing a difficult or new task, however, our performance level decreases and we tend to do more poorly.

• This phenomenon is called social facilitation, and as we try harder due to the presence of others, our performance actually decreases for difficult or unlearned tasks.

Group Think and Group Polarization

• If you've ever been involved in a group decision making process, you've probably seen such things happen: either the group agrees on all of the major issues, or there is significant dissent that splits the group. When we all agree, and are happy with that agreement, we typically do not want to hear opposing arguments. This phenomenon is referred to as Group Think. It can lead to impulsive decisions and a failure to identify and/or consider all sides of an argument.

• Similar to this, Group Polarization refers to a groups tendency to talk itself into extreme positions. In this case, a group gets so focused and energized about a decision, which pushes itself forward faster than originally intended.

Social loafing • This theory states that as a group gets larger, the individual contribution decreases disproportionate to the group size. This is due to the diffusion of responsibility created as the size of the group increases. As more people are added to the group, you will end up with a small percentage doing a large portion of the work and a large percentage doing a much smaller proportion.

• Bystander Effect. The internal push to help a person in need decreases as the group gets larger, very similar to Social Loafing. In this instance, however, people tend to be followers and will only get involved if they witness another person getting involved.

Cultural differences

The fundamental attribution error, which was originally thought to be a universal cognitive bias, is not found in collectivist cultures.

Western notions of the person are predominantly individualistic, emphasizing the central importance and autonomy of the person, whereas non Western notions tend to be holistic, stressing the interdependence between the person and their social relationships, role obligations and situational norms.

Attributions are not only cognitive, but also social and cultural phenomena that are based on social representations

Social schemas Social cognition research suggests that our behaviour

and interactions in the social world are facilitated by cognitive representations in our minds called schemas – mental or cognitive structures that contain general expectations and knowledge of the world.

A schema contains both abstract knowledge and specific examples about a particular social object. It ‘provides hypotheses about incoming stimuli, which includes plans for interpreting and gathering schema-related information’.

Schemas therefore give us some sense of prediction and control of the social world. They guide what we attend to, what we perceive, what we remember and what we infer.

Person schemas

Person schemas – often referred to as person prototypes – are configurations of personality traits that we use to categorize people and to make inferences about their behaviour.

They help us to anticipate the nature of our social interactions with individuals, giving us a sense of control and predictability.

Self schemas

Just as we represent and store information about others, we do the same about ourselves, developing complex and varied schemas that define our self-concept based on past experiences. Self schemas are cognitive representations about ourselves that organize and process all related information.

They develop from self-descriptions and traits that are salient and important to our self-concept.

Role schemas

The norms and expected behaviours of specific roles in society are structured into role schemas. They will include both achieved roles – including occupational and professional roles, such as doctor or teacher – and ascribed roles, over which we have little control – such as age, gender and race.

The roles and expectations associated with these categories are commonly referred to as stereotypes – mental representations of social groups and their members that are widely shared. Prolific empirical research on stereotypes views the process of categorizing individuals into their respective social groups as highly functional in that it simplifies the inherent complexity of social information.