Lecture 11 / Attitudes & Behavior

Behavior Shaping Attitudes

Behavior can also form/change attitudes (e.g., adapting to a new job positions and career choices).

LaPiere's Study (1930s)

Surveyed American hotels, restaurants, and clubs about allowing Chinese people to enter, and all responded negatively. However, when he visited these establishments with a Chinese couple, they were welcomed without issue, highlighting the difference between stated attitudes and actual behavior.

Behavior-Attitude Associations

Our movements can influence whether we accept a message or refuse it (e.g., leaning forward while reading increases the chance of acceptance).

Self-Perception Theory (Bem, 1965)

Says that when internal cues are weak or ambiguous, people infer their own attitudes and emotions by observing their freely and actively chosen behavior and the context around it. This is the basis for foot-in-the-door methods, but only works for attitudes that are not important to us and we have no prior knowledge about them.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger, 1957)

Individuals experience an unpleasant state of mental discomfort (dissonance) when holding conflicting beliefs, or when they are aware of an inconsistency between important attitudes and their actions. This discomfort motivates people to reduce the inconsistency by changing their behavior, justifying their actions, or ignoring conflicting information to restore internal consistency.

Preconditions for Cognitive Dissonance

1. Perceiving the action as internally inconsistent. 2. Perceiving the action as freely chosen, rather than forced by external factors. 3. Experiencing uncomfortable physiological arousal (discomfort or guilt). 4. Attributing that uncomfortable arousal directly to the inconsistency between your attitude and action.

Insufficient Justification Effect

When offered a small reward or weak incentive to perform a behavior that contradicts their beliefs, individuals internally justify that behavior by adopting a positive attitude toward it.

Effort Justification Effect

People place a higher value on outcomes that require significant effort, time, or sacrifice to achieve. This helps individuals justify their actions, ensuring that labor feels worthwhile even if the results are mediocre.

Justifying Decisions

Making a choice means accepting the disadvantages of the chosen option and sacrificing the benefits of the non-chosen alternative.

Post-Decisional Regret Effect

The negative emotion and self-blame experienced after making a choice that leads to a poor outcome or when realizing an alternative option was superior.

Minimizing the Inconsistencies

Trivializing the behavior or adding cognitions to make it consonant (e.g., calling a large cake a "reward" for a week of dieting).

Minimizing Perception of Free Choice

Using external attribution and saying that someone forced the behavior.

Attributing the Arousal to Something Else

Suppressing the discomfort, such as using drugs or alcohol to numb feelings.

Reaffirming Self-Worth Integrity

Focusing on integrity to reduce dissonance (e.g., saying "I'm a good doctor").

Changing Future Behavior (The Hypocrisy Effect)

A psychological phenomenon where individuals feel compelled to change their behavior to match their stated beliefs, typically induced after they publicly advocate for a behavior they have failed to practice.

Dissonance and Culture

People from individualistic cultures tend to experience cognitive dissonance more frequently, and in collectivist cultures, there is a high level of tolerance for dissonance.

The Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA, Fishbein & Ajzen, 1967/1980)

Posits that a person's behavior is determined by their intention to perform it, which is driven by their attitude toward the behavior and subjective norms. It suggests people consider consequences before acting, focusing on voluntary behaviors.

Attitude Accessibility

The influence of an attitude is affected by self-monitoring, self-awareness, and attitude strength (how frequently activated, well-established, and self-relevant it is). It can also be oppressed by other aspects, like social norms or habits.

Attitude Correspondence

The target and behavior need to be exactly the same, requiring an appropriate level of specificity and object-behavior target correspondence.

Belief in Personal Control (Theory of Planned Behavior, Ajzen, 1991)

Emphasizes that a person needs the ability and opportunity to act; for example, loving Ferraris won't influence purchasing behavior if you cannot actually afford one