Ch. 4 - Behaviors and Attitudes

Attitude

feelings, often influenced by our beliefs, that predisposed us to respond favorably or unfavorably to objects, people, and events

In studies on attitudes, people’s expressed attitudes hardly predicted their varying behaviors

• Student attitudes toward cheating bore little relation to the likelihood of their cheating

• Attitudes toward organized religion were only modestly linked with weekly worship attendance

• Self-described racial attitudes provided little clue to behaviors in actual situations

3 Components of attitudes (ABCs)

• Affective = feeling

• Behavioral = action, intention

• Cognitive = thinking, belief

Explicit vs implicit attitudes

Explicit: attitudes that you have and can say about something

Implicit: attitudes that you do not immediately know you have or can’t say about something

Behavior is best predicted with a combo of both measures

How to measure explicit attitudes

• Self-reporting through Likert scales or visual analog scales

• Observing behavior

How to measure implicit attitudes

• We can construct measures of incidental behavior reflecting implicit attitudes

  • Movement (ex: mouse and eye tracking)

  • Response time (ex: IAT)

  • Language use (ex: data mining)

• Physiology

  • Skin conductance (sweating)

  • EEG

  • fMRI

When do our attitudes predict behavior?

• Other influences on what we say and do are minimal

• Attitude is specific to the behavior

• Attitude is potent

Implicit association test (IAT)

a computer-driven assessment that uses reaction time to measure how quickly people associate concepts

Millions of IAT assessments show:

• Implicit biases are pervasive

• People differ in implicit bias

• People are often unaware of their implicit biases

Influences on what we say and do are minimal

Situational influences can induce people to violate their deepest convictions

Attitude is specific to the behavior

Specific, relevant attitudes do predict intended and actual behavior

• To change habits through persuasion, we must alter people’s attitudes toward specific practices

• Ex: attitudes toward “health fitness” vs attitudes about “jogging”

Attitude is Potent

Attitude predicts behavior better when the attitude is potent

• Attitude becomes potent if we think about them

• Self-awareness promotes consistency between words and deeds

• Attitudes that best predict behavior are also stable – when forged by experience, they are more accessible, more enduring, and more likely to guide actions

When does our behavior affect our attitudes?

• Attitudes follow behavior

• We come to believe in what we stand up for

• Mental aftereffects of our behavior appear in many social-psychological examples of self-persuasion 

Roleplaying

A set of norms that defines how people in a given social position ought to behave

• When we step into a new role, we may at first feel phony; but soon the role begins to fit

• Ex: Stanford prison study

Saying becomes believing 

• People often adapt what they say to please their listeners; and, often, they begin to believe what they are saying

• When there is no compelling external explanation for one’s words, saying becomes believing 

Evil and Moral Acts

• Evil sometimes results from gradually escalating commitments

  • One small evil act erodes one’s moral sensitivity, making it easier to perform a worse act (ex: white lies)

• In wartime, soldiers ordered to kill may initially react with revulsion – but not for long

  • People tend to dehumanize their enemies

  • Same occurs in peacetime, such as when a group holds another in slavery

• Similar effect works to shape moral acts

• Our character is reflected in what we do when we think no one is looking

• Moral action, especially when chosen rather than coerced, affects moral thinking

  • Ex: children and a battery-controlled robot toy

• Positive behavior also fosters liking

Why does our behavior affect our attitudes?

• Self-presentation theory

• Cognitive dissonance theory

• Self-perception theory

Self-presentation theory

assumes that for strategic reasons we express attitudes that make us appear consistent

• We may automatically pretend we hold attitudes consistent with our behaviors

Cognitive Dissonance

Tension that arises when one is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions

• Having made a decision between two equally attractive choices, people often become aware of dissonant cognitions

  • Desirable features of what was rejected and undesirable features of what was chosen

  • People reduce dissonance by upgrading the chosen alternative and downgrading the chosen option—leading to a choices-influence-preferences effect 

Reducing cognitive dissonance

• Adding cognitions

• Altering importance of cognitions

• Changing cognitions

dissonance reduction follows the path of least resistance

• Past behavior is impossible to change

• Perceptions of behavior are hard to change

• But attitudes are relatively easy to change

Festinger Study - insufficient justification

• Subjects engage in a really boring task involving wooden pegs

• The experimenter asks subject for a “small favor”: to greet the next subject and tell him that the task was really fun

  • ⅓ of the subjects paid $20 for the favor

  • ⅓ paid $1

  • ⅓ control - no lie and no pay

• Cognition 1: that task was very boring

• Cognition 2: i just told someone it was fun

• Cognition 3: justification?

  • I got $20 - sufficient justification for lying

  • I got $1 - insufficient justification for lying

  • I didn’t get any money and I didn’t lie - no dissonance

Selective Exposure

The tendency to seek info and media that agree with one’s views and to avoid dissonant info

Insufficient Justification

reduction of dissonance by internally justifying one’s behavior when external justification is “insufficient”

Self-perception theory

The theory that when we are unsure of our attitudes, we infer them much as would someone observing us—by looking at our behavior and the circumstances under which it occurs

• especially true when we can’t easily attribute our behavior to external constraints

• facial feedback effect

• overjustification effect

Facial Feedback Effect

The tendency of facial expressions to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger, or happiness

Overjustification Effect

The result of bribing people to do what they already like doing; they may then see their actions as externally controlled rather than intrinsically appealing

• Alternative explanation to findings of cognitive dissonance

• A behavior is “overjustified” when there is more than one sufficient reason to do it

  • The intrinsic reason (it’s fun; I want to)

  • The extrinsic reason (it pays well; I’ll get good recommendation)

• When this happens, the extrinsic reason (“the reward”) discounts the intrinsic reason (“the fun”)

Dissonance Theory

We justify our behavior to reduce our internal discomfort

• Dissonance theory can’t explain the attitude changes that occur without dissonance; and it doesn’t explain the overjustification effect

Self-perception theory

We observe our behavior and make reasonable inferences about our attitudes

• explains attitude formation - as we act and reflect, we develop more readily accessible attitudes to guide future behavior

Self-affirmation theory

People often experience a self-image threat after engaging in an undesirable behavior; and they can compensate by affirming another aspect of the self