A → B

A ← B

Attitude Affecting Behaviour:

1. Factors within an Attitude

   → The Strength of an Attitude

   • The stronger the attitude, the stronger the link to behaviour

   → The Accessibility of the Attitude

   • The easier it is to bring the attitude to mind, the stronger the link between attitude and behaviour

   • Factors of an Accessible Attitude:

     • Priming or practicing by recalling the attitude often

     • Relevance to a life event

     • Strong Attitudes

     • Direct Experience

   → The Specificity of the Attitude

   • The more specific the attitude, the stronger the link between attitude and behaviour

   • Example:

     • The young woman is determined to be fit (general) but she likes weights (specific) than floor exercises so she uses the weights more often.

Behaviour Affecting Attitude:

Theory: When people engage in a behaviour, particularly an unexpected one, thoughts and feelings towards that behaviour are likely to change

Self Perception Theory: Daryl Bem 1967

→ People can analyse their own behaviour in the same way they would analyse someone else’s behaviour.

→ This often occurs when there is some uncertainty about this attitude. The behaviour helps the person to conclude what their attitude is.

Cognitive Dissonance:

The attitude-behaviour link isn’t always consistent.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory : The idea that people need to be consistent in attitudes and beliefs

Cognitive Dissonance Definition: An uncomfortable feeling caused by having two disagreeing ideas ( B ←→ A) at the same time

→ To resolve Cognitive Dissonance:

• Change the behaviour (to agree with the attitude)

• Change the thought (to agree with the behaviour)

• Add a new thought (to justify the behaviour)

• Trivialise the dissonance (so it is of no importance)

→ Situational Pressures:

• Social desirability

• High self monitors

• Social norms

• Peer pressure

• Authority effects

→ Consequences of Inconsistency between Attitudes and Behaviour

• Mental distress:

  → An individual with ongoing inconsistency between attitude and behaviour can experience negative stress that harms relationships with others

• Inability to predict behaviour

  → EXAMPLE:

  • Social desirability makes it difficult to discover if people are attending an event as it is common to say yes (often to save face), but the behaviour is not to attend. This can cause financial problems

  • Social desirability occurs with people being more likely to indicate a positive attitude to socially acceptable practices such as using seat belts but may not behave this way when driving, increasing danger to society

  → Attitudinal fallacy occurs when people verbally indicate an attitude but do not carry out that behaviour. This can decrease the validity of social psychology research as measuring behaviour in a valid way is not very easy to do so.

Trivialise: make something seem less important, significant or complex than it really is

Social Desirability: Trying to act like you think you should depending on the social norms and environment around you

Save Face: People pleasing attitude / like saving your dignity without actually following through with your behaviour

Fallacy:

Dissonance: