Social psych unit2

Class #8 - 2/18/25:

The self: structure and content 

• I (experiential consciousness)

  • Is always changing (environment is always changing) - changes from moment to moment

• Me (self-concept) 

  • Is a set of beliefs and feelings about who (I) am

  • Helps predict behavior 

  • Hypothetically, infants have no self concept

• Looking glass-self: reflected appraisals (how other people respond to us)

  • Recognizing that you are something distinct and different from everything else  

Independent self-system:

• Self has a membrane that others cannot permeate 

• The self is separate and distinct from others 

• Still have relationships but the way they talk about themselves is separate and distinct

Interdependent self-system:

• Self is permeable

• Self is integrated and is apart of others 

Self concept: 

• Independent:

  • Identity is personal, defined by individual traits and goals

  • I matter - Personal achievement and fulfillment, my rights and liberties are most important

  • Disapproves of conformity

  • Illustrative motto: “to thine own self be true”

  • Individualistic western, industrial and capitalist

• Interdependent:

  • Identity is social, defined by connections with others 

  • We matters - group goals and solidarity; our social responsibilities and relationships

  • Egotism

  • Motto: “ no one is an island”

  • Collectivistic asian and third world, hunter gatherer tribe (everyone depends on each other and there is no competition or private ownership) 

Beliefs about the self:

• Self-esteem: a global (is not domain specific, and is completely separate from what you have achieved and done) evaluation (affective judgement) about one’s value and competency 

  • Considered really important

Measuring self-esteem: most effective to ask people to rate themselves on certain questions

• Sample items from Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale

  • I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal basis with others

  • I feel that I have a number of good qualities

  • I am able to do things as well as most other people

  • On the whole, I am satisfied with myself

  • At times I think I am no good at all (RS)

• Someone will high self esteem will strongly agree with these statements

• Someone with low self esteem will strongly disagree 

Beliefs about the self:

• Self-esteem

• Rotter’s Locus of Control (older idea, has been replaced)

• Bandura’s self-efficacy 

  • Grit and perseverance are important to high self-efficacy

    • Cope with stress much better than ppl with low self efficacy

  • Low self efficacy runs off of people only thinking about their failures

    • Hallmark of major depression 

Self-efficacy scale:

• When I make plans, I am certain that I can make them work

• When I decide to do something, I go right to work at it

• I am a self-reliant person

• If I see someone I would like to meet, I go to that person instead of waiting for him or her to come to me

• I do not seem capable of dealing with problems that come up in life 

  • Someone will high self efficacy will strongly agree with these statements

  • Someone with low self efficacy will strongly disagree

Self-regulation:

• Self-control (or self-regulation): is a limited capacity resource 

  • People with low self-control or high impulsivity are more likely to end up in jail

  • It can be “exhausted” in the short term (glucose expenditure) 

  • However, repeated use (practice over extended periods) can strengthen or expand the capacity

  • Its association with favorable social/psychological outcomes is robust (strong and healthy)

• Video: exerting self-control requires a lot of energy and can deplete it 

  • They also gave people sugar (through lemonade) to restore their energy levels while making people exert self control - people who did not get sugar could not display self control as well as people who were able to get their energy back up 

  • In the short term, self control can deplete energy 

  • In the long term, self control gets stronger (if you do it every day like exercising) 

• Marshmallow with 4 year olds (put 1 in front of them and told them to resist, if they delayed gratification then they got another one)

  • Kids who were able to delay gratification (not eat the one marshmallow when they were told not to) grew up to be adults who were much more successful in all aspects of their life compared to the ones who ate the marshmallow and did not delay gratification

Activity: compared to the average RU student, are you: (More, equal, or less) 

• Wise = equal

• Original = equal

• Immature = less

• Prejudiced = equal

• Reliable = equal

• Rude = less

• Honest = more

• Superficial = equal

• Ethical = equal

  • The majority of people will rank themselves higher for the positive ones and lower for the negatives, but statistically this isn’t possible because as a whole, it should be average (not everyone can be more smart)

  • There isn’t an objective measure for any of these traits, and none of them can be objectively measured or quantified 

• The “better than average” effect: people think they are better than the average 

Study: “everybody loves me: metaperceptions of dating popularity”:

• People had to make a video of themselves for a dating profile

• They also predicted how their own video profiles would be ranked by others in comparison to 6 other video profiles

  • 1 was the best, 7 was the worst 

  • 25% of subjects thought their video was the best

  • 20% thought their video was second best

  • 20% thought their video was third best

  • 25% of subjects thought theirs was right in the middle (4th)

