Attitude and Social Cognitio Class 12 Psychology Exam Questions

Please refer to Attitude and Social Cognitio Class 12 Psychology Exam Questions provided below. These questions and answers for Class 12 Psychology have been designed based on the past trend of questions and important topics in your class 12 Psychology books. You should go through all Class 12 Psychology Important Questions provided by our teachers which will help you to get more marks in upcoming exams.

Class 12 Psychology Exam Questions Attitude and Social Cognitio

Class 12 Psychology students should read and understand the important questions and answers provided below for Attitude and Social Cognitio which will help them to understand all important and difficult topics.

Question. What is primacy effect?
Ans. During formation of impression, information presented first has a stronger effect than information presented at the end. This is primacy effect.

Question. What are values?
Ans. Values are attitudes with a ‘should’ or ‘ought’ aspect, i.e., moral or ethical values. For example, one should work hard or one should be honest.

Question. What is recency effect?
Ans. During formation of impression, information that comes at the end may have stronger influence. This is recency effect.

Question. What is belief?
Ans. Beliefs refer to the cognitive component of attitudes such as belief in or belief in democracy.

Question. What is social facilitation?
Ans. Improvement in performance in the presence of others is called social facilitation. For example, cyclists racing with each other perform better than when they cycle alone.

Short Answer Questions

Question. What is attribution? Explain fundamental attribution error and actor-observer effect with the help of an example.
Ans. We assign causes to the behavior shown in specific social situations. This process is called attribution. For example, a person A hit another person B, we may explain the hitting behavior by saying that
(i) A hit B because A is short-tempered person or
(ii) A hit B because B behaved in a nasty way.
There is an overall tendency for people to give greater weightage to internal or dispositional factors than external or situational factors. This is called fundamental attribution error. It varies from culture to culture.
A distinction is made between the attribution that a person makes for his/her positive and negative experiences (actor-role) than the attribution made by another person’s positive and negative experiences (observer-role). This is called actor-observer effect.
For example, if you get good marks in a test you attribute it to your ability and hard work while if you get bad marks you say that you were unlucky or that the test was difficult.
On the other hand, if your class-mate gets good marks you attribute his/her success to good luck or an easy test and if your class-mate gets bad marks you attribute his/her failure to low ability or lack of effort.

Question. How message characteristics facilitate attitude change?
Ans. The message for attitude change contains a rational appeal or an emotional appeal makes a difference. For example, an advertisement for cooking food in a pressure cooker may point out that this saves cooking gas (rational appeal) or preserves nutrition (emotional appeal).
The motives activated by the message also determine attitude change. For example,drinking milk makes a person healthy, good-looking, more energetic and more successful in one’s job.The mode of spreading the message plays a significant role. Face-to-face transmission of the message is usually more effective than indirect transmission. As for instance, through letters and pamphlets or even through mass media.

Question. What are the properties/features of attitude?
Ans. The properties/features of attitude are described below:
(i) Valence: Valence of an attitude tells us whether an attitude is positive or negative towards the attitude object. For example, an attitude towards a nuclear research is expressed on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (Very Bad), 2 (Bad), 3 (Neutral), 4 (Good) and 5 (Very Good). A rating of 4 or 5 indicates a positive attitude towards nuclear research while a rating of 1 or 2 indicates a negative attitude and a rating of 3 indicates a neutral attitude.
(ii) Extremeness: The extremeness of an attitude indicates how positive or negative an attitude is. A rating of 1 or 5 indicate extreme attitudes. Ratings of 2 and 4 are less extreme. A neutral attitude, of course, is lowest on extremeness.
(iii) Simplicity or Complexity (Multiplexity): An attitude system is said to be ‘simple’ if it contains one or a few attitudes and complex if it is made of many attitudes. For example, an attitude towards a person is a simple attitude while an attitude towards health and well-being is a complex attitude consisting of attitude towards physical and mental health, views about happiness and well-being etc.
(iv) Centrality: A central attitude would influence the other attitudes in an attitude system. For example, in an attitude towards world peace, a negative attitude towards high military expenditure is present as the central attitude and influences all other attitudes in the multiple attitude system.

Question. Examine four ways through which people bring consistency in their attitudes.
OR
Write a note on the Attitude-Behaviour Relationship. Describe the relationship between attitude and behaviour with the help of suitable examples.
Ans. There is consistency between Attitudes and Behaviour when
(i) The attitude is strong, and occupies a central place in the attitude system.
(ii) The person is aware of his attitude, there is no external pressure for the person to behave in a particular way. For example, there is no group pressure to follow the norm.
(iii) The person’s behaviour is not being watched or evaluated by others.
(iv) The person thinks that the behaviour would have a positive consequence.

Question. Explain the factors that influence impression formation.
Ans. Impression formation is influences by:
(i) Nature of information available to the perceiver.
(ii) Social schemas in the perceiver (including stereotypes).
(iii) Personality characteristics of the perceiver.
(iv) Situational factors

Question. State the strategies for overcoming prejudice.
OR
How can prejudice be handled?
OR
Discuss the strategies for handling prejudice.
Ans. The strategies for handing prejudice would be effective if they aim at:
(i) Minimizing opportunities for learning prejudices.
(ii) Changing such attitudes.
(iii) De-emphasising a narrow social identity based on ingroup.
(iv) Discouraging the tendency towards self-fulfilling prophecy among the victims of prejudice.
These goals can be accomplished through:
(a) Education and information dissemination, for correcting stereotypes related to specific target groups and tackling the problem of strong ingroup bias.
(b) Increasing intergroup contact allows for direct communication, removal of mistrust between the groups and discovery of positive qualities in the outgroup. This strategy is successful if
– The two groups meet in a cooperative rather than competitive context
– Close interactions between the groups help them to know each other better
– The two groups are not different in power or status.
(v) Highlighting individual identity rather than group identity

Long Answer Questions

Question. Differentiate between prejudice and stereotype.
Ans. A stereotype is a cluster of ideas regarding the characteristics of a specific group. They are category-based schemas about a group of people. For example, a stereotype that
Americans are hard-working.
Prejudices are negative attitudes towards a particular group and are based on stereotypes (the cognitive component). The cognitive component of prejudice is accompanied by dislike or hatred (the affective component). Prejudice gets translated into discrimination (the behavioural component) whereby people behave in less positive way towards a particular target group compared to another group which they favour.
In our society there has been cases of discrimination due to prejudice based on gender,religion, community, caste, physical handicap and illness such as AIDS.

Question. Define attitude. Discuss the components of an attitude.
Ans. An attitude is a set of views or opinions which have an evaluative feature (positive, negative or neutral quality) and is accompanied by ABC components namely affective, behavioural and cognitive components. For example, a positive attitude of students towards teachers and parents.
The emotional component of an attitude is the affective aspect, the behavioural component is the tendency to act while the cognitive component is the thought component of an attitude. For example, the cognitive component of prejudice i.e. stereotype is accompanied by dislike or hatred, the affective component which may get translated into discrimination, the behavioural component.

Question. Prejudice can exist without discrimination and vice versa. Comment.
Ans. Prejudices can exist without being shown in the form of discrimination. Similarly,discrimination can be shown without prejudice. Yet, the two go together very often.Wherever prejudice and discrimination exist, conflicts are very likely to arise between groups within the same society. Our own society has witnessed many deplorable instances of discrimination, with and without prejudice, based on gender, religion,community, caste, physical handicap, and illnesses such as AIDS. Moreover, in many cases discriminatory behaviour can be curbed by law. But, the cognitive and emotional components of prejudice are more difficult to change.
Prejudice gets translated into discrimination (the behavioural component) whereby people behave in less positive way towards a particular target group compared to another group which they favour. In our society there has been cases of discrimination due to prejudice based on gender, religion, community, caste, physical handicap and illness such as AIDS.

Question. Explain how the attribution made by an ‘actor’ would be different from that of an ‘observer’.
Ans. There is an overall tendency for people to give greater weightage to internal or dispositional factors than external or situational factors. This is called fundamental attribution error. It varies from culture to culture.
A distinction is made between the attribution that a person makes for his/her positive and negative experiences (actor-role) than the attribution made by another person’s positive and negative experiences (observer-role). This is called actor-observer effect.
For example, if you get good marks in a test you attribute it to your ability and hard work while if you get bad marks you say that you were unlucky or that the test was difficult.On the other hand, if your class-mate gets good marks you attribute his/her success to good luck or an easy test and if your class-mate gets bad marks you attribute his/her failure to low ability or lack of effort.

