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4 Attitudes, Attributions, and Behavior

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Learning Objectives

By the end of the chapter you should be able to

• Define attitude and differentiate between implicit and explicit attitudes.

• Distinguish among the theory of planned behavior, cognitive dissonance theory, and self-perception theory and the way they affect our behaviors and attitudes.

• Compare internal and external attributions and explain how errors in attributions can occur.

• Describe the patterns we can develop for making attributions as well as what we think others observe of us.

Section 4.1 Attitudes

Large U.S. supermarkets carry between 40,000 and 50,000 products (Ruhlman, 2017). This plethora of options is relatively new. The first supermarket—King Kullen in Queens, New York—opened in the 1930s and stocked around 200 products (Wilson, 2019). By the 1990s there were around 7,000 products in the modern supermarket. With all of these choices, we face a dilemma: We can get almost any product we want but must decide what we want or need. Do you want peanut butter, almond butter, or cashew butter? What brand of almond butter is best? As if making our own choices were not enough, we might observe people in the grocery store making decisions about their nut butter and wonder why they would make that particular choice. Is it better than what we have in our basket? In this chapter, we look at both phenomena—how we evaluate the products, people, and other contents of the world around us and how we under- stand other people’s actions.

4.1 Attitudes From the time you wake up in the morning to the moment your head hits the pillow at the end of the day, you encounter objects, people, animals, actions, and situations that require a response. As you face these things, you must make quick evaluations so you know how to react. For example, if you evaluate your neighbor as mean and cream as good, you would avoid interacting with the neighbor and put cream in your coffee. Attitudes are evaluations. These evaluations are based on our reactions—both in terms of how we feel and what we think—to some attitude object. The objects of our attitudes/evaluations can be physical objects, other people or groups of people, abstract or concrete ideas, animals, behaviors, or even some aspect of ourselves (Albarracin & Shavitt, 2018; Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). A restaurant diner might have an attitude about his meal, as well as his dining companion, the restaurant décor, and the tie he is wearing. The meal, companion, décor, and tie are all attitude objects. Your neighbor and cream are also attitude objects.

Expand Your Knowledge: Pew Global Attitudes Project

If you would like to investigate a wide variety of attitudes from around the world, take a look at the Pew Global Attitudes Project website: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/. Reports on a variety of surveys are also available.

Attitudes have long been considered important to social psychology (Allport, 1935). Through- out the years, social psychologists have found the subject of attitudes a fruitful area of research (Albarracin & Shavitt, 2018). The attitude evaluations we make have two measures: strength and valence. Attitudes may be very strong or very weak; they differ in strength. In terms of valence, we may have attitudes that are on the positive side of the spectrum (you like pen- guins) or negative side of the spectrum (you hate elephants). Putting together strength and valence, you might have a fairly weak positive attitude toward penguins and a very strong negative attitude toward elephants. There is also a body of work on ambivalent attitudes— attitudes that are simultaneously positive and negative (McGrane, 2019; Sawicki et al., 2013).

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/

Section 4.1 Attitudes

When most of us think of attitudes, we probably think of how we feel about objects, people, or groups, but researchers have found that consciously known and reported attitudes are only part of the picture (Nosek & Smyth, 2007; Payne, Burkley, & Stokes, 2008). The attitudes we report—those that are based on our knowledge and beliefs about an attitude object— are called explicit attitudes . Implicit attitudes are based on the automatic, unconscious reactions we have toward an attitude object. For example, you could describe your negative explicit attitude toward your neighbor and explain that your attitude is reasonable because of what your neighbor said about your house. Your implicit attitude toward your neighbor might also be negative, but it would show up in your expression of anger when you see your neighbor and your negative feelings when someone says your neighbor’s name.

We learn implicit and explicit attitudes either through symbolic representations of or through encounters with attitude objects. Explicit attitudes are based in language, logic, or some other symbolic representation. Because of this, we can develop explicit attitudes relatively quickly through simple communication. For example, if someone told you about a partic- ular juice you had not known about before (e.g., pomegranate juice) and shared how much he or she liked this juice, you might form a positive explicit attitude toward the juice. Implicit attitudes are learned as we encounter the attitude object. For example, if you always encountered representations of a particular product (pictures of pome- granate juice) that were positive (happy people drinking the juice), you might develop a positive implicit attitude toward that product (Olson & Fazio, 2006; Rydell & McConnell, 2006; Strack & Deutsch, 2004; Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000).

Implicit attitudes are frequently based on the messages communicated by society. The social environment and culture people are exposed to have a large impact on their implicit attitudes (Kashima et al., 2015; Shepherd, 2011). If media representations of a particular racial group are always paired with violence or poverty, individuals in that society tend to hold negative implicit attitudes toward that group. Or, if people within the environment show nonverbal behavior that expresses a negative attitude toward a person or other attitude object (e.g., stereotypical image of a particular group), individuals tend to adopt that implicit attitude (Castelli, Carraro, Pavan, Murelli, & Carraro, 2012). If all of your friends express disgust when you are told about granola bars made of cricket powder, you are likely to adopt that negative implicit attitude as well. One reason why individuals in Western countries, like the United States, are reluctant to incorporate insect-based protein into their diets may be a long-held societal taboo, leading to strong implicit attitudes against eating insects (La Barbera, Verneau, Amato, & Grunert, 2018).

Because implicit attitudes are based on associations that occur outside of conscious aware- ness, they are not subject to logic. You might know that insect protein is a sustainable source of food for the planet that can be sanitary and safe to eat, but you still do not want to eat it.

numismarty/iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images It is fairly easy for us to identify our explicit attitudes, but implicit attitudes can be challenging to recognize.

Section 4.1 Attitudes

Or imagine you found out that a new friend is a member of a political party that is different from your own affiliation. You would know logically that your friend does not have many of the qualities that you associate with people who are members of that party. Your explicit attitude toward your friend would, at least for a while, still rely on what you know about her rather than her membership in this group. Your implicit attitude would, however, not be ruled by logic but would automatically assign the stereotypical characteristics of members of that political party to your friend (Ranganath & Nosek, 2008). The difference in the processing of implicit and explicit attitudes allows for people to hold opposite explicit and implicit atti- tudes. If people logically believe that a social group is good and report a positive explicit atti- tude but society has a negative view of the group, they might hold a negative implicit attitude.

This separation of implicit and explicit attitudes can be seen in a study of branded prod- ucts (Ratliff, Swinkels, Klerx, & Nosek, 2012). In this study, the researchers showed that if people liked a particular branded product, they tended to evaluate other products of that same brand positively, even if they had not tried them. For example, if you drank a particular brand of apple juice and liked it, you might have a positive attitude toward the brand’s grape and pomegranate juices as well, even though you had not tried them. If people are then told that other products from that brand are not very good, their explicit attitudes tend to change, while their implicit attitudes tend to stay the same. If you were told that the company making your favorite apple juice does not make very good grape juice, you would develop a nega- tive explicit attitude toward the grape juice. However, you would likely maintain a positive implicit attitude, based on a positive implicit attitude toward the brand. As noted previously, explicit attitudes are based in language and logic and thus can be changed through those same mechanisms; in other words, you can change your explicit attitude toward a brand’s grape juice by being told it is not very good. While this works for explicit attitudes, changing implicit attitudes warrants other approaches.

Implicit attitude change does not tend to happen based on logic or through convincing argu- ments (Mattavelli, Avishai, Perugini, Richetin, & Sheeran, 2017). In one study looking directly at changing implicit attitudes, researchers found that vivid mental imagery was effective in changing implicit attitudes, while text-based persuasive messages were not (Trendel, Mazodier, & Vohs, 2018). Engaging in training that pairs positive images with attitude objects for which a positive implicit attitude is desired or negative images with objects for a desired negative implicit attitude, a technique called evaluative conditioning, has been shown to be effective in creating implicit attitudes in the direction of the conditioning (Geng, Liu, Xu, Zhou, & Fang, 2013; Hollands, Prestwich, & Marteau, 2011; Y. Wang et al., 2017).

To make the picture even more complicated, implicit attitudes can be further divided into affective and cognitive reactions to the attitude object (Trendel & Werle, 2016). An affective reaction would involve how you feel about a particular attitude object. If you have a positive affective implicit attitude toward doughnuts, you would react positively to them because they are tasty. The cognitive reaction involves what we think or believe about an attitude object. If you have a negative cognitive implicit attitude toward doughnuts because you believe they are unhealthy, you would react negatively to them. Because both of these are important in predicting food choices, it sometimes appears that implicit attitudes do not do a very good job at predicting those choices. Your affect and cognitive implicit attitudes are in opposition when it comes to doughnuts, so the conditions under which you are making the choice become important. If your cognitive resources were low because you were in a hurry or tired, your

Section 4.1 Attitudes

affective implicit attitude would likely take over and you would eat the tasty doughnut. This explanation may help us better understand why we make more unhealthy food choices when we are tired or overwhelmed (Wang et al., 2015).

