Chapter 4 Behavior and Attitudes Kid StockBlend ImagesCorbis

Attitude Favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction toward something or someone For many years, the assumption is social psychology has been that if you know someone’s attitude toward something, you can predict this person’s behavior That is, the assumption has been that the attitude will be translated into behavior. Copyright 2016 © Mc. Graw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behavior? People’s expressed attitudes hardly predicted their varying behaviors Student attitudes toward cheating bore little relation to the likelihood of their cheating Attitudes toward the church were only modestly linked with worship attendance on any given Sunday Self-described racial attitudes provided little clue to behaviors in actual situations Copyright 2016 © Mc. Graw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behavior? When Attitudes Predict Behavior When social influences on what we say are minimal Implicit association test (IAT) Implicit biases are pervasive People differ in implicit bias People are often unaware of their implicit biases Explicit When other influences on behavior are minimal Copyright 2016 © Mc. Graw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behavior? When Attitudes Are Specific to the Behavior When attitudes specific to the behavior are examined When attitudes are Potent Bringing Attitudes to Mind Forging Strong Attitudes Through Experience Copyright 2016 © Mc. Graw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? Role Playing Role Set of norms that defines how people in a given social position ought to behave Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford’s prison study Abu Ghraib controversy Copyright 2016 © Mc. Graw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? When Saying Becomes Believing: When people are asked to present a position that they do not agree with: When there is no compelling external explanation for one’s words, saying becomes believing People often adapt what they say to please their listeners Foot-in- the-door phenomenon: if you want people to do a big favor for you, you ask them first to do a small favor. Copyright 2016 © Mc. Graw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Cont-d Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon Tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request The initial compliance created a commitment to the cause Low-ball technique Tactic for getting people to agree to something. People who agree to an initial request will often still comply when the requester ups the ante: Used by some car dealers

When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? Evil and Moral Acts Wartime Actions and attitudes feed on each other When evil behavior occurs we tend to justify it as right Peacetime Moral action, especially when chosen rather than coerced, affects moral thinking Copyright 2016 © Mc. Graw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? Interracial Behavior and Racial Attitudes Racial behaviors help shape our social consciousness By doing, not saying racial attitudes were changed Legislating morality Social Movements Political and social movements may legislate behavior designed to lead to attitude change on a mass scale Copyright 2016 © Mc. Graw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? Self-Presentation: Impression Management Assumes that people, especially those who self-monitor their behavior hoping to create good impressions, will adapt their attitude reports to appear consistent with their actions But there is more to attitudes than self-presentation, so 2 other theories try to explain this phenomenon.

Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance Tension that arises when one is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions To reduce this tension, we adjust our thinking or change our behavior Insufficient justification Reduction of dissonance by internally justifying one’s behavior when external justification is “insufficient” Copyright 2016 © Mc. Graw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Dissonance Means Disagreement Dissonance theory pertains mostly to discrepancies between behavior and attitudes A person who smokes cigarettes may be aware of the studies linking smoking to lung-cancer The person may either stop smoking, or downplay the quality of the study Festinger argued that to reduce the discrepancy between behavior and cognition (knowing smoking is dangerous) , the person will change either the behavior of the cognition.

Insufficient Justification: Festinger’s Milestone Study (1959) Festinger asked subjects to participate in a very boring experiment (turning wooden knobs again and again) When finished, the experimenter tells the subjects that the study concerns how expectations affect performance. She asked the subjects to tell the students waiting outside to participate in the experiment that this was a very interesting experiment! For telling this lie, the participants are being paid. Some are paid $1 and some $20.

Festinger’s Study (cont-d) Later these participants were asked to indicate how much they have actually enjoyed the experiment. Festinger and Carlsmith had predicted that those who were paid $1 for telling a lie to their friends may experience a greater dissonance, as they had insufficient justification to their lie to their friends. Those who were paid $20 have not experienced dissonance: “For $20 I will say anything!” The results supported the prediction(the hypothesis): Those who were paid $1 indeed change their attitude came to view the experiment as enjoyable!

Cont-d In later experiments, this attitudes- follow- behavior effect was the strongest when people felt some choice for their actions. Attitudes follow behavior for which we feel some responsibilty.

Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance after decisions When faced with two alternatives that are equally attractive we usually upgrade the alternative we have chosen and downplay the alternative we had given up. Deciding-becomes-believing Can effect breed overconfidence Copyright 2016 © Mc. Graw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? Self-Perception Theory 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 Expressions and attitudes: When people were asked to manipulate their facial muscles in a smiling or sad expression, after couple of minutes they reoprted an internal emotional state corresponding to their facial expression. Imitating other people’s expression help us sense how they are feeling Emotional contagion: It is fun to be around happy people. Copyright 2016 © Mc. Graw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Overjustification and intrinsic motivations When you pay or reward people to do something that they actually do on their own (have intrinsic motivation) you find that they perform this behavior less. The reason: This is explained in the context of self-perception theory: You observe your own behavior, and the conditions under which this behavior is performed: You perform because you are being paid, you attribute your behavior to the reward rather than to your enjoyment. Your actions are seen as externally controlled rather than externally appealing. However, unanticipated reward does NOT diminish intrinsic interest, because people can still attribute their behavior to intrinsic motivation.

Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? Comparing the Theories Dissonance Theory Self-Perception Theory Dissonance as Arousal Self-Perceiving when Not Self-Contradicting Changing Ourselves Through Action Copyright 2016 © Mc. Graw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Comparing theories