Journal of Advanced Medical Sciences and Applied Technologies

Journal of Advanced Medical Sciences and Applied Technologies

Simulating the Formation and Dynamics of the Implicit Attitude; a Social Cognition Study

Document Type : Original Articles

Authors
Mohsen Oftadehal
Babak Mohammadi
Kamal Kharrazi
Mohammad Nami
Department of Neuroscience, School of Advanced Medical Sciences and Technologies, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences
10.18869/nrip.jamsat.2.4.291
Abstract
The current study aimed to define some factors contributing to implicit attitude formation mainly in the social interaction context. An agent-based computer simulation of a society including autonomous agents and an attitude object was used to track the implicit attitude progress towards the object. The society could simulate the autonomic behaviors. We provided a complex adaptive system and observed an emergent phenomenon as the formation and dynamics of implicit attitude in the society. Our results suggested that population size and the number of high-impact individuals are important for the formation of implicit attitude in a society. Moreover, when the number of factors affecting agents’ relationships increases, the dynamics of society tended to unpredictability. Our experience showed that diverse autonomous components of a society with implemented simple rules lead to emergent and seemingly organized system behavior, and the pattern of behavior can be affected by communication and environmental stress. Our study attempted to offer some key implications since few theories within the cognitive psychology and sociology have been stated in precise and unambiguous terms.
Keywords
Implicit attitude formation
Social cognition simulation
Cognitive science
  1. Fazio RH. Accessible attitudes as tools for object appraisal: Their costs and benefits. Why we evaluate: Functions of attitudes. 2000; 1-36. doi: 10.4135/9781446263037
  2. Crano WD, Prislin R. Attitudes and persuasion. Annu Revew of psychology. 2006; 57(1):345-74. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.57.102904.190034
  3. Crano WD, Prislin R. Attitudes and attitude change. Newyork: Psychology Press; 2011.
  4. Zanna MP, Rempel JK. Attitudes: A new look at an old concept. In: Bar-Tal D, Kruglanski AW, editors. The Social Psychology of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1988.
  5. Albarracin D, Johnson BT, Zanna MP, Kumkale GT. Attitudes: Introduction and scope. In: Albarracin D, Johnson BT, Zanna MP, editors. The Handbook of Attitudes. New York: Psychology Press; 2005.
  6. Fazio RH, Towles-Schwen T. The MODE model of attitude-behavior processes. In: Chaiken S, Trope Y, editors. Dual Process Theories in Social Psychology. New York: Guilford; 1999.
  7. Fazio RH, Ledbetter JE, Towles-Schwen T. On the costs of accessible attitudes: detecting that the attitude object has changed. Journal of personality and social psychology. 2000; 78(2):197-210. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.197
  8. Fazio RH. On the power and functionality of attitudes: The role of attitude. In: Pratkanis A, Breckler SJ, Greenwald AG, editors. Attitude Structure and Function. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum; 1989.
  9. Maio GR. The psychology of human values. Oxford: Psychology Press; 2016.
  10. Pham MT, Muthukrishnan AV. Search and alignment in judgment revision: Implications for brand positioning. Journal of Marketing Research. 2002; 39(1):18-30. doi: 10.1509/jmkr.39.1.18.18929
  11. Banaji MR, Lemm KM, Carpenter SJ. The social unconscious. In: Tesser A, Shwarz N, editors. Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Intraindividual Processes. Oxford: Blackwell; 2000.
  12. Gawronski B, Bodenhausen GV. Associative and propositional processes in evaluation: an integrative review of implicit and explicit attitude change. Psychological Bulletin. 2006; 132(5):692-731. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.132.5.692
  13. Fazio RH. Multiple processes by which attitudes guide behavior: The MODE model as an integrative framework. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. 1990; 23:75-109. doi: 10.1016/s0065-2601(08)60318-4
  14. Greenwald AG, McGhee DE, Schwartz JL. Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: the implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1998; 74(6):1464-80. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.74.6.1464