Figure 4.1: Task on the IAT

The IAT might first prime you for “good” words and then ask you to match older faces with “good” words.

Source: Based on Project Implicit® (2011). Four-category race-gender IAT. Retrieved from https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/; photo credit: Amos Morgan/Digital Vision/Thinkstock

Joy

Press “e” for good Press “i” for bad Press “e” for good Press “i” for bad

To assess implicit attitudes, researchers need to measure our automatic reactions—reactions we may not even be aware of. Psychologists developed a test to look at implicit attitudes called the Implicit Association Test (IAT) (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998; Schnabel, Asendorpf, & Greenwald, 2008). The IAT measures implicit attitudes by evaluating reaction times. Test-takers match characteristics that are flashed in the center of a computer screen to a category of words in the upper corners of the screen (Figure 4.1). For example, if “good” is in the left corner and “bad” is in the right, a word like “joy” should be matched to the left corner and “evil” to the right. Attitude objects are placed in the same corners as those words, and respondents need to quickly match the words for the good and bad categories and words or faces associated with that attitude object to their correct corner. For a test looking at implicit attitudes toward older adults, “old” might be assigned to the left corner and “young” to the right. The respondent would need to quickly switch from a word (“joy”) to a face (older adult) and match each with the correct corner (left).

Expand Your Knowledge: Implicit Association Test

Information about implicit attitudes and the opportunity to take a variety of tests of implicit association can be found at the Project Implicit website: https://implicit.harvard .edu/implicit/takeatest.html. You can read research papers, take the Implicit Association Test, and participate in ongoing research. Most of the research studies take about 10 to 15 minutes. Participants are provided with a summary of their own results at the end of their participation .

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

Section 4.1 Attitudes

A person who has a negative implicit attitude toward older adults should take longer to match the picture of an older person with the left “good” corner than to the right “bad” corner. This delay in matching an older person with a corner that contains the category “good” provides evidence of a negative implicit attitude toward older adults. Because implicit and explicit atti- tudes can be different, it is possible that someone with a positive explicit attitude toward older adults might be slow in pairing the good label with the older adult, indicating a negative implicit attitude.

Implicit attitudes are often described as being non-conscious, suggesting we have no idea what our implicit attitudes might be. Although that may be true for some attitudes, research- ers have found that people are generally good at predicting what their response might be to the IAT (Hahn, Judd, Hirsh, & Blair, 2014). Individuals might know, for example, that they have a positive explicit attitude toward older adults but that they have absorbed society’s negative view of them and that their initial reaction to older adults may not be positive. Our implicit attitudes may still be described as not consciously controlled, as we do not consciously hesi- tate in clicking the “good” paired with “older adult” button and have difficulty consciously convincing ourselves to change an implicit attitude.

Because of this ability to predict one’s implicit attitudes and other issues, the IAT has come under some criticism. Some researchers have criticized its reliability (how similar the scores might be if the test were taken twice over a short period of time) and its validity (the test’s ability to accurately categorize people with strong negative implicit attitudes). However, it remains an important tool for researchers in assessing implicit attitudes (Jost, 2019).

Test Yourself

• Can someone have an attitude toward a color? A day of the week? Their right big toe? A concept like justice? Yes to all of these. Attitude objects can be physical objects, other people or groups of people, abstract or concrete ideas, animals, behaviors, or even some aspect of ourselves. Almost anything can be an attitude object.

• How is it possible to have a mismatch between an explicit attitude and implicit attitude? Explicit attitudes are conscious while implicit attitudes are unconscious. Because they are developed through different systems, they can develop differently. Because implicit attitudes are sometimes unconscious, we may not even be aware there is a mismatch.

Section 4.2 Behavior and Attitudes

4.2 Behavior and Attitudes Our attitudes involve evaluations of other people, behaviors, and objects. Logically, these evaluations should affect how we behave toward these attitude objects (Allport, 1935; Droba, 1933). For example, if you have a favorable attitude toward exercise, you should be more likely to engage in physical activities than if you had a negative attitude. Richard LaPiere (1934) was one of the first to investigate the relation of attitudes to behaviors. In the 1930s, LaPiere trav- eled around the United States with some of his Chinese friends. At that time, many Americans held negative attitudes toward the Chinese, and LaPiere and his friends were concerned about the service they might get as they traveled. Despite this fear, they were treated well in all but one location. LaPiere was curious about this reaction, so several months later he sent ques- tionnaires to the places he and his friends had visited, as well as to a number of hotels and restaurants they had not visited. Almost universally, these businesses reported they would not serve someone who was Chinese. The negative attitude was present, but, happily, LaPiere and his friends found that behavior did not match these attitudes.

Since the 1930s, a great deal of work has been done to determine why attitudes and behaviors do not always match. Researchers have identified factors that can strengthen or weaken the ability of attitudes to predict behaviors. Attitudes that are accessible, particularly those based on emotion, are more likely to determine our behavior (Fazio, 2000; McCartan & Elliott, 2018; Rocklage & Fazio, 2018; Young & Fazio, 2013). Generally, if people respond quickly in report- ing their attitudes, these attitudes are highly accessible. If you respond quickly that you hate pickles, you are unlikely to eat one.

When relatively narrow attitudes are assessed, then relatively narrow behavior needs to be assessed, but when broader attitudes are assessed, broad behaviors must be assessed (Siegel, Navarro, Tan, & Hyde, 2014; Weigel & Newman, 1976). For example, if you were asked about your attitude toward sports, your answer may not align with your attendance or lack thereof at the local high school football game. If we asked about your attitude toward the local high school football team, we may have better luck predicting if we will see you at a game. Another factor is whether the behavior is easy or difficult to perform (Wallace, Paulson, Lord, & Bond, 2005). One might have a negative attitude toward smoking but continue to smoke because quitting is difficult. The social pressure one has to join in or avoid a behavior is also impor- tant. If a person feels a strong social pressure to engage in a behavior (wearing a seat belt), that person may engage in the behavior despite having a negative attitude about it (Miller & Prentice, 2016; Wallace et al., 2005).

Explicit attitudes can predict consciously controlled behaviors, but implicit attitudes are the best predictors of nonverbal behaviors. Those with a negative implicit attitude toward people of a particular racial group tend to show nonverbal behaviors that indicate dislike for a mem- ber of the group with which they are interacting, even when their verbal behavior is friendly

Section 4.2 Behavior and Attitudes

and welcoming (Dovidio, Kawakami, & Gaertner, 2002). Therefore, negative implicit attitudes can have an unconscious, adverse effect on our interactions. In studies of health care profes- sionals (physicians and genetic counselors), those with negative implicit attitudes toward their minority patients had poorer quality interactions with those patients (Cooper et al., 2012; Schaa, Roter, Biesecker, Cooper, & Erby, 2015). In the study with doctors, the clinicians tended to dominate the conversation, and the patients showed less confidence in and were less trusting of the physician.

In contrast, consciously controlled, deliberate behaviors are evidence of explicit attitudes (Jellison, McConnell, & Gabriel, 2004; McConnell & Leibold, 2001; Rydell & McConnell, 2006). Explicit attitudes are more likely to predict actions like voting behaviors (Berthet, Barthe- lemy, & Kop, 2015; Friese, Smith, Plischke, Bluemke, & Nosek, 2012).

Test Yourself

• Has attitude research been a topic of study only recently for social psychology? No. Attitudes have been studied since the 1930s, including LaPiere’s 1934 study of attitudes and behavior with his Chinese friends.

• What makes explicit attitudes more likely to match with behaviors? Attitudes that are accessible, that match the behavior in specificity, that are easy to perform, and that are not subject to social pressure are more likely to match a behavior.

Theory of Planned Behavior Behaviors may be difficult to predict from attitudes alone. The theory of planned behav- ior combines several factors to provide for better prediction (Figure 4.2). According to this theory, if we want to predict both intent to behave and actual behavior, we need to know three things: (1) attitude toward that specific behavior, (2) subjective norms related to that behav- ior, and (3) perceived behavioral control (Ajzen, 1991). Subjective norms involve people’s beliefs about how other people in their environment perceive their behavior. For example, you might believe that people in your social circle (friends, relatives) think healthy eating is a good idea, but yoga is silly. Perceived behavioral control is your belief that you can engage in the behavior. For example, you might think that eating a healthy diet takes a lot of effort but going to yoga class is easily accomplished. In this example, your perceived behavioral control would be high for yoga but low for healthy eating. If someone has a positive attitude, positive subjective norms, and high perceived behavioral control, we can predict with some accuracy the person’s intentions to engage in that behavior and his eventual behavior. You might join a yoga program if you have a positive attitude toward yoga, if people in your environment think it is a good idea, and if you foresee no problems in getting to the studio for classes.