  • 5% thought their video was 5th best 

  • 5% though their video was the worst

• Then people who did not make videos ranked the videos

  • Most thought the videos were mid to really bad 

Other self-enhancing biases:

• False consensus: overestimating the commonality of one’s opinions or undesirable behaviors/failures 

  • Ex: I cheat on my partner/test, but so does everyone else 

  • Ex: I always speed on the highway, but so does everyone else

    • Neither of these are true (not everyone does) 

    • You think most people do these, but you don’t know that 

    • It is a way to rationalize immoral behavior

    • If you share these immoral behaviors with other people you know, you are more likely to believe that a majority of people also do these immoral behaviors

• False uniqueness: underestimating the commonality of one’s abilities or desirable behaviors/successes

  • Ex: you think you are the only person who would stop on the side of the road to help someone 

    • Protects your sense of self esteem to make you feel like a good person 

• Unrealistic optimism: Weinstein’s RU students (study)

  • Asked people - compared to the average RU student, how likely (more, equal, or less) do you think you are to have _____ (heart attacks, early death, etc)

    • A majority of the people thought they were more likely to have the successes in life and less likely to have the negative health risks and effects happen to them 

    • The participants in the study were average RU students - why would they think that they are more likely to have good things happens and less likely to have bad things happen 

      • If you think you are less likely to be susceptible to certain health risks, you won’t go on diets or get screening which could develop these health risks 

  • Ex: no one else could have been promoted in this job as fast as I did 

    • You don’t know that because no one else did it 

• Barnum effect: if it’s flattering, it must be true: people are much more likely to accept information that reflects favorably on themselves 

  • Any info that is unflattering you will challenge, question, and doubt 

  • Barnum was famous for the circus (there is a sucker born every minute) - it is easy to dope the public for their money

  • Ex: tell people to take a personality test and tell half the people that they are going to have a great life and be favorable, and the other half that they are the opposite

    • No one doubts or questions the positive successful feedback

    • People who got a negative response for their personality doubted the results 

Self-knowledge:

• How good are we at remembering our own attitudes, emotions, and behavior

• “Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory”

• “It is necessary to remember that events happened in the desired manner”

  • We will remember things that in a way will reflect favorably upon ourselves

• “The easiest person to deceive is one’s self”

  • We lie to ourselves but when we do it, we don’t think we are lying 

Remembering our own attitudes:

• Attitudes: remembering ‘73 and ‘82

  • Researchers asked the same group of people what they thought their attitudes were in relation to legalizing pot, women’s rights, and affirmative action in ‘73 and in ‘82, and asked them what they thought their attitudes were 9 years ago when they were first asked (the second time they were asked) 

    • Most people remembered their attitudes being a lot less favorable in each category than what they actually were (people tend to become more conservative towards issues as they become old)

    • Their current attitudes in ‘82 closely matched what they remembered their attitudes being in ‘73, when their actual attitudes in ‘73 were much much more favorable

    • People are using their current attitudes as an anchor and adjusting from it 

• Remembering our own emotions 

  • People were asked to maintain a daily diary on what day of their menstrual cycle they were on (3-4 months) and they had to summarize what their overall mood was each day

  • They had to recall what their mood was and compared it to what their actual mood was (referring to the journals) 

  • During premenstrual phase, they recalled that they were in a really bad mood but their diary showed them being in a less bad mood than they thought 

  • During menstrual phase, they recalled being in a pretty bad mood but their journals showed them being in a less bad mood than they thought 

  • During inter-menstrual phase, they recalled being in an ok mood but their journal showed them being in a worse mood than they thought 

Self-knowledge:

• How good are we at explaining our one preference, our own behavior, its causes and consequences? 

  • Ex: power saw and documentary study: there was a power saw that was really loud while teachers were grading papers  

    • They thought they were grading their papers worse than normal because of the noise of the power saw 

    • Got 2 groups of subjects to watch the same documentary, and had them rate the documentary

      • Half watched it in a quiet environment, and the other half watched it with the annoying power saw that the teachers heard when grading their paper

• Hypothesis is that the group watching with the power saw would produce worse ratings 

• There was no difference between the ratings of the documentary

Class #9 - 2/20/25:

Poster example: introspection 

• Half of subjects are asked to write down reasons why they like or dislike the poster

• Half of the subjects don’t write down what they like or dislike

• Hypothesis: ppl who had to write down would be less satisfied with their posters later on than ppl who didn’t write down reasons 

  • This was proven to be true

People were more likely to pick the first perfume in the array (not a single person said they chose that perfume because it was first in the line up) 

• People don’t know why they do what they do but they can easily generate explanations for why they do it 

MCQ example:

• Based on your past experience, which should you do - stick with the first choice, or change your answer - here is what students and most professors believe occurs when they change their answer

• 55% said it would hurt their score

• 19% said dont know

• 15% said it will improve their score

• 11% said it wouldn’t change or matter

• In several disciplines, they had students track their actual data when they changed their answers

  • 20% changed their right answers to wrong answers

  • 22% changed their answer from wrong to wrong

  • 58% changed their answer from wrong to right 

• Occurs because what sticks in our head the most is when we get something wrong when we could have gotten it right 

• A lot of professors will also tell their students to go with their first choice and their instincts 

How we come to know ourselves:

• Self-perception theory: we infer our attitudes and feelings by observing our own behavior (and its context) 

• Facial and kinesthetic feedback studies on the evaluation of stimuli and emotional state

• Explaining the overjustification effect (inferring extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation)  

• People who simulate a smile feel more positive moods, favorable evaluation of neutral stimuli

• People who simulate a frown feel more negative moods, and have an unfavorable evaluation of neutral stimuli 

• If you have your subjects head nod, they are more likely to accept the persuasive message

  • Doing this causes you to agree

• If you have your subjects shake their head, they are more likely to reject the persuasive message

• It is what your body is doing that tells your brain if you should agree or disagree with the stimuli being presented 

  • Pulling toward - pushing away

• Power posing: how you present yourself is how your body tells your brain how you feel

  • If you have a strong and powerful pose, your brain makes you feel more confident and vice versa

• The overjustification effect: if given a reward for doing something they enjoy doing, people will do it less (or less well) after the reward is ceased than if never given a reward at all

Overjustification effect study:

• Children were given an opportunity to pick out their favorite toy and could play with them as much as they wanted (baseline)

• One group of kids were given a reward for playing with their favorite toy

• One group of kids were not given a reward for playing 

• Results

  • Baseline had no difference between the two groups

  • Kids who got the reward played with their toy even more, and kids who did not get a reward played just a little less

  • Kids who got the reward played much less when they were not given a reward again, and kids who never got a reward just played a little less than before but significantly more than the other group

• Rewards lead us to infer extrinsic motivation rather than intrinsic motivation for our behavior

• We infer that people who do things for no extrinsic rewards must be because they like it (intrinsic motivation)

• We infer that people who do things for extrinsic rewards do it for the money and don’t like it 

Social comparison:

• Others are a “standard” against which we evaluate ourselves

  • If you think you are a great singer and you try to make a career out of singing but you never compare yourself to other singers, you will fail miserably if you turn out to be a bad singer 

• We use similar others, most often from reference groups

  • Natural inclination to engage in social comparison

  • We compare ourselves to people similar to us

• Upward comparisons

  • We compare ourselves to someone who is in some way better than us

  • Give us an example of someone we can strive to be like 

  • A motivational boost - who we can be like

  • Makes us feel worse about ourselves 

• Downward comparisons

  • We compare ourselves to someone who is in some way worse than us

  • Want to feel better about ourselves 

• In ambiguous situations, other people’s behavior (or performance) is a useful source of information  

  • Want to know if we do better or worse than average

Inferring emotion - self perception, attributional, and social comparison processes

• The 2-factor theory of emotion

  • First, experience physiological arousal (sympathetic nervous system arousal) - nervous, excited, etc

    • Nervousness and excitement are the same physical feeling, the context and how you frame your mind changes how you feel

  • Interpret arousal (make an attribution for it) - use context to figure out how you are feeling

  • “Suproxin” study - suproxin was supposed to increase visual abilities

    • Subproxin was not a thing 

    • Half of subjects received a placebo and half got epinephrine (releases adrenaline)

    • Half of subjects were informed and half not informed of the effect

    • Subjects were paired with hostile or euphoric confederate

    • Those who were informed about the effects and were with the hostile person did not report any anger or hostility

    • Those who were not informed and were with the hostile person did report anger and hostility  

      • Thought oh this person is angry, i must be angry too 

    • Those who were informed and paired with the euphoric person did not feel euphoria

    • People who were not informed and were paired with the euphoric person did report feeling euphoric 

Misattribution of arousal (fear or sexual attraction): study 

• Half of the men crossed a low and secure bridge

• Half of the men crossed a high and wobbly bridge  

• After they crossed the bridge they are approached by an attractive woman who gives them a survey about the park and says “if you want to know any more about the park, please contact me at this number”

• Hypothesized that the second group would be highly aroused and would misattribute that arousal to the woman 

  • 24% of the group that crossed a low and secure bridge called the woman

  • 100% of the group that crossed the wobbly high bridge called the woman

• People have a tendency to misattribute their arousal to interpersonal attraction

Self-presentation phenomena: impression management

• Spotlight effect: overestimating the extent to which our actions/appearance are noticed by and affect others

• Illusion of transparency: overestimating others’ accuracy in reading our thoughts and feelings

  • “Couldn’t you tell that i was angry/wanted to leave” no bruh thats not possible they cant read ur mind

• Self-handicapping: creating an excuse for possible future failure

  • When people really care about their performance, identity, and sense of self worth 

  • If you are afraid of failing in the future you do this

• False modesty 

False modesty: expression of gratitude for success (study)

• Subjects asked to write about a success in their life (story)

  • Half asked to write it and then read it in front of an audience

  • Half told just to write their success but do it anonymously

• People gave a lot more gratitude to others for their success when they were told they had to read it in front of an audience

• People gave much less gratitude to others for their success when they were told to write it and it would be anonymous 

• People want to have self preservation 

The big picture: how biased are we toward the self and is it adaptive or not?

• Biases exert themselves when information is ambiguous or lacking, or judgements are subjective

• Motives are multiple: accuracy, homeostasis (self-verification), self-enhancement

• The self is social, defined in part by and subject to the influence of others, as individuals and as groups

• A little self-serving deception may be adaptive

  • Benefits of unrealistic optimism**

  • The phenomenon of depressive realism

    • People suffering of depression are more accurate in how others see them 

Is self-deception beneficial? study

• Assessed self-deception with “embarrassing admissions” measure

• Those scoring highest (in self-deception) were better off psychologically, socially, and physically

Class #10 - 2/25/25:

A little bit of deception is not a bad thing, but might even be crucial

• People from the podcast said that the people who lied to themselves raced faster

• Assessed self-deception with “embarrassing admissions” measure

  • People aren't consciously lying, but they refuse to admit these things to themselves because they are too embarrassed to admit it 

  • The ones who shows the greatest level of self deception were more successful -> they do better in every area of life than people who don’t self deceive 

When self-serving biases become a problem:

• 90% of managers believe themselves to be better than their peers

  • People feel under satisfied and less helpful so they look for a different job 

• In marriages, women say they do 70% of the housework; men say they do 45%

  • They are both over estimating 

• When groups succeed, members take a disproportionate share of credit; when they fail. Members take less than proportionate share of blame

  • Does not make for good relationships within workplaces

When self-serving biases become a problem - high SE and the problem of “threatened egotism”

• Low SE is associated with anti-social, especially aggressive, behavior (or is it?)

• Students who were told that they were really smart when they did good on a test were more reluctant to want to take more tests after they did bad on the second test

• Students who were told they tried really hard when they did good on a test wanted to take more tests after they did bad on the second test

• Prisoners felt much better about themselves on self-esteem tests than college students 

• Violent criminals, bullies, and perpetrators of genocide have high self-appraisals and believe themselves superior to others

• Inflated SE may lead to threatened egotism (they think they are being disrespected and not being given the high appraisals they deserve)

  • If my appraisal of myself is at the same level of your appraisal of me, then everything is good

  • If my level of appraisal is much higher than the level of your appraisal of me, then I will feel disrespected because I feel that you don’t see me at the level that I see myself

    • Generates conflict and often aggressive behavior 

Attitude: an evaluative orientation toward a specific object 

• Affect (emotional, how we feel), cognition (set of beliefs) and behavior

• Favorable or unfavorable

• Negative or positive

• Attitudes are the cause of behaviors

Components of attitudes

• Ex: attitude on gun control (is positive in this case) 

  • Cognitive: gun owners end up shooting themselves more often than they shoot thieves

  • Affective: guns frighten me

  • Behavioral: i vote for gun control advocates whenever possible   

• Expect consistency between the ABCs of the attitudes

Origins of attitudes:

• Human beings are born with certain preferences but most are learned and we start learning them very early on in life

• Cognitively-based (based on beliefs)

  • Attitudes towards household appliances (no one has a strong emotional bond towards their kitchen appliances) 

    • They like or dislike because of their beliefs (large capacity, high energy efficiency)

• Affectively-based via learning

  • Classical conditioning: repeatedly conditioning 

    • If we associate a fear or pain inducing stimulus with something that is a neutral stimulus, we will come to avoid that neutral stimulus and associate it with pain or fear

