We care about what others think of us, and our romantic relationships, too. The support we receive from our social networks, such as family and friends, influences the quality of our relationships. Continue reading
Category Archives: Attitudes
Cognitive Dissonance: Why We Lie to Ourselves

We “lie” to ourselves as we like our thoughts to be consonant.
The cognitive dissonance theory was coined by Leon Festinger (1957). Festinger suggests that our thoughts can show three relationships Continue reading
Posted in Attitudes, Psychology, Social Psychology
Tagged attitudes, justification, leon festinger, rationalization
Extreme Political Attitudes are Difficult to Change for 5 Reasons
Why is it that some people hold extreme political or religious attitudes? First, we need to understand the nature of such attitudes. Here are two quotes, which I think, emphasize it:
Instincts Might Explain Why People Hold Prejudices

Prejudices might originate from an innate “behavioral immune system”.
Prejudices have plausibly existed since the origins of humanity. In an evolutionary sense, prejudices might have solved an adaptive problem. Continue reading
Posted in Attitudes, Behaviors, Evolutionary Psychology, Social Psychology
Tagged evolution, instincts, prejudices
Does the Apple Fall Far From the Tree? Parent-Child Similarities in Attitudes

Father and son. How do they look alike?
This article considers a strongly disputed topic in social psychology: the formation of attitudes, prejudices, and stereotypes. A new meta-analysis by Degner & Dalege (2013) synthesizes the evidence for the past 60 years, and it is a rather exhaustive analysis that includes 131 studies of over 45,000 parent-child dyads. Continue reading