Question. What is social facilitation? Explain.
Ans. (i) Social facilitation can be defined as ‘an improvement in performance produced by the mere presence of others’. There are two types of social facilitation: (a) coaction effects (b) audience effect. Studies and research on social facilitation concern the extent to which a given piece of an individual’s behavior is affected by the real, imagined or implied presence of others.
(ii) Perhaps the first social psychology laboratory experiment was undertaken in this area by Norman Triplett in 1898.In his research on the speed records of cyclists, he noticed that racing against each other rather than against the clock alone increased the cyclists’ speeds. He attempted to duplicate this under laboratory conditions using children and fishing reels.
(iii) There were two conditions: the child alone and children in pairs but working alone.Their task was to wind in a given amount of fishing line and Triplett reports that many children worked faster in the presence of a partner doing the same task.
(iv) Triplett’s experiments exhibit the co-action effect, a phenomenon whereby increased task performance comes about by the mere presence of others doing the same task.The co action effect may come into operation if you find that you work well in a library in preference to working at home where it is equally quiet.
(v) Social facilitation occurs not only in the presence of a co-actor but also in the presence of a passive spectator/audience. This is known as the audience effect, surprisingly.
(vi) We can say that the extent of social facilitation or inhibition depends upon the nature of the interaction between the task and the performer. According to Cottrell (1968), it’s not the presence of other people that is important for social facilitation to occur but the apprehension about being evaluated by them.

Question. State the factors that lead to the formation of attitudes. Explain the process of attitude change giving examples from everyday life.
OR
State the factors that influence attitude formation.
Ans. The factors influencing attitude formation are as follows:
(i) Family and School Environment: Learning of attitudes within the family and school usually takes place by association, through reward and punishment and through modeling.
(ii) Reference Groups: Attitudes towards various topics such as political, religious and social groups, occupations, national and other issues is developed through reference groups. This is learning by reward and punishment.
(iii) Personal Experiences: Personal experience can bring a drastic change in our attitude.Here is a real-life example. A driver in the army went through a personal experience that transformed his life. On one mission, he narrowly escaped death although all his companions got killed. He gave up his job in the army and worked actively as a community leader. Through a purely personal experience the individual evolved a strong positive attitude towards community upliftment.
(iv) Media-related Influences: Media can exert both good and bad influences on attitudes.On one hand, the media and internet make people better informed than other modes of communication while on the other hand it can create negative attitudes in people.

Attitude Change (Write any one out of the following three):
In the process of attitude change, the concept of balance proposed by Fritz Heider is described in the form of P-O-X triangle. Attitude changes if there is a state of imbalance
between P-O attitude and O-X attitude and P-X attitude.
For example, in the study of attitude towards dowry(X), a person (P) has a positive attitude towards dowry (P-X positive). P is planning to get his son married to the daughter of some person (O) who has a negative attitude towards dowry (O-X negative). Here P-X is positive, O-P is positive but O-X is negative. That is, there are 2 positives and 1 negative in the triangle. This is a situation of imbalance. Imbalance on POX triangle is found when
(i) All the 3 sides of the POX triangle are negative or
(ii) 2 sides are positive and 1 side negative.
Balance is found when
(i) All the 3 sides are positive or
(ii) 2 sides are negative and 1 side is positive.
In the process of attitude change the concept of cognitive dissonance was proposed by Leon Festinger. If an individual finds that two cognitions in an attitude are dissonant,then one of them will be changed in the direction of consonance. For example, consider the case of the following two ideas or cognitions:
– Cognition 1: Pan masala causes mouth cancer which is fatal.
– Cognition 2: I eat pan masala.
Here the two ideas are dissonant in the attitude towards pan masala. Therefore, one of these ideas will have to be changed so that consonance can be attained. Thus, to remove or reduce the dissonance, change Cognition 2. Thus Cognition 2 will become:
I will stop eating pan masala.
Both balance and cognitive dissonance are examples of cognitive consistency. Cognitive consistency means that two components, aspects or elements of the attitude or attitude system must be in the same direction.
The 2-step concept of attitude change was proposed by an Indian psychologist, S. M. Mohsin.
Step 1: The target changes his attitude by identifying with the source.
Step 2: The source shows an attitude change towards the attitude object. The target also shows an attitude change. This is a kind of imitation or observational learning.
For example,
Step 1: Preeti reads in newspaper that a particular soft drink she enjoys is harmful.But she imitates the sports person with whom she identifies.
Step 2: The sports person having positive feelings towards his fans may change his habit of consuming the soft drink by substituting it with a health drink. Now, Preeti will also change her attitude and stop consuming the harmful soft drink.

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