Section 4.2 Behavior and Attitudes

The theory of planned behavior is an extension of an earlier theory called the theory of reasoned action. The theory of reasoned action, developed by Icek Ajzen and Martin Fishbein (1972), predicted behaviors using just attitudes and subjective norms. Ajzen (1991) later added the element of perceived behavioral control to provide better predictions of behavior. This addition created better forecasts about behavior.

Some behaviors are difficult to control. For exam- ple, many people find it very difficult to quit smok- ing. Taking into account the amount of control people have for such behaviors is helpful to predict- ing behavior. For behaviors like quitting smoking, where a perceived lack of control interferes with actually engaging in the behavior, assessing smok- ers’ beliefs about their control makes predicting smoking cessation more reliable (Madden, Ellen, & Ajzen, 1992).

Figure 4.2: Theory of planned behavior

The theory of planned behavior relies on a number of factors for predicting behavior.

Attitude toward the behavior

Subjective norm

Perceived behavioral

control

Intention Behavior

Stockbyte/Thinkstock Edward, a longtime smoker, wants to stop smoking, but he has doubts that he will be able to do so. According to the theory of planned behavior, these doubts might inhibit his actual behavior of quitting.

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Section 4.2 Behavior and Attitudes

This theory does not predict behavior perfectly; there are a few factors that may make it more or less likely to lead to accurate predictions. Habitual behaviors, such as driving a car to work instead of taking the bus, may not be well predicted by the model (Hashim, Jawis, Wahat, & Grove, 2014; Lheureux, Auzoult, Charlois, Hardy-Massard, & Minary, 2016). However, habits may undergo a change if circumstances change, such as when bus tickets become cheaper and a bus stop comes to one’s street, and opens up space for the theory of planned behavior to predict behavior (Bamberg, Ajzen, & Schmidt, 2003; Verplanken, Aarts, van Knippenberg, & van Knippenberg, 1994).

The theory of planned behavior also assumes that people make rational decisions about their actions. This may be true some of the time, but at the moment of decision, one’s good inten- tions may not be enough to deter behavior. In one study of risky sexual behavior, anticipated emotions that would occur after sex, such as regret, were a strong predictor of actual sexual behavior, and attitudes were a weaker predictor (Richard, van der Plight, & de Vries, 1996). For some decisions, emotions may rule the day. Overall, the theory of planned behavior does a better job of predicting behavior over which individuals have some control. The theory is also more accurate when people are in the process of actually making decisions, rather than relying on habits or other mindless behaviors to determine their actions (Manstead, 2011).

The theory of planned behavior may be particularly helpful to those who want to encourage others to engage in healthy behaviors by determining what might be standing in the way of the healthy behavior. As noted previously, research using the model has been done on a num- ber of health-related behaviors. Researchers have investigated exercise, fruit and vegetable consumption and other healthy dietary behaviors, purchase of organic food, use of sun pro- tection, and risky drinking behavior (Collins, Witkiewitz, & Larimer, 2011; Kothe, Mullan, & Butow, 2012; Li, Figg, & Schuz, 2019; Scalco, Noventa, Sartori, & Ceschi, 2017; Spink, Wilson, & Bostick, 2012; Sutton & White, 2016).

If an individual believes eating lots of vegetables is a good idea (positive attitude) and those in her environment also think so (subjective norm), but this individual feels unable to buy or prepare vegetables, an intervention might be targeted at the element of perceived behav- ioral control—the individual’s belief in the inability to attain and prepare enough veggies. An informational campaign might be launched that discusses where to find reasonably priced vegetables and provides recipes for cooking vegetables. On the other hand, if people did not see the value in eating vegetables (negative attitude), but others in their environment were encouraging them to eat vegetables (subjective norm) and vegetables were easy to find and prepare (perceived behavioral control), a campaign to change attitudes might be launched. Interventions that use the theory of planned behavior have been shown to be effective (Stein- metz, Knappstein, Ajzen, Schmidt, & Kabst, 2016).

Test Yourself

What are the three components of the theory of planned behavior?

Attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control .

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Section 4.2 Behavior and Attitudes

Behavior and Attitude Mismatch Imagine you have agreed to be part of a research study. You come to the study and are asked to do two boring, repetitive tasks for an hour. As you finish, the researcher looks distressed; there was supposed to be another student coming to introduce the tasks you just completed to the next participant. The researcher tells you that the next participant is supposed to be told that these tedious tasks you completed are fun and interesting, with the goal of measur- ing how expectations influence performance. The researcher asks if you might be willing to help him out and tell the next participant that what you just did was fun. He is willing to pay you $1 for your effort. You agree and tell the next participant that the task was interesting and exciting. Afterward, you are asked how interesting the tasks you just did were and whether you would be willing to participate in similar types of studies in the future. How would you have answered? Would your answer be different if the researcher had given you $20?

A group of male college students faced exactly this situation in a study by Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith (1959). In their study, one-third of participants received $1 to tell the next participant that the study he or she was about to participate in was fun and interesting; another third received $20 to do so; and the final third, the control group, was not asked to say anything to a future participant and was not given any money. Unbeknownst to the par- ticipants, the request was part of the experiment, and the other participant was working for the experimenter. What the researchers were really interested in was whether the different amounts of pay would affect how participants felt about the study. When asked at the end how interesting and enjoyable the task was on a scale from –5, extremely dull and boring, to +5, extremely interesting and enjoyable, the $1 group responded with an average +1.35, while the $20 group had an average score of –0.05 and the control group had an average of –0.45. A similar pattern was found when the participants were asked if they would like to participate in a comparable study in the future. The average scores for the $1, $20, and control group on a –5, definite dislike, to +5, definite like, were +1.20, –0.25, and –0.62, respectively.

Expand Your Knowledge: Attitude and Behavior Mismatch

Do your attitudes and behaviors always match? If you are like most people, you see distracted driving as dangerous but also engage in the behavior. An article on this issue can be found at https://whyy.org/segments/are-we-addicted-to-using-our-phones-while -driving/. The author describes some reasons why people continue to use their phones when driving, even when everyone knows the serious consequences of distracted driving.

The participants who received $1 seemed to like the study best; they had a positive score while the other groups had negative scores. Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) proposed that the participants who received $1 for lying to another person felt they had insufficient justi- fication for doing so. In other words, these participants lied for a very small amount of money and could not explain (justify) what they did by the monetary reward. These participants were faced with two things: knowledge that the research was boring (the researchers had deliberately made it mind-numbingly tedious) and a behavior that involved telling someone else it was interesting .

https://whyy.org/segments/are-we-addicted-to-using-our-phones-while-driving/

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Section 4.2 Behavior and Attitudes

The gap between what they believed and what they did created a type of tension known as cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable because it indicates an incon- sistency in what people think or feel and do. People are motivated to reduce this tension. The participants could not go back in time and change what they had done, so their only option was to change how they felt about the study. In the $20 condition, there was also a gap between what they did and how they truly felt, but these people did not experience any ten- sion. They had sufficient justification for what they did: $20. The people in the $20 condition later reported that the study was boring because they had no need to justify what they did. When the discomfort of cognitive dissonance is felt and the cause of the discomfort is assigned to the inconsistency, it results in an attitude change to reduce tension (Cooper, 2019).

Cognitive dissonance happens to all of us in our everyday lives. In managing our own health and wellness we often encounter cognitive dissonance. If you believe you should exercise on a daily basis but do not, you feel the tension of cognitive dissonance. A smoker who knows of the health dangers of smoking may feel dissonance. Someone may know about the importance of protecting her skin from the sun but may feel not only the pain of sunburn but the discomfort of dissonance when she spends too long outside without sunscreen. If you think you should be on a diet and yet you eat a fattening dessert, you might experience cognitive dissonance. The belief that you should be on a diet is in conflict with your behavior—eating the dessert. Unless there is some outside force that provides you with justification for your behavior, such as being in a dessert-eating contest, you likely have insufficient justification for your behavior and will feel the tension of cognitive dissonance. Given this tension, you may change your atti- tude toward dieting and decide you do not really need to be on a diet, at least not today.

Cognitive dissonance can be reduced without changing one’s attitude. For example, if you decided you needed to be on a diet but then went to a dinner and had chocolate mousse, you could change your attitude toward the diet (maybe you do not need to diet), but you could also reduce that tension by doing other things. One option would be to minimize the impor- tance of one of the elements by rationalizing or justifying your choices (Festinger, 1957). You could say that dieting is not that important to you or that chocolate mousse is not a big deal. Another option would be to reduce your perceived choice (Beauvois & Joule, 1999; Wicklund & Brehm, 1976). You might tell yourself it would have been rude if you had not eaten your host’s dessert. You might also add thoughts that support or explain your behavior (Tanford & Montgomery, 2015). You could tell yourself that chocolate mousse is healthy; after all, choco- late contains flavonoids that are good for your health. If you are unable to take one of these routes to reduce dissonance, you might have to live with guilt or shame because of the dis- crepancy (Yousaf & Gobet, 2013).

Cognitive dissonance does not always occur when behaviors and attitudes are inconsistent. Research that was completed after Festinger and Carlsmith’s original study (1959) showed that inconsistency will lead to cognitive dissonance only when a number of conditions are met. Imagine a woman has made a commitment to protect her skin from damage by wearing sunscreen when she is outside. One day at work, her boss takes staff members outside for an outing, and she gets sunburned. It is possible for her to feel no dissonance between her atti- tude toward sunscreen and sunburn if she does not perceive she had a choice in her behavior. Her boss insisted staff members take the outing, and not going would have endangered her job. Choice is important. Level of commitment is also important. If her attitude toward sun- screen was not a strong commitment, she may not feel much dissonance.

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Section 4.2 Behavior and Attitudes

Cognitive dissonance is also less likely if people do not experience an unwanted consequence. For example, if the woman had been out in the sun and had not gotten a sunburn, she would not feel much cognitive dissonance, even though she was exposed to the sun without protec- tion. Finally, cognitive dissonance will only occur if the consequence was foreseeable at the time the choice was made. If the woman could have foreseen that she would spend a long time outside when she decided not to put sunscreen on that morning, she would feel dissonance. Because she could not have foreseen those consequences, she would feel no dissonance. Cog- nitive dissonance will only occur if the behavior is chosen freely, the attitude or belief is firmly held, the behavior leads to unwanted consequences, and the consequence could have been foreseen when the choice was made (Cooper, 2019).

The principle of cognitive dissonance can be helpful in understanding or promoting behavior change (Freijy & Kothe, 2013; Priolo et al., 2019; Stone & Focella, 2011). In a study that used cognitive dissonance, researchers focused on reducing the thinness ideal and body dissatis- faction of college women who could be diagnosed with an eating disorder (Stice, Rohde, Shaw, & Gau, 2019). The researchers induced behavior change by creating dissonance. The students were asked to engage in behaviors that went against their unhealthy attitudes toward their bodies and food. For example, they were asked to write a letter to a young girl about the dan- gers of the thinness ideal, to share what they liked about themselves, and to practice what they would say to others to challenge the thinness ideal. This intervention decreased partici- pants’ risk factors for an eating disorder. Follow-up research found that such programs could be effective for individuals at risk for eating disorders no matter if they were condensed into a short or long time period (Kilpela et al., 2015). Other researchers have used cognitive dis- sonance interventions to encourage smoking cessation and sunscreen use (Chait, Thompson, & Jacobsen, 2015; Simmons, Heckman, Fink, Small, & Brandon, 2013).

One form of behavioral intervention that involves cognitive dissonance is motivational inter- viewing. In motivational interviewing, a practitioner tries to collaborate with the individual in exploring his or her motivations for engaging in behavior change, reasons for ambivalence about change, and highlighting discrepancies in attitudes or values and behaviors (Miller & Rollnick, 2002, 2009). The technique has been shown to be effective in helping people make positive health changes across the lifespan, including encouraging healthy behavior in children, reducing drinking and other substance use in adolescents and young adults, and increasing healthy family meals (Draxten, Flattum, & Fulkerson, 2016; Gayes & Steele, 2014; Jensen et al., 2011; Magill et al., 2017).

Cognitive dissonance has different manifestations across cultures (Hoshino-Browne, 2012; Hoshino-Browne et al., 2005; Kokkoris & Kuhnen, 2013). Individuals in independent cultures like the United States are more concerned about their own individual identity and attributes. Therefore, internal consistency is the primary goal for someone in an independent culture. For example, if Alice had a positive attitude toward children but disliked her neighbor’s 4-year- old, she would know these two things were inconsistent. Even if she never told anyone about her dislike of the child, she would still feel guilty because her attitudes and feelings were inconsistent. Individuals in interdependent cultures, such as in Japan, are more concerned about how they fit with the expectations of others—in particular, others who are part of their own group. The approval of others is, therefore, of great importance.

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For interdependent cultures, internal consistency is not as important as consistency between attitudes or behaviors, especially when others are going to be appraised of one’s behavior. In a study by Shinobu Kitayama and colleagues (Kitayama, Snibbe, Markus, & Suzuki, 2004), Japanese and U.S. college students were asked to make judgments that revealed the amount of cognitive dissonance they felt. The Japanese college students showed greater dissonance when they were aware of potential public scrutiny of their choices. When there was no poten- tial of others being made aware of their choices, dissonance did not appear to come into play. When this study was done on U.S. college students, the results showed that the potential for public scrutiny did not matter. Because the U.S. students were attempting to be internally con- sistent, they showed a similar degree of dissonance in both situations. The amount of disso- nance the U.S. students showed was not as high as that shown by the Japanese students who thought their choices would be public, but it was higher than that of the Japanese students who believed others would not know of their choices.

Expand Your Knowledge: The Truth

Internal consistency is more important to individuals in independent cultures than interdependent cultures. For teens in an independent culture, then, pointing out inconsistencies between a behavior, such as smoking, and a strongly held value, such as the freedom to choose one’s own action, should lead to cognitive dissonance and, therefore, behavior change. Truth.com takes this approach, showing teens how smoking makes them puppets and emphasizing that teens should make their own decisions about smoking. If you would like to explore the site, you can find it at https://www.thetruth.com/

Test Yourself

Why did the $1 group in Festinger and Carlsmith’s study say they enjoyed the boring study while the $20 group did not?

The $1 group had insufficient justification for the lie they told, so to reduce cognitive dissonance, they changed their attitude and said the study was interesting. The $20 group had sufficient justification for their behavior and therefore had no cognitive dissonance and no need to change their attitude.

https://www.thetruth.com/

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Social Psychology in Depth: Cognitive Dissonance, Children, and Monkeys

Where does cognitive dissonance come from? In exploring the origins of cognitive dissonance, social psychologists investigate whether children feel cognitive dissonance or if it develops later in life. We may also want to know if cognitive dissonance occurs in nonhuman primates or if it is unique to humans. This would help us understand the potential evolutionary origin of the phenomenon.

Louisa Egan, Laurie Sanatos, and Paul Bloom (2007) investigated cognitive dissonance in children and monkeys. For both populations, they created cognitive dissonance by having the child or monkey make a choice between two alternatives: two different stickers for the children or two different M&M candies for the monkeys. Frequently, when faced with two equally good options, we will reduce our cognitive dissonance by increasing our liking of our chosen option and decreasing our liking of the option we did not choose.

In this study, the participants first made an initial choice. For example, if children originally rated stickers with a flower, a bird, and a rainbow equally, they might initially be asked if they wanted the flower or the bird sticker more. After choosing in the first round, they made a second choice. The second choice included the option not chosen on the first trial and a new option. Having chosen the flower in the first round, the children would then be asked to choose between the bird (the option not chosen in the previous trial) and the rainbow (a new sticker option). Presumably, if cognitive dissonance was at play, the participants would have decreased their liking of their unchosen option (bird) and be less likely to choose it in the second trial. When we have two initially equally valued alternatives and choose one, we feel dissonance because we do not have good justification for rejecting the other option. To reduce dissonance, we tend to decrease our liking for the unchosen option. Having not chosen the bird on the first round, if cognitive dissonance is present, the children should reduce their liking of the bird and choose the rainbow.

Even though the children initially liked all three options equally, the results showed that after making a choice, they were less likely to choose the option they had not chosen on the first trial (the bird). Monkeys showed the same pattern of behavior. Other researchers have looked into dissonance in children and found that although younger children might deal with the dissonance differently, they still show dissonance in early childhood (Benozio & Diesendruck, 2015). Due to the fact this effect is found among young children (4-year-olds) and monkeys, cognitive dissonance may impact us before we have much experience in making choices; language and socialization may not be necessary precursors to cognitive dissonance.

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What Is My Attitude? If attitudes help determine our behaviors, do behaviors ever help define our attitudes? If you were wondering about your attitude toward sushi, one place you could look to determine your attitude is your behavior. If you have chosen sushi restaurants over those that do not serve sushi and order sushi when you get the chance, you are likely to conclude that you have a positive attitude toward sushi. If you have spent a lot of time making fun of people who eat sushi, you might conclude, looking at these actions, that your attitude toward sushi is nega- tive. This sense that we can figure out our attitudes by looking at our behaviors is the basis of self-perception theory (Bem, 1967). Self-perception theory explains how we might form or enhance particular attitudes, while cognitive dissonance theory explains how our attitudes change .

To evaluate the extent to which our actions influence our attitudes, Ann Marie Zak and col- leagues (1998) conducted a study of 64 dating couples. Each member of the couple was asked to provide information on how much they trusted their partner. The couples were separated and told one of three things. The first third of participants were told that their partner would be dancing to a romantic song with a research assistant. These participants were asked if that was okay with them—if they trusted their partner to dance with someone else. The next third of participants were told they would be dancing to a romantic song with a research assistant. The researchers told them that their partner had been asked if that was all right, and their partner had said yes, they trusted their significant other. The final third of participants, the control group, were told that their partner would be listening to music.

The researchers wanted to measure whether acting in a trusting manner—that is, telling the researcher that they trusted their partner to dance with someone else—would increase trust. When the researchers assessed levels of trust at the end of the study, they found that both the participants who acted in a trusting way and those who were trusted showed an increase in trust when compared to the control group. The biggest change, however, was with the partici- pants who acted in a trusting matter. The act of trusting, it seems, increases trust. Attitudes can follow actions .

Self-perception can explain our behaviors and feelings in a variety of realms. We might decide whether we like a food based on how often we find ourselves eating it. If you engage in a par- ticular activity fairly often, such as riding a bike or watching a particular show, you may con- clude that you like that activity. When deciding how important environmental issues are to us, we may look at our past environmentally friendly behavior to determine how concerned we are about the environment (Lee, Hochman, Prince, & Ariely, 2016). Self-perception theory explains how people who inhabit a role, like the role of leader, might come to identify with that role (Miscenko, Guenter, & Day, 2017).

The home goods store IKEA provides us with an example of how important our behavior can be to liking particular items. Much of the furniture IKEA sells is ready-to-assemble, meaning that buyers take boxes of furniture parts home and assemble the furniture them- selves. Researchers find that when people make things themselves, they often evaluate them more highly, something they named the IKEA effect (Marsh, Kanngiesser, & Hood, 2018). For example, in one study, individuals folded origami, and when they were able to fold it

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correctly and finish their project, they eval- uated their creations more highly (Norton, Mochon, & Ariely, 2012). This can also occur for food we make ourselves. In one study, participants evaluated a milkshake they made themselves more highly than a milk- shake made by someone else (Dohle, Rall, & Siegrist, 2014). In subsequent research, this effect was particularly pronounced for the preparation of healthy foods (Dohle, Rall, & Siegrist, 2016). People tend to evalu- ate healthy food they have prepared them- selves highly.

Expending effort on an activity can backfire if we are rewarded for that activity (Lep- per, Sagotsky, Dafoe, & Greene, 1982; Tang

& Hall, 1995). Although this may seem counterintuitive, self-perception theory gives us clues as to how this might work. Imagine a high school student gets a scholarship to college to play tennis, a sport he has always loved. While in college, when he thinks about why he gets up early to lift weights, spends hours working on his backhand, and takes time from his stud- ies to play, he remembers the scholarship. In trying to explain his own behavior, the most obvious reason for playing tennis is the money, not his love of the game. This is called the overjustification effect. The overjustification effect occurs when individuals are rewarded for an activity that they are intrinsically motivated to engage in, such as playing tennis for the love of the game. The reward undermines the intrinsic motivation. Researchers find that once rewarded for something they would have engaged in for no reward, people are less likely to engage in the activity unless they are rewarded again (Tang & Hall, 1995). This effect can undermine motivation and enjoyment of sports in college athletes even decades later (Moller & Sheldon, 2019).

Behavior can be affected in more subtle ways by our self-observations, such as with our rela- tionship to certain colors. The color black is often associated with bad things. This fact is evident in our language. For example, people might be blacklisted or blackmailed, or their reputation might be blackened. Even dark-colored chocolate cake is called devil’s food cake. Would members of sports teams in black uniforms therefore observe themselves in that bad color and be more willing to engage in aggressive behavior? Mark Frank and Thomas Gilov- ich (1988) investigated whether what we are wearing impacts our actions. They found that individuals who donned black were more willing to engage in aggression, measured by their choice of aggressive games over nonaggressive games, than those who were asked to wear white. National Hockey League teams wearing black were more aggressive on the rink than those wearing other colors; that is, members of teams wearing black spent more time in the penalty box than teams wearing other colors. In a similar way, in the virtual world, when rep- resented by avatars, people report being more willing to engage in aggressive behavior, such as attacking unarmed players, if their avatar is wearing a black cloak rather than a white cloak (Peña, Hancock, & Merola, 2009).

NickyLloyd/iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images The IKEA effect is in play when we evaluate something more highly because we made it. Many experience the IKEA effect when preparing desserts from a premade mix.

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The effect of color does rely on the viewpoint of one’s culture about particular colors. A repli- cation of this study with soccer teams in Turkey found no differences between the black and non-black uniformed players, perhaps because of a cultural difference in the meaning of the color black (Tiryaki, 2005). Black is not associated with aggression in Turkey.

Test Yourself

Of self-perception theory and cognitive dissonance theory, which is more focused on attitude change rather than attitude formation?

Cognitive dissonance theory .

4.3 Explaining the Behavior of Others Our daily lives present us with situations where we need to explain the behaviors of others. At work, you might want to know if your boss intended her behavior as encouragement to pursue a raise or as a clue that your job might be in danger. Attributing your friend’s late-night phone call to concern will affect the relationship differently than attributing it to rudeness. Attributions are also involved in deciding the proper punishment of a misbehaving child or

a criminal. Attributions—our explanations of the behavior of others and ourselves— have been of interest to psychologists for a long time. In 1958, Fritz Heider wrote a book on how we make judgments about one another. According to Heider and others who came after him, we generally explain others’ behavior as due to something either internal or external to the person.

Imagine you are sitting in a coffee shop wait- ing for a date you met online. Your date is late. If you decide that your date is inconsid- erate, you have made an internal attribution for your date’s behavior. When you make an internal attribution, you blame personality, attitudes, or some other dispositional factor for the action. If, on the other hand, you think your date is late because of traffic or a work emergency, you have made an external attri- bution. When you make an external attri-

bution, you attribute situational factors for the action. We find differences in the patterns of attributions across cultures. Generally, individuals from more independent cultures make more internal attributions while those in more interdependent cultures make more external attribu- tions (Triandis, 2001). For example, in the United States, salespeople tend to attribute their performance to internal factors—their sales are due to their hard work and wonderful people

damircudic/E+/Getty Images When you call a friend on the phone and she doesn’t answer, are you more likely to make an internal attribution (perhaps by deciding that your friend is ignoring your call or bad at communicating) or an external attribution (perhaps by assuming that your friend is busy and will get back to you when she’s free)?

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skills. In more interdependent cultures, such as in India, attributions tend to be more external— their sales are due to a good customer base (DeCarlo, Agarwal, & Vyas, 2007).

Attributions can make a difference in how we treat people and deal with societal problems. For example, how crime is attributed can impact how we handle criminals. If a society and the people within that society believe that criminals engage in crime because it was their choice or because they have no morals, then that society will lock up its criminals and try to prevent them from getting out to offend again. On the other hand, a society that believes that lack of job opportunities, racism, or peer pressure is primarily to blame for criminal behavior is likely to offer rehabilitation and education to criminals as well as work to eradicate societal ills (Templeton & Hartnagel, 2012; Unnever, Cullen, & Jones, 2008).

Fundamental Attribution Error Daily life offers many opportunities to make attributions. When a neighbor fails to greet you while passing in the street, you might declare your neighbor rude and unfriendly. Blaming a behavior on a dispositional factor, like rudeness, may not be accurate. Your neighbor might not have seen you because of the large bag of groceries you were holding, or she was dis- tracted by a fight she just had with her child. When people attribute behavior to dispositional factors when there are clear situational factors at work, they are engaging in the fundamen- tal attribution error, also known as correspondence bias (Gilbert & Malone, 1995; Gilbert, Pelham, & Krull, 1988; Jones & Harris, 1967; Ross, Amabile, & Steinmetz, 1977). See Figure 4.3 for an example.