  • Operant conditioning: attitudes we receive punishment or reward for

    • Attitude toward democracy: having 3rd graders write what they love about democracy, and if they were the best one they got to read their essay in front of people (reward)

      • Communism was seen as a threat in the 1950s

      • If anyone wrote against democracy they would be threatened and their parents would be called

      • Writing continuously about what you love about democracy as a child who doesn’t know politics were conditioned to like democracy 

  • Behaviorally-based (self-perception): behaviors tell us what our attitudes are 

    • Standard ways of thinking is that attitudes determine behaviors, in behaviorally-based, the causal arrow goes both ways

  • Genetically-based: predispositions toward acquiring specific attitudes

    • No evidence that sets of genes cause or make people have certain attitudes

      • Genes predispose and experience disposals -> they tip the playing field that makes it easier or more difficult to acquire certain attitudes, but your experience determines where you finally end up, and it can push against the genetic gradient or go with it

Attitude-behavior link

• Attitudes often do not predict behavior well 

• Experiment: wanted to figure out if people’s prejudices were good determinants of behavior

  • Took chinese people around different places

    • Found that there were only 2-3 places that turned them away because he was with a chinese couple 

    • researcher came back and then sent letters to all of the establishments they went to 

    • Huge majority of responses came back and said “we don’t serve people of chinese descendent” 

  • Peoples expressed attitudes did not match well with what they actually did

  • The reason might be because there was economic pressure and they needed money from customers

  • Used meta-analysis to help 

• When do attitudes predict behavior

  • Search for moderating variables - another variable that determines when something does/doesn’t happen

  • strength/accessibility: if you can respond right away, your attitude is much stronger (you can access it quickly which means its strong)

  •  Direct vs indirect acquisition: 

  • Congruent specificity: the idea that you need to measure the attitude and the behavior with an equal degree of specificity 

  • Social desirability: people will do what they think others think is right (for controversial issues) 

Theory of planned behavior:

• Planned = control processes (most of our behavior is NOT the result of controlled processes) 

• Specific attitude toward the behavior (hard to form attitudes on our own without influence from others) -> behavioral intention -> behavior

• Subjective norms (need support of others to build a behavioral intention) -> behavioral intention -> behavior  

• Perceived behavioral control (must be convinced that you can carry out the behavior) -> behavioral intention -> behavior

  • Need to clear all hurdles (bolded ones)

  • Even if you clear all hurdles, sometimes our intentions do not result in predicted behavior

  • Behavioral intention is the best predictor of behavior 

The role of automaticity in attitude-behavior relations

• Explicit (conscious) attitudes

  • Use when we have time, when we are motivated, and when the resources we have are available

• Implicit non-conscious) attitudes 

  • We are usually under this because we do not have access to one of the necessary resources or motivation needed for conscious attitudes

Persuasion - the process of attitude change

• Source: who or what is doing the persuading

• Target: the person at whom the persuasion attempt is directed

• Message: the content and nature of the persuasive message

• Discrepancy: the distance of the message from the target’s current attitude 

  • Large discrepancy message will flip the attitude

Central + peripheral routes to persuasion

• Central route: 

  • Analytical and motivated to process the information 

  • High effort: elaborate, agree or counterargue

  • logical arguments evoke enduring agreement 

  • Long lasting and enduring attitude change

  • Likely to change behavior 

• Peripheral route:

  • Not analytical or involved

  • Low effort: use peripheral cues, rule of thumb heuristics

    • Look at the person and see how the message makes you feel/if you like the person (ads use this)

  • Cue trigger liking and acceptance, often only temporary 

  • Less likely to change behavior

  • Typical of most advertisements - they know the people listening are not going to exert time or effort 

  • Typical peripheral route ad

    • Geico ad just says “i'm here to save you money” - doesn’t tell you how or what but most people already know what geico is

 Class #11 - 2/27/25:

Source variables in persuasion - peripheral route

• Attractiveness: the more attractive you are, the more likely you are to persuade well

• Credibility: 

  • Perceived expertise

    • Credentials

    • Speech cues

•  Perceived trustworthiness: 

• Self interest: less trustworthy if they are giving a message based on their own self interest 

  • Arguing against their own self interest is seen as highly trustworthy

• Perception of persuasive intent: intentions of giving this persuasive message  

Target variables in persuasion: - central route to whom a message is being directed at

