PSYCHOLOGY 461a

The Social Psychology of Attitudes

Spring, 2007; T-TR 3:30-4:45pm, ILC 119

Instructor:	Jeff Stone, Ph.D.
Office:	436 Psychology Department
Office Hrs:	Wed 9am-12pm and by appointment
Phone:	626-2438
email:	jeffs@u.arizona.edu

Course Overview

The purpose of this course is to examine one of the oldest and most important topics in social psychology: The study of attitudes. The impact of social influence and persuasion on our attitudes is an everyday affair—we influence, and are influenced by, the people we observe and interact with on a daily basis. I designed this course with four goals in mind: First, I want to improve your understanding of how attitudes influence your day-to-day life. Second, I want you to experience first hand how social psychologists generate and test hypotheses about attitudes and attitude-change processes. Third, I want to introduce you to some possible career directions that will utilize your knowledge of social psychology and/or research methodology. The fourth goal of this course is to have a lot of fun and stimulating discourse along the way to the first three objectives.

The course material will focus broadly on how social context determines the relationship between attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. We will consider the following questions: What is an attitude? How can the topic of attitudes be studied scientifically? How do we form attitudes and are they conscious or unconscious? Are you always thoughtful and rational when you form an attitude? When do you take shortcuts that cause you to change your attitudes? Does your behavior always reflect your attitudes and values? What are prejudiced attitudes and can they be changed? Can subliminal messages affect your attitudes and beliefs? How can you avoid being taken by a skillful salesperson or roommate? Answers to these and other questions will be addressed in the readings, lectures, assignments and the discussions we will have in class.

The course is divided into thirds. In the first and second third, we will examine classic and contemporary theories of attitudes, social influence and persuasion. As a result, the reading in the first 2/3's is somewhat heavy. The last third of the course will turn to examine the role of attitudes, social influence and persuasion in our understanding of prejudice and prejudice reduction. Along the way we will also examine how attitudes and attitude change processes play a role in the courtroom and other legal contexts, advertising and consumer behavior, and health and other prosocial behavior.

Course Format

This course is designed to be a lecture/seminar for Advanced Psychology Majors who have had a lower division Social Psychology, Research Methods and Statistics course. It will differ from the lower division courses in two important ways. First, because it is an advanced course, I will only lecture each class meeting to reinforce the major points of the readings. I hope we will spend much of each class meeting discussing the material. To facilitate discussion, you need to come to each class with questions, comments, or criticisms of the readings. We are going to cover a fair amount of material in a short amount of time. In order to gauge your progress, I will conduct pop quizzes now and again without warning, and they will count toward your final grade.

Another difference between this course and the lower division courses is that you will be asked to do more than simply memorize the material. I believe psychology students at the 400 level should be able to integrate theory and research with real world experiences and phenomena. Really, what good is an education in psychology if you can’t use it to investigate and understand your world in some way? Thus, in addition to demonstrating your knowledge of the reading material, you will also be required to develop a project that uses the course material in a new and creative manner.

Course pre-requisites: Because of the advanced and heavy emphasis on research in social psychology, to take this course you must have already completed the following courses: INDV 101 or Introduction to Psychology (Psych 101), Research Methods (Psych 290A or B), Statistics and Measurement (Psych 230), and Introduction to Social Psychology (Psych 360). It will be difficult to earn a letter grade of A in this course without having passed these courses. See me if you are taking any of these courses concurrently.

Course Requirements

Your grade in this course will be a function of your performance on midterm exams, paper assignments, participation in group presentations, involvement in class assignments and discussions, and a final comprehensive exam. The exams are designed to measure how well you have learned the principles and concepts covered in the readings. The format for each exam will consist of multiple choice and short answer questions. Completion of homework, participation in class assignments and discussion will also be assessed. As will be detailed below, your presentations and papers will be based on a group project.

Grade Summary: Your final course grade will be a function of performance on the following:

Paper Assignments (50 pts total)	Exams (100 pts total)
The Project Proposal Draft (10pts)	2 Midterms (35pts Each)
The Project Final Paper (40pts)	Final Comprehensive Exam (30pts)
Group Project Assignments (30 pts total)	Class Assignments (20 pts total)
2 Group Presentations (10pts Each)	Methods Homework Assignment (10pts)
2 Group Participation Evals (5 Pts Each)	Pop Quizzes (10pts)

The total points possible are 200. I will distribute grades based on the percentage of total points earned (i.e., everyone can get an A!):

A => 180 or 90% of the total pts	C => 140 or 70% of the total pts	E =< 119 or 59% of the total pts
B => 160 or 80% of the total pts	D => 120 or 60% of the total pts

Absences and makeups: ** Please note that there will be no extra credit, make-up exams or paper extensions offered in this course. Be sure you can make the date for each exam, group presentation, and paper assignment before you decide to take this course.