Figure 4.3: The fundamental attribution error

Often when we attribute behavior to dispositional factors, we engage in the fundamental attribution error.

Source: Adapted from Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2004). Interactive lectures. In Psychology, media and research update (7th ed., ch. 8). Prentice-Hall.

Beth’s attributions

Situational

Dispositional Fundamental attribution error

“James is running late to his first date with Beth.”

“His babysitter may be late or there may be

traffic on the freeway.”

“He’s inconsiderate and doesn’t manage

his time well.”

Ignoring clear situational factors and only attributing behavior

to dispositional factors.

(Has the possibility of leading to)

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In Lee Ross, Teresa Amabile, and Julia Steinmetz’s (1977) study on the subject, participants were randomly assigned the role of questioner or contestant in a quiz game. The question- ers came up with questions from their own storehouse of esoteric knowledge. Depending on the background of the questioners, they might develop questions on geography, cars, breeds of cows, or any number of other odd topics. Contestants completed the quiz and rated the general knowledge of the questioner. Given the freedom of the questioner to develop difficult questions from any realm, most contestants did not do very well. When rating the general knowledge of the questioner, they overestimated that knowledge. The contestants overes- timated the effect of dispositional factors (knowledge) and underestimated the effect of the situation (freedom to ask any question).

Various factors make the fundamental attribution error more likely. People make the fun- damental attribution error more when they are happy versus when they are sad. Because happy people process less information from their environment, they tend to make quick deci- sions about the cause of the behavior of others (Forgas, 1998). Certain people are more likely to make the fundamental attribution error than others (Scopelliti, Min, McCormick, Kassam, & Morewedge, 2018). Some people more naturally focus on situational factors, while oth- ers are more likely to ignore those external factors. The attributions people make with the fundamental attribution error grow more situational over time (Burger & Pavelich, 1994; Truchot, Maure, & Patte, 2003). When making an immediate attribution, we tend to show a bias toward dispositional attributions predicted by the fundamental attribution error. When time has passed, our judgments take the situation into account to a greater degree. Over time, then, the power of the fundamental attribution error diminishes. The likelihood of making the fundamental attribution error also diminishes from young adulthood to middle age (Follett & Hess, 2002). After middle age, the likelihood of making the error begins to increase again.

There are certainly times when behavior is due to rudeness, so deciding that your neighbor is inconsiderate could be appropriate. The fundamental attribution error is an error because we make these kinds of decisions about someone’s disposition even when clear situational factors are at work. But you do not make this error, do you? Most people believe themselves to be less vulnerable to the fundamental attribution error than others, even though we are generally similar to others like us in our tendency to make the error (Van Boven, Kamada, & Gilovich, 1999; Van Boven, White, Kamada, & Gilovich, 2003).

One context where the fundamental attribution error is particularly likely is in communica- tion using a computer or smartphone. Messages in one’s email or text inbox provide few cues as to the situation of the writer. Without these cues, it is easy to misjudge details about the sender and the message. For example, if you received a message with a number of misspell- ings and grammar mistakes, it is likely you would judge the writer of that message as not very intelligent or competent. Without knowing the writer was pressed for time, distracted by a crying child, or dealing with a misbehaving phone, you may judge that dispositional, rather than situational, factors were at work (Cramton, 2001). It is only when we are made aware of some of these situational forces that we change our judgments. One study found that when people are told that the sender of an email is from a different culture, the email recipients are less harsh in their dispositional judgments for language errors like misspellings, although dispositional judgments are still made for etiquette errors (Vignovic & Thompson, 2010).

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With a name like fundamental attribution error, one would assume that this error is common in all people in all cultures. Not so. When compared to European Americans, researchers have found that East Asians are more aware of situational constraints on behavior. When situations are powerful or easily recognized, East Asians are more likely to attribute behavior to those situational factors (Choi, Nisbett, & Norenzayan, 1999; Lien, Chu, Jen, & Wu, 2006; Miyamoto & Kitayama, 2002; Morris & Peng, 1994). When research participants were told that the per- son whose behavior they were evaluating had no choice in his behavior and simply followed the directions of the experimenter, Korean participants were more likely to take into account the situational constraints on the person, whereas U.S. participants largely ignored the situ- ational factors (Choi & Nisbett, 1998). For example, someone raised in an East Asian culture might say that a person is rude because his parents never taught him manners rather than rude because it is part of his nature. East Asians also think more holistically about the person (Choi et al., 1999). Even if someone’s behavior is blamed on internal factors, these internal factors are explained situationally. Although the phenomenon came to be known as the fun- damental attribution error because so many researchers found similar results over a number of years (Funder, 2001), it turns out the fundamental attribution error is not as fundamental as we thought.

Test Yourself

• Someone cuts in front of you in line at the grocery store. Describe some internal attributions for that behavior. Describe some external attributions for that behavior. Examples might include: internal attributions—the person is rude, a jerk, inconsiderate; external attributions—the person is distracted by his/her children, cannot see me because of a large display, was directed to my line by a store employee.

• Which of these people may have made the fundamental attribution error?

a . Janelle believes the clown she hired for her son’s birthday party is a happy and joyful person.

Janelle may be making the fundamental attribution error. The clown’s job, a situational factor, requires joyful behavior. The happy behavior the clown shows may not be due to dispositional factors but to situational factors.

b. Kim attributes the store clerk’s rude behavior toward her to the crankiness of the customer in front of her.

Kim is not making the fundamental attribution error because she is attributing the clerk’s behavior to a situational factor, the previous customer, rather than to something about the clerk herself.

c . Ted attributes his friend’s service at the soup kitchen to his kind and giving nature, not to a requirement of the social work major his friend is pursuing.

Ted is making the fundamental attribution error. He is ignoring situational influences on his friend’s behavior and is describing the behavior as due to something dispositional.

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Actor-Observer Bias A related concept to the fundamental attribution error is the actor-observer bias. The fun- damental attribution error suggests that as observers, people discount situational factors and overestimate dispositional factors. The actor-observer bias expands this tendency to explain our own behavior as actors. Actors tend to make more situational attributions for behav- ior (Jones & Nisbett, 1972; Van Raalte, Cornelius, Copeskey, & Brewer, 2014). In this way, the same behavior may be explained differently depending on the perspective the individ- ual takes when making the judgment (Kulibert & Thompson, 2019). The situationally based explanations for our own behavior are stronger when we are explaining negative rather than positive events (Green & McClearn, 2010). When explaining positive events, like doing well on a test, the self-serving bias leads us to account for our behavior using more dispositional explanations, such as our intelligence.

Some researchers have questioned the traditional formulation of the actor-observer bias. In a meta-analysis, Bertram Malle (2006) found that actors are not more likely to make situ- ational inferences, and observers are not more likely to make dispositional inferences. Over- all, individuals try to explain the reasons for their own and others’ actions, more so than providing explanations that are based in disposition, background, or factors within the situ- ation that allowed the action (Korman & Malle, 2016; Malle, 2011). Actors and observers do, however, explain behaviors differently. Malle (2005) found that reasoning explanations made up 80% of explanations for a person’s own behavior, as an actor, and 60% of explanations for the behavior of others, as an observer. Malle and colleagues (Malle, Knobe, & Nelson, 2007) proposed an asymmetry in explanations based on different desires and different knowledge. Actors know the reasons behind a decision and are motivated to present themselves as ratio- nal people. Imagine Jill cleaned out the work refrigerator and in the process threw out several people’s lunches. She would describe her action as due to the boss’s request to clean the refrigerator, the lack of clear markings on containers about who they belonged to, and her overall helpfulness in keeping the office clean.

Observers can only guess the reasons for a behavior and must instead rely on their general knowledge of situations and their ability to mentally simulate the thought process of the actor. Observers have no particular need to present the actor in a positive light. Jill’s cowork- ers might explain her actions as irrational, making the argument that the refrigerator did not need to be cleaned, and Jill should not throw out things that do not belong to her. The coworkers would describe Jill’s actions as due to her rude and inconsiderate nature. Observ- ers are more likely to distance themselves from an actor’s actions by making note of a belief or motive rather than just the reason itself. Jill might say, “The food in the refrigerator was old; that’s why I threw it out.” A coworker would say, “Jill believed the food in the refrigerator was old; that’s why she threw it out.” Malle and colleagues’ explanations (Malle et al., 2007) for differences between actors and observers provide a more nuanced approach to these dif- ferences and help explain inconsistencies in past research.