• Expertise: certain level of knowledge

• involvement/self-relevance: you have to care and be involved

• Self-esteem

• Need for cognition: the need to use our minds

• Gender

• Mood: politics was thought to be a male domain in the past 

  • Women were more persuaded by messages than men because they typically relied on peripheral cues rather than central routes 

Peanuts and pepsi study - mood

• Asked if the government should increase funding for cancer research, armed forces, and space exploration 

  • Half of the subjects were told to read persuasive messages without a snack

  • Other half got a snack (peanuts and pepsi) while reading their persuasive message

    • They were put into a mildly positive mood

• The group that got a snack had a significantly higher rating for agreeing with the persuasive messages compared to the control group

Effect of fear - mood

• Subjects were exposed to one of 3 treatments to try and stop smoking

  • Info only group - got info on how to stop smoking

  • Film only group - watched an autopsy of a long term smoker 

  • Film and info group - got both

• Everyone began at the same number of cigarettes smoked per day 

• Film and info group stopped smoking as frequently the most compared to other groups - they continued to decrease amount over time 

• Info group only increased amount of cigarettes smoked per day

• Film only decreased but not as much as film and info group - they tapered off after week one

• You need to emotionally reach people and also tell people how they can achieve their goals 

Message variables

• One sided message: only provides pro of your side and cons of the other side

• Two sided message: provides both pros and both cons of each side 

• Discrepancy from target’s current position

  • Low discrepancy = positions agree

  • High discrepancy = positions disagree

  • If my current attitude is at one end of a pole and your message you are giving is on the other side, there is no attitude for change (large discrepancy)

    • Latitude of rejection

  • If my current attitude and your message are close together, there can be a small attitude change 

    • Falls in the latitude of acceptance 

• strength/quality of argument - when does it make a difference

  • Depends on target mood and target involvement 

Persuasive effect of 1 vs 2 sided messages depends on target’s initial position

• A one sided message is more effective and shows a stronger strength of agreement to those who initially agreed to the position compared to those who initially disagreed

  • Looks like a biased argument to people who initially disagreed 

• A two sided message shows a lot more agreement among people who were initially opposed to the debate than those who initially agreed 

  • Would ideally look like a balanced argument but it doesn’t have that effect 

  • Introduces uncertainty and doubt to those who were quite certain before 

interaction: the effect of one dependent variable depends on the second dependent variable

A persuasive message needs to change attitudes

• Latitude of noncommitment: between latitude of acceptance and latitude of rejection 

  • Get the most attitude change in this area

Message discrepancy interacts with source credibility

• Measured amount of opinion change based on size of discrepancy

•  Subjects had to read poetry -> intentionally written to be really bad

• Small discrepancy would have been that this poem was really bad and can’t go anywhere

• Large discrepancy would be that this poetry work is amazing and should be published 

• One of these works was labeled as T.S. Elliot: he was a high credibility source (super well known poet)

• A. Stearns: adjunct prof in the middle of nowhere ohio: low credibility source 

• T.S. Elliot had a lot more of an opinion change within the small discrepancy change compared to A. Stearns - they both had a small amount opinion change 

• Both T.S. Elliot and A. Stearns did better in the medium discrepancy compared to small discrepancy 

• T.S. Elliot does the best with opinion change in this large discrepancy message

  • A. Stearns does the worst in the large discrepancy message - loses persuasive power 

Effect of argument strength depends on target mood:

• Attitude message with very weak arguments vs attitude message with strong arguments 

• Subjects were induced with a sad or happy mood (not extreme)

  • In a sad mood, strong arguments do much better than weak arguments

    • Like the caution at a traffic intersection - think carefully, slow down, and analyze before you decide (central route)

  • In a happy mood, both weak and strong arguments do well 

    • Like a green light at a traffic intersection - don't slow down, just go (peripheral route)

Effect of argument strength depends on target involvement:

• Surveyed participants on a policy requiring a final exam that you would have to achieve a certain exam on to pass

  • Arguments were either weak or strong

• With the low involvement group (people not affected), the arguments did not make much of a difference

• With the high involvement group (people affected), those presented with strong arguments were really strongly in favor, and those with the weak arguments were really against the policy

Effecting attitude change:

• Most important to match persuasion attempt to attitude basis 

• Phenomenon of psychological reactance 

Matching persuasion attempt to attitude basis:

• Basis of attitude (cognitive [efficiency] or affective [emotions])

• Basis of ad shown (cognitive [features of a product] or affective [emotions])

  • Cognitively-based ads shown to cognitively based people were highly effective in generating favorable thoughts, but those ads shown to affectively based people had a negative effect