Weekly Readings

The core readings for the course will come from two textbooks and from book chapters and articles available on electronic reserves. Most of the reading will come from the following required texts (available in the U of A bookstore):

Age Of Propaganda: The Everyday Use And Abuse Of Persuasion

By Pratkanis & Aronson (2001) 2^nd edition

Persuasion: Psychological Insights and Perspectives

By Brock & Green (2004) 2^nd edition

The other readings are available online. You can access them for reading and/or printing at the following address: http://eres.library.arizona.edu/eres/default.aspx

You will need the program called Adobe Acrobat Reader to read the articles. It is available for free from Adobe and you can download it from the electronic reserve site.

When you reach the first page of the ER site, find the course on the menu (psyc461a), type in the password "stone" and click on the “submit” button. Accept the copyright statement. The next page will show a list, alphabetized by the author’s last name, of all the readings for this semester. To access a specific reading, click on the PFD icon and it will load onto your computer. You can then read it or print it out. Let me know if you have questions or if there are problems using the ER site.

Group Research Project

The class will be divided randomly into small groups to accomplish a collaborative research project. The purpose of the project is to design a social influence or persuasion experiment that will convince people to believe or do something. The study must be based on the psychological principles of social influence and persuasion covered in the course. Each group will present their study to the class, collect data to test the effectiveness of their idea, and write papers about their project. Aspects of the project will be graded collectively (e.g., the group presentations) and individually (e.g., contribution to the project, the paper assignments).

The research groups are intended to function like a research lab. They will be formed sometime during the first month of class and should meet outside of class in addition to the scheduled in-class meeting times. You should take time to become acquainted, choose a name for your group, and begin discussing ideas for your persuasion project.

The project should be ambitious but feasible within the scope of this class. Your group should attempt to study attitudes, persuasion or social influence on a topic of substance and importance, such as the promotion of prosocial behavior (e.g., health or volunteerism) or the influence of consumer behavior (e.g., advertise a product ). I would encourage the groups to pick a topic that all members find interesting. This may take a few meetings to negotiate--welcome to life in an organization!

Once each group has a topic and a hypothesis, the next task will be to give the first presentation to the rest of the class. The presentations will provide an opportunity for everyone to hear and discuss the various projects. Each group member is expected to present some aspect of the project. The presentations will demonstrate how well your group, as a whole, understands the course material and is able to apply it to your topic. Most groups will modify their project after they receive "helpful" comments from the class and me. As is often the case in the real world, each group member will receive a grade based on the overall group’s presentation. The groups tend to be as strong as their weakest link, so I strongly recommend you prepare and practice as a group before the presentation.

For the proposal draft writing assignment, each group member will write a 2-page summary of his or her group's project. The paper will be written as a research proposal and should include a brief review of the theory and research relevant to your topic, a clear statement of the hypothesized results, and a brief description of the methods and procedures. The proposal draft will be due one week after the first group presentations and it will be evaluated individually.

The group's next goal will be to conduct an experiment to test the hypothesis. You will collect data and then analyze and interpret the results of the study. Each group will present their final project and results of their research to the class during the final weeks of the semester. As before, each group member will receive points based on the entire group’s presentation.

Finally, each group member will write his or her own final paper describing the theoretical background, hypothesis tested, methods, results, and a discussion of what the results mean. This paper will be written in APA style and should include tables and/or figures to illustrate the results of the study. The length of this paper must be 10 pages minimum to 15 pages maximum (including everything!) and will be due during finals week. It will be evaluated individually.

Social Loafing: To discourage social loafing you will have the opportunity to tell me how much effort each person in your group has put forth toward the group project. You will get to rate the effort of each group member after each group presentation. This provides some individual accountability in that if one or more members are not helping the group carry out the project, the group will be allowed to impact the social loafer's course grade.

After the groups are formed I will distribute handouts that detail what to focus on in your papers and presentations and some guidelines to follow in your research (e.g., ethics).