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4.4 Explanations and Our Behavior As we make attributions day after day, we may develop patterns for making these judgments. These patterns then influence how we approach others and react to events. Two of the major patterns investigated by researchers are those surrounding whether we explain events in an optimistic or pessimistic way and the extent to which we expect hostility from others in our interactions. The attributions we make are influenced by our need to fit in with others but also by our need to differentiate and stand out from the crowd. The behaviors we engage in are influenced by these various patterns of attributions.

Optimistic and Pessimistic Explanatory Styles Every day we interpret the actions of others and the events that occur. As we do so, we may fall into a certain pattern of explanation. One pattern of attributions is optimistic and leads us to expect positive outcomes from our interactions. Another pattern is more pessimistic and leads us to expect negative outcomes from our interactions.

Consider how you would explain these two events: your date complimenting you on your appearance and your inability to find a job. According to researchers, you have three deci- sions to make as you interpret those events (Seligman & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1987; Seligman & Schulman, 1986). When you are explaining a compliment you receive, you could assume the other person was having a good day and complimented everyone. On the other hand, you could assume that the compliment was prompted by your own appearance. In this case,

Test Yourself

Ayesha showed up late to an important meeting at work. According to the reformulation of the actor-observer bias offered by Malle and colleagues (2007), how might Ayesha and her colleagues differ in their explanation of her behavior?

Ayesha is likely to provide more reasons for her behavior and paint her behavior in a more positive light than her colleagues would. She might mention staying late the day before and therefore getting a slow start in the morning and encountering traffic on the way to work as reasons for her late arrival. Her coworkers might also mention traffic, based on general knowledge about why people are sometimes late for meetings, but offer no other reasons. Ayesha’s colleagues are also more likely to distance themselves from a reason by remarking on a motive or belief. They could mention that Ayesha might have believed the meeting started later.

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you are attributing the compliment to either an external cause, something about the other person or the circumstance, or an internal cause, something about you. Your second choice involves whether you consider the compliment to be an event that will likely never or rarely happen again, like a free makeover you just had, or something that will always be around, your attractive face. In this case, you are making an attribution that is either unstable, mean- ing that the cause is there rarely or only some of the time, or stable, meaning that the cause is always there. You need to decide whether the compliment applies to your present appear- ance at the mall where you got the makeover or whether you will likely get compliments in all situations in your life. In this case, you are making a decision about whether the cause is specific, applying only in this particular situation, or global, applying to all situations. Putting this all together: When you decide on the cause for a behavior or event, you decide whether it is external or internal, unstable or stable, and specific or global.

People tend to have relatively stable patterns in making such decisions. These patterns char- acterize a person’s explanatory style. If you received a compliment, what kind of attribution do you think would make you feel the best? If you consider the cause of the compliment to be internal (something about you), stable (something that will always be there), and global (something that will be found in all situations), you are likely to feel better about yourself. Consider another example. If you got a high grade on your last psychology test, you would feel good if you attributed that grade to your own brilliance (internal), a brilliance that you have always possessed (stable), and brilliance that is true in many classes and situations (global).

Would the same be true in explaining long-term unemployment? If you think about a nega- tive event like long-term unemployment, an explanation that will make you feel best about yourself is one that says the cause is external (something about the job market), unstable (a job market that will change), and specific (applies only to the job market). People with an optimistic explanatory style show exactly this pattern. Someone who is optimistic will explain positive events as internal, stable, and global. Negative events, on the other hand, will be explained as external, unstable, and specific. For example, if you were explaining a poor grade, a negative event, using an optimistic explanatory style you could say the test was very hard, something external; that the next test will be different, something unstable; and that it was the particular topic on that test that you did not understand, something specific.

Individuals with a pessimistic explanatory style have exactly the opposite pattern. Pes- simistic people generally blame themselves for negative events and believe those events are typical of what is likely to happen in many aspects of their lives. A person using a pessimistic explanatory style for a poor test grade would explain this negative event as internal, they are a poor student; stable, they will always be a poor student; and global, they cannot do well in any class, not just the one in which they received the poor grade. Individuals using a pessi- mistic explanatory style also tend to imagine such events continuing in the future. Optimistic people generally blame outside influences for negative events and interpret these events as temporary. See Figure 4.4 for examples of how optimists and pessimists may respond to certain events.

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Section 4.4 Explanations and Our Behavior

Optimistic explanatory style is related to more positive well-being in both younger and older adults (Forgeard & Seligman, 2012; Mohanty & Begum, 2012). This connection between optimism and well-being appears to be universal, found in a study of 142 countries around the world (Gallagher, Lopez, & Pressman, 2013). When facing difficult circumstances, such as a major health crisis, optimism can allow individuals to maintain positive mental health and physical health (Gallagher, Long, Richardson, & D’Souza, 2019; Shifren & Anzaldi, 2018). When dealing with poor health, it may be that optimism has a positive effect on the body’s response to stress or that optimism leads people to engage in more positive health behaviors (Avvenuti, Baiardini, & Giardini, 2016).

Individuals with optimistic explanatory styles are more likely to persist in the face of failure. This can be seen in the case of sales agents. Sales agents experience a lot of failure, as the majority of their potential clients say no to their product. Researchers assessed the explana- tory style of beginning life insurance agents using a questionnaire and followed them to see how much life insurance they would sell and how long they would remain in their jobs (Selig- man & Schulman, 1986). Those agents who were most optimistic sold the most insurance. At the end of the first year, those who were the most optimistic were twice as likely to still be selling insurance.

Figure 4.4: Explanatory style

Optimistic people see bad events in the same way as pessimistic people see good events. Conversely, pessimistic people see bad events in the same way as optimistic people see good events.

Source: Adapted from Optimism: How to learn to expect positive outcomes, March 26, 2012. Langley Group. https://langleygroup.com.au /optimism-how-to-learn-to-expect-positive-outcomes/

Bad events Example:

You rear-end another car at an intersection.

Good events

Example: You earn a promotion at work.

Optimistic explanatory style

Pessimistic explanatory style

External “The fog impaired my visibility— accidents happen.”

Unstable “I’ll pay for the damage and move on.”

Specific “Despite this incident, I’m still a safe driver.”

Internal “I got the promotion because I’m a great worker.”

Stable “I’ll be able to succeed in my new position and have this job for a long time.”

Global “If I work hard and do my best, things will work out in the end.”

Internal “I’m a terrible driver.”

Stable “I’ll never be safe on the road.”

Global “I can’t do anything right; I always do things like this.”

External “My boss is very generous to give me this opportunity.”

Unstable “I won’t have this job forever.”

Specific “I got the position because it needed to be filled and there was no one better.”

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In contrast, individuals with a pessimistic explanatory style have more negative outcomes. They are more likely to get sick when they encounter stressful events (Bennett & Elliot, 2005; Jackson, Sellers, & Peterson, 2002). Pessimistic explanatory styles have been linked to depres- sion and suicide (Hirsch, Wolford, LaLonde, Brunk, & Parker-Morris, 2009; Hu, Zhang, & Yang, 2015; Huang, 2015; Peterson & Seligman, 1984). When people with negative explanatory styles encounter a bad event, like losing a job, they are likely to explain it as due to something about them, such as having unmarketable skills—something that will always be there, such as no one will ever hire someone with their skills, and something that is global, such as that all of their skills are useless. These explanations lead to a state of learned helplessness. Learned helplessness occurs when we have acquired through our experiences a sense that no matter what we do, our actions will not have a positive impact on negative experiences (Seligman & Maier, 1967; Teodorescu & Erev, 2014). When a job loss is explained as internal, stable, and global, it is unlikely anything the person does will change the situation, so giving up is the most rational response to the problem.

Negative explanatory styles and self-handicapping are linked to poorer academic perfor- mance (Martin, Marsh, & Debus, 2001; Peterson & Barrett, 1987). Researchers found that first-year university students who interpreted negative events as internal, stable, and global received lower grades. These lower grades seemed to be due to a reluctance to seek help when struggling (why do so if you believe your poor performance is due to your lack of intel- ligence?) and a lack of academic goal setting. Similarly, college students with a pessimistic explanatory style were less likely to actively deal with their symptoms when they became ill, prolonging or exacerbating illness (Lin & Peterson, 1990).

Pessimism does not always link to poor performance. In a longitudinal study of law students, researchers assessed explanatory style with a survey at the beginning of law school and revis- ited the students throughout their time in school (Satterfield, Monahan, & Seligman, 1997). The students with a more pessimistic style at the beginning of school ended up with higher grade point averages and did better publishing in law journals. The difference may come from the fact that the law students had already proven to be resilient in the face of problems, given their ability to get into law school, as well as being in a profession that rewards skepticism and cautious decision making.