  • Affectively based ads shown to affectively based people were effective in generating favorable thoughts, but those ads shown to cognitively based people had a negative effect

• Political attitudes/opinions are so hard to change because they are based on feeling and start with affect, and the knowledge is a structure built around the feeling 

When persuasion backfires: psychological reactance

• College campus had problem with graffiti in bathrooms

  • Wanted to see if they could reduce the amount of graffiti by telling people really harshly, or gently asking them to stop

• When there was a request (gentle) to stop graffiti, there was more graffiti but not as much as when there was a demand, because when they were demanded to stop, students felt a greater need to rebel and do more graffiti

  • Sometimes when we get really angry, we just continue to do the opposite of what is demanded of us

Attitude inoculation (immunize) against peer pressure to smoke

• Measured how much each grade was smoking after they had been through training 

• Control group gets lectures and films against how bad smoking is for you

• Inoculation group got mock peer interactions where other kids try to persuade them to smoke along with lectures and films 

  • Purpose was to help kids develop counter arguments for refusing 

• Control group smoked a lot increasing throughout the years, decreasing at 9th grade but not by much (they smoked a lot)

• Inoculation group smoked much less compared to the control group 

 Class #12 - 3/4/25:

• Subliminal persuasion does not have a huge effect and we don't have to worry about it 

  • Bureaucrats - rats example 

• Attitude: beliefs and feelings are the causes of our behavior 

  • The causal arrow runs in two directions

• Changes in behavior can cause changes in feelings and beliefs 

Self-justification: We must justify our actions to ourselves - we do so by bringing our beliefs and feelings into line with our conduct 

Historical anecdotes: 

• The way you act is going to determine what you think and feel

• Franklin’s way to wind a friend - get him to do something nice for you 

• Douglass’ way to “win” someone's contempt - have them treat you like a slave 

Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance

• When we hold conflicting cognitions (when our behavior is not consistent without attitudes), internal tension (dissonance) is aroused

• If the way we act/behave is the opposite of our attitude (beliefs and feelings), there will be a tension (cognitive dissonance)

  • Can get rid of cognitive dissonance by changing our attitudes to match our behaviors

Ex: two coworkers in IT work tg for a few years, positive never had conflicts

• Now as a result of a prank, girl sends an email to the guy, and the guy’s computer gets disabled

  • She did it voluntarily as a joke

  •  She has positive feelings towards the guy but she did something bad to him

    • She can’t attribute her behavior to anything external because no one forced her to do it = cognitive dissonance

  • She then changes her attitude towards the guy and decides he doesn't like him as much to get rid of cognitive dissonance

Testing cognitive dissonance theory:

• All subjects were told to turn a bunch of knobs (intended to make them bored and have a negative attitude towards the task)

• They were then told to tell the next “subject” that the task was interesting and enjoyable

  • The “subject” was an experimenter who responded with an answer saying that his friend said the task was boring and the subjects had to convince him that it was fun

  • Half of the groups got paid $20 while the other half got paid $1 for this job (to lie)

  • Favor: counterattitudinal advocacy (lie about the task being fun)

• Wanted to see who would show a more favorable attitude toward the task - those paid $1 or those paid $20 to lie

  • Those paid $20 to lie did not convince themselves much that the task was that fun because they could attribute their lying and attitude/behavior to their reward

  • Those paid $1 to lie couldn’t attribute their attitudes and behavior to their reward because they were only paid $1

• Control (not paid anything) rated the task really boring

• $20 group rated the task in the middle (not boring or interesting)

• $1 group rated the task really interesting

Counterattitudinal advocacy and attitude change - self-justification and cognitive dissonance

• Students voluntarily wrote essays supporting police action (for beating up students)

  • Some students got paid $0.50, %1, $5, or $10

  • $0.50 got inadequate external support - not enough to attribute

• $10 group had the least favorable attitude toward the police

• The $0.50 had the most favorable attitudes towards the police because they experienced the most dissonance - they could NOT attribute their behavior towards an external reward

Phenomena explained by cognitive dissonance:

• Self justification through “post-decisional” attitude change

• After choosing between very close alternatives, people upgrade the chosen one and downgrade the rejected ones

  • Brehem’s appliances

    • Told women that they could choose one of two items they rated closest in value (found the most closely rated versions and made women choose which one they liked better)

    • Pre choice: both items were of equal value and she wanted them both

    • Post choice: the chosen item was much more highly rated than the one she didn't choose 