A few additional issues:

Course Website: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~jeffs/psy461/461home.html. The course website provides several resources to help you conquer this class. You will find the syllabus, test scores, and outlines for each lecture. In addition to reading the assigned chapters/papers, I recommend that you study the lecture outlines before lecture and bring them with you to each class.

All holidays or special events observed by organized religions will be honored for those students who show affiliation with that particular religion. Also, all absences pre-approved by the UA Dean of Students (or Dean's designee) will be honored.

Policies regarding expected classroom behavior: Please turn off your cell phone when in class.

Classroom policies against plagiarism will be covered in a separate handout. However, students are encouraged to review the University Student Code of Academic Integrity policies against plagiarism found at http://dos.web.arizona.edu/uapolicies/

Students are also encouraged to review the policies against threatening behavior by students: http://policy.web.arizona.edu/~policy/threaten.shtml

You are hereby notified that some students may deem some course content offensive. I will always try to warn you when I think this is possible, but I may not always know when a topic or other material is offensive to you. Please let me know if that is the case.

Students with special needs who are registered with the S.A.L.T. Center (http://www.salt.arizona.edu/) or the Disability Resource Center (http://drc.arizona.edu/) must submit appropriate documentation to me if they are requesting special accommodations. I will do the best I can to grant your request.

All information contained in this course syllabus, other than the grade and absence policies, may be subject to change with reasonable advance notice, as deemed appropriate by me.

Tentative Course Calendar

Note: B&G = Brock & Green text; P&A = Pratkanis & Aronson text; ER = Electronic Reserves

Date	Lecture#	Topic	Readings & Assignments
Jan 11	-	Course Overview And Introduction.	None
Jan 16	1	The Psychology Of Everyday Persuasion **Get homework assignment due 1/23	P&A: pgs 1-17 & 21-67 ER: Jordan & Zanna (2000) chpt on how to read a journal article
Jan 18	2	What Are Attitudes And How Do We Study Them?	ER: Rudman paper on implicit attitudes B&G: Attitude Measurement by Fabrigar et al
Jan 23	-	Research Methodology	ER: Appendix A from Zimbardo & Leippe **Methodology homework due for classroom exercise
Jan 25	-	No class (SPSP conference)
Jan 30	3	Attitude-Behavior Relationship	B&G: Acting As We Feel by Fazio et al.
Feb 1	4	Pre-Persuasion Strategies	P&A: pgs 71-118; 157-166
Feb 6	5	Conformity And Norms	ER: Aronson chpt on conformity ER: Whatley paper on reciprocity
Feb 8	6	Interpersonal Influence Strategies	B&G: Interpersonal Influence by Cialdini et al.
Feb 13	-	Midterm 1	review
Feb 15	7	Self-Persuasion I: Cognitive Dissonance	B&G: Actions and attitudes by Cooper et al.
Feb 20	8	Self-Persuasion II: Cognitive Dissonance	P&A: pgs. 230-258 ER: Stone paper on hypocrisy
Feb 22	9	Classic Theories I: Associative Models	P&A: pgs. 207-230
Feb 27	10	Classic Theories II: Learning Models	P&A: pgs. 121-146
Mar 1	11	Process Models Of Persuasion	B&G: To Think Or Not To Think by Petty et al.
Mar 6	12	Subliminal Persuasion	P& A: pgs. 285-294 ER: Strahan et al. (2002) paper on subliminal priming
Mar 8		Midterm 2	review
Mar 13,15		Spring Break!!
Mar 20	-	Mandatory Group Meetings (In Class)	Brief report on your project to me
Mar 22,27 & 29	-	Group Proposal Presentations	prepare; group evals due
Apr 3	13	Prejudice And Discrimination	P&A: pgs. 317-326 ER: Fiske article on prejudice **proposal draft paper due for groups that presented on 3/22
Apr 5	14	Prejudice And Discrimination	ER: Dovidio et al. paper on implicit/explicit biases **proposal draft paper due for groups that presented on 3/27
Apr 10	15	Reducing P&D	B&G: Changing prejudice by Devine **proposal draft paper due for groups that presented on 3/29
Apr 12	16	Reducing P&D	ER: Monteith et al. paper on confrontation
April 17		Mandatory Group Meetings (In Class)	Brief report on your project results to me
Apr 19, 24, & 26	-	Final Group Presentations	prepare
May 2	17	Last class: Resisting Persuasion	P&A: pgs 329-356
May 8	-	Final Cumulative Exam 2-4pm	Final paper & final group evals due