Social Attitudes, Judgments and Conformity

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the role of priming on several social psychology behaviors including attitudes, judgements and conformity. The paper provides a description of priming and of each of the social behaviors discussed in the paper. The paper then focuses on describing past research that shows the ways in which priming affects these behaviors.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Priming Attitudes/Judgments
Priming Social Conformity

From the Paper:

"Schemas are cognitive representations of nonsocial and social objects that are stored in memory in associative networks. Activation of a schema increases its accessibility in the present and in the future. One way to activate a schema is through priming. Priming is any experience or mental activity that occurs prior to an event or situation and which increases the likelihood that relevant schema will be made more accessible. Such experiences or activities are referred to as primes and primes vary in the level of activation or accessibility they create. The minimum prime required to activate a schema is called the response threshold (Moskowitz, 2005). This can then affect a perception, judgment, and/or behavior by associative processes in memory. In this paper I will examine priming effects on judgments and social conformity by describing several relevant studies and their results."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Breckler, S., Olson, J., & Wiggins, E. (2006). Social Psychology Alive. Belmont, CA: Thompson.
• Davis, J., & Rusbult, C. (2001). Attitude adjustment in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 65-84.
• DeCoster, J., & Claypool, H. (2004). A meta-analysis of priming effects on impression formation supporting a general model of informational biases. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8, 2-27.
• Epley, N., & Gilovich, T. (1999). Just going along: Nonconscious priming and conformity to social pressure. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35, 578-589.
• Herr, P. (1983) Consequences of priming: Judgment and Behavior. Journal of personality and social psychology, 51, 1106-1115.

More papers on Social Attitudes, Judgments and Conformity:

• Term Paper # 121896 : "Thoreau on Rebellion and Conformity"
• Book Review # 73889 : "Obedience and Conformity "
• Research Paper # 128968 : "Gender and Conformity"

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