  • Knox’s racetrack bettors 

    • He asked people who were waiting in line to place their bet, and people who had already placed their bet, and asked them what they thought their probability of winning the bet was

    • Before placing the bet, bettors thought they had a 25% chance of winning

    • After placing the bet, bettors thought they had a 50% chance of winning

Phenomena explained by cognitive dissonance

• Physiological arousal accompanies attitude-behavior inconsistency

• Drugs that decrease arousal attenuate attitude change due to dissonance 

• When arousal is attributed to another cause (a placebo), attitude change is eliminated

  • Zanna and Cooper had their subjects take a placebo pill and then wrote a counterattitudinal essay 

  • Half of the participants were told that the pill would cause arousal, half were told nothing about the pill

  • The ones who were told nothing had a much higher amount of agreement with the essay compared to the ones who were told 

    • The subjects who were told the pill causes arousal were able to attribute some of their arousal to the pill, the other group could not 

Phenomena explained by cognitive dissonance:

• Justification of effort

  • Aronson and mills had women join a club and said “you can be members of the club” and made it exclusive

  • The initiation was either mild, severe, or there was no initiation

    • Severe initiation involved embarrassment and was very stressful

  • Initiates then listened to a very dull and boring club discussion, then rated the club and its discussion -> no one wants to go into a club that required so much embarrassment for such a boring meeting 

  • People who went through awful hazing felt a much stronger bonding to their group 

    • Was necessary to change attitudes - brothers got along much better after hazing

  • The people who had no initiation did not like the club that much

  • The people who had a mild initiation liked the club a little more than the ppl with no initiation

  • The people with severe initiation really liked the club

Bem’s self-perception theory: alternate explanation:

• People determine their attitudes by observing their own behavior

• There is NO internal tension or dissonance

• A simpler, “purely cognitive” explanation, based on attributional inferences

The paradox of “barely sufficient” punishment 

• Which is more effective in the long run: 

  • the threat of severe or mild punishment?

  • Mild punishment works better -> you are going to change your attitude if the punishment is mild 

 Mild threat resulted in reduced liking for forbidden toys:

• Want to see how much a child likes a toy

  • They originally rank their favorite toy really high (both groups)

• One group is going to be told that they will get severe punishment if they play with their favorite toy

• One group is going to be told that they will get mild punishment if they play with their favorite toy 

• After the threat: the children who were told they would get severely punished rated their favorite toy even higher, and the children who were told they would get mildly punished rated their favorite toy less attractive 

  • A couple of weeks later,  80% of children who were given a severe threat were playing with the toy 

  • 30% of children given a mild threat were playing with the toy

    • Because they have high cognitive dissonance (they changed their attitude to not like the toy as much)

    • This is not a conscious activity

Why is the threat of mild punishment more effective?

• self-justification/self-perception

  • Mild: I don't do it because I don't want to 

  • Severe: I don’t do it because of the threat

• Cognitive dissonance:

  • Mild: I want to do it; I'm not doing it, but the threat is insufficient justification - high dissonance

  • Severe: I want to do it; I’m not doing it because of the threat - low dissonance 

Resolving the dilemma:

• Theories are complementary explanations, NOT mutually exclusive alternatives

• Self-perception theory is better at explaining attitude formation 

 Class #13 - 3/6/25:

Self affirmation: attitude-behavior inconsistency threatens our self esteem

• We recover it by changing attitude to match behavior 

• A unique prediction: we can reduce the threat by affirming our competence or goodness on another, unrelated dimension - which will “short-circuit” the attitude change

Study: for self affirmation theory

• Subjects chose between equally desirable music albums 

  • Normally, people will upgrade their liking for the album they chose and downgrade their liking for the album they did not choose to justify their decision and get rid of any dissonance

• Some subjects were given a chance to self-affirm (by donning a white lab coat) - which should only work for science majors 

  • Wearing a white lab coat is a big big honor and accomplishment for science majors

  • Half of the subjects were randomly assigned to wear the lab coat, and half were not assigned to wear the lab coat

  • The ones who were not allowed to wear the lab coat did not have the chance to increase their self affirmation 

• What were the effects on the typical “spreading of alternatives”

• Subjects that were not wearing a lab coat had a big increase in positive evaluation of their chosen album after their decision from both business and science majors

• Subjects who were wearing a lab coat and were business majors had no difference between if they were wearing a lab coat or not in their increase in positive evaluation of a chosen album after their decision

• Subjects who were wearing a lab coat and were SCIENCE majors had a much less positive increases in evaluation of their chosen album compared to the subjects who hadn’t worn the lab coat