  15. Vollrath M, Torgersen S. Personality types and coping. Personality and Individual Differences. 2000; 29(2):367-78. doi: 10.1016/s0191-8869(99)00199-3
  16. Zuckerman M. Sensation seeking: Beyond the oprimul level of arousal. Hillside, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum; 1979.
  17. Zuckerman M. Broad or narrow affect scores for the multiple affect adjective check list? Comment on Hunsley’s “dimensionality of the multiple affect adjective check list-revised”. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment. 1990; 12(1):93-7. doi:10.1007/BF00960456
  18. Olson MA, Fazio RH. Implicit acquisition and manifestation of clasically conditioned attitudes. Social Cognition. 2002; 20(2):89-104. doi: 10.1521/soco.20.2.89.20992
  19. Baumeister RF, Vohs KD. Self regulation, ego depletion, and motivation. Social and Personality Psychology Compass. 2007; 1(1):115-28. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00001.x
  20. Betsch T, Plessner H, Schwieren C, Gütig R. I like it but I don’t know why: A value-account approach to implicit attitude formation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2001; 27(2):242-53. doi: 10.1177/0146167201272009
  21. Fazio RH, Powell MC, Herr PM. Toward a process model of the attitude–behavior relation: Accessing one’s attitude upon mere observation of the attitude object. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1983; 44(4):723-735. doi: 10.1037//0022-3514.44.4.723
  22. Gorman DM, Mezic J, Mezic I, Gruenewald PJ. Agent-based modeling of drinking behavior: A preliminary model and potential applications to theory and practice. American Journal of Public Health. 2006; 96(11):2055-60. doi: 10.2105/ajph.2005.063289
  23. Penzar D, Srbljinović A. Dynamic modeling of ethnic conflicts. International Transactions in Operational Research. 2004; 11(1):63-76. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-3995.2004.t01-1-00439.x
  24. Sellers WI, Hill RA, Logan B. An agent-based model of group decision making in baboons. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 2007; 362(1485):1699-710. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2007.2064
  25. Hegselmann R. Understanding social dynamics: The cellular automata approach. Paper presented at: The Conference of Social Science Microsimulation. London, United Kingdom; 1996.
  26. Bryson JJ, Ando Y, Lehmann H. Agent-based modelling as scientific method: A case study analysing primate social behaviour. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences. 2007; 362(1485):1685-99. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2007.2061
  27. Bryson JJ, Ando Y, Lehmann H. Agent-based models as scientific methodology: A case study analyzing the DomWorld theory of primate social structure and female dominance. Modelling Natural Action Selection. 2011; 427-53. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511731525.024
  28. Adra S, Sun T, MacNeil S, Holcombe M, Smallwood R. Development of a three dimensional multiscale computational model of the human epidermis. PloS one. 2010; 5(1):8511. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008511
  29. Bargh J. Automaticity of everyday life. In: S R, Wyer Jr, editors. Advances in Social Cognition: vol. 10. Newyork: Psychology Press; 1997.
  30. Moors A, De Houwer J. Automaticity: A theoretical and conceptual analysis. Psychological bulletin. 2006; 132(2):297-326. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.132.2.297
  31. Bandura A. Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Michigan: Prentice-Hall; 1986.
  32. Banerjee AV. A simple model of herd behavior. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 1992; 107(3):797-817. doi: 10.2307/2118364
  33. Bikhchandani S, Hirshleifer D, Welch I. A theory of fads, fashion, custom, and cultural change as informational cascades. Journal of Political Economy. 1992; 100(5):992-1026. doi: 10.1086/261849
  34. Sun R. Cognition and multi-agent interaction: From cognitive modeling to social simulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2006.
  35. Cai H, Chen Y, Fang H. Observational learning: Evidence from a randomized natural field experiment. American Economic Review. 2009; 99(3):864-82. doi: 10.1257/aer.99.3.864
Journal of Advanced Medical Sciences and Applied Technologies
Volume 2, Issue 4 - Serial Number 4
9
December 2016
Pages 291-298