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Social Psychology in Depth: Attribution, Story, and Depression

Our explanations for behavior influence how we feel about ourselves. Jonathan Adler, Emily Kissel, and Dan McAdams (2006) interviewed adults within the community, asking them to discuss eight different episodes in their lives (e.g., childhood memory, high point, low point) as well as themes they saw in their lives and how they would divide their lives into chapters. When the researchers looked at attributions made in the stories, they found that when individuals explained negative events in their stories as stable and global, they were more likely to report symptoms of depression in a depression scale. Keep in mind that these were attributions that appeared spontaneously and were not solicited by the researchers through a questionnaire or direct questions.

Depression was also related to contamination sequences in stories. A contamination sequence occurs when a story begins well but is ruined or spoiled by negative events. For example, someone might tell a story about a fun day at the beach that was spoiled by a fight and ended in a car ride home in stony silence. The presence of these types of stories independently predicted depression, apart from attributional style. We may often think of depression as simply feeling bad about oneself and the world, but these studies reveal that depression is related to the way we view and describe the world around us.

Although sometimes our stories reveal our sadness, remembering our stories can also make us more optimistic. College students who were asked to think about a past event that made them feel nostalgic and generate a narrative about that event reported feeling more optimistic than those who were asked to simply think about ordinary events (Cheung et al., 2013). Our memory of nostalgic events may help us remember our connections to others, raising self-esteem and increasing optimism.

Test Yourself

For each of the following, indicate whether the explanation is internal or external, stable or unstable, global or specific.

• Karen blames her own stupidity for a bad grade on the history test. For all of her classes, she says that any studying she does goes to waste because she never does any better. Internal, stable, global.

• Andrew believes his disastrous date on Friday night was due to a cold he is developing that made him a bad conversation partner. Once he recovers, he is certain future dates will go better. His cold might also be to blame for a fight he had with his roommate in the morning and the bad day at work he had on Friday. Internal, unstable, global.

• Jeremy blames his bad day at work on his computer losing the project he worked so hard on. Fortunately, all his other work is going well, and the technology department promised to have his computer fixed tomorrow. External, unstable, specific .

• Shawna celebrates her new job. She believes her great interviewing skills landed her the job, skills she has honed over the years and uses in all kinds of situations. Internal, stable, global .

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A Hostile World Some individuals view the world as a hostile place. In making judgments about the actions of others, we can decide that others engaged in those actions to deliberately harm us. People who chronically make these kinds of judgments have a hostile attribution of intent, sometimes called hostile attribution bias (De Castro, Veerman, Koops, Bosch, & Monshouwer, 2002). If you believe someone has deliberately stepped on your toes or cut in front of you in line, your reaction is likely to be different than if you believe these actions were unintentional. Hostile attribution of intent tends to lead to more aggressive behavior, at least in children, where this has been studied the most (De Castro et al., 2002; Martinelli, Ackermann, Bernhard, Freitag, & Schwenck, 2018).

Hostile attribution bias has been linked to both attitudes toward violence and differences in the brain (Quan et al., 2019). One source of these attributions may be peer interactions or interactions in the home. Kim Freeman and colleagues (Freeman, Hadwin, & Halligan, 2011) conducted a study in which kids in their early teenage years communicated with hostile or non-hostile teens in an online chat room. Some of the teens from this chat room explained oth- ers’ behavior in a hostile way, but for others the explanations were more benign. For example, when explaining why a group of unknown kids stood up when approached, some said it was a desire to defend territory, a hostile attribution. For others, a less threatening explanation was given—that the kids were going to give a greeting. The teens that interacted with more hostile peers were more likely to make hostile attributions.

For children, a rejection by their peers can activate the hostile attribution of intent and lead to aggressive action. Kids who thought others rejected a personal profile they posted online believed that others had more hostile intent toward them and were angrier and more aggres- sive toward the rejecters (Reijntjes et al., 2011). Family also plays a role. Negative interactions within the home and having a parent who makes more hostile attributions are related to more hostile attributions (Bickett, Milich, & Brown, 1996; Gomez & Gomez, 2000; Healy, Mur- ray, Cooper, Hughes, & Halligan, 2015). For example, parents who reported using harsh disci- pline tactics had children with more hostile interaction goals and more aggressive behavior (Crouch et al., 2017; Heidgerken, Hughes, Cavell, & Willson, 2004). Children’s exposure to violent video games also increases hostile attributions, both immediately after they play and over time (Hasan, Bègue, Scharkow, & Bushman, 2013).

Test Yourself

Given the factors that contribute to and are related to a hostile attribution of intent, describe a person who is likely to show a hostile attribution of intent.

The person has peers who act in a hostile way or make hostile attributions, has been rejected by peers, has negative interactions at home, and has recently played a violent video game.

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Just Like Everybody Else As we observe others, we look for clues concerning what they think or feel. One way in which we fill in the gaps of our knowledge is to overestimate the extent to which people have similar interests and preferences, a phenomenon called the false consensus effect. For example, we assume that our friend will love our favorite coffee shop; we love the place, surely our friend will as well!

When research participants were asked about something they liked, such as movies or types of music, and were then asked to estimate the degree to which others liked those things, they tended to overestimate the extent to which their own preferences are shared by other people (Gilovich, 1990; Ross, Greene, & House, 1977). False consensus is stronger for our likes than our dislikes, and we make false consensus judgments more when we are happy (Coleman, 2018; Gershoff, Mukherjee, & Mukhopadhyay, 2008). We more easily come up with reasons for liking what we like, so we may overestimate how common those opinions are (Mullen et al., 1985). We engage in the false consensus effect for a wide variety of opinions, from favor- ite ice cream sundae toppings or movie posters to favorite celebrities, from sexual behavior to illegal drug use among both college stu- dents and elite athletes (Bui, 2012; Dunn, Thomas, Swift, & Burns, 2012; Gershoff et al., 2008; Morente-Sanchez & Zabala, 2013; Sanders, Stogner, Seibert, & Miller, 2014; Whitley, 1998). We even engage in false consensus when judging what others would do in a particular situation; certainly all rea- sonable people would do what we do, right? (Oostrom, Kobis, Ronay, & Cremers, 2017).

False consensus comes, in part, from selec- tive exposure to others who are like us and agree with us (Whitley, 1998). Powerful people within a group engage in more false consensus about the group members’ atti- tudes (Overbeck & Droutman, 2013). Online groups are one way people connect with others who are like-minded. Being part of one of these groups may increase false consensus by giving one a feeling that there are many people who share one’s opinions, even though there may be few in the general popula- tion (Wojcieszak, 2008, 2011). When trying to estimate how many other people share our opinions, instances where we remember others agreeing with us (e.g., I like penguins too!) more easily come to mind and may therefore lead us to overestimate how many others agree (Marks & Miller, 1987; Mullen et al., 1985).

Another source of our overestimations comes from our desire to see ourselves as part of the group (Marks & Miller, 1987; Sherman, Presson, & Chassin, 1984). People who have a greater need to belong show a greater tendency toward false consensus (Morrison & Matthes, 2011). In a desire to see our behavior as normal, we may overestimate the extent to which others are engaging in that behavior. For example, college women who were sexually experienced gave higher and less accurate assessments of peer sexual behavior; the further their own behavior was from the norm, the higher their estimates of their peers’ behavior (Whitley, 1998).

hadynyah/E+/Getty Images A person traveling internationally for the first time may be likely to demonstrate false consensus, possibly assuming those in different countries share the same norms and cultural references.

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False consensus may lead us to make judgments about others that can create later problems. For example, not knowing if your online date likes the singer Beyoncé or not, you may simply assume she does because you do. This can make additional conversations and face-to-face meetings problematic when one’s illusions about the other person’s thoughts and attitudes are revealed (Bridges, 2012; Finkel, Eastwick, Karney, Reis, & Sprecher, 2012). Even more serious false consensus has been shown to lead to inaccurate judgments about human immu- nodeficiency virus (HIV) risk in intimate relationships (Harman, O’Grady, & Wilson, 2009). If judgments based on false consensus translate into risky behavior, severe consequences can result.

In contrast, we also have behaviors or beliefs that we view as unique. The tendency for peo- ple to underestimate the extent to which their opinions or behaviors are shared by others is the uniqueness bias, or the false uniqueness effect. This underestimation usually involves beliefs or behaviors that are desirable or a source of pride. When we perceive our attributes to be more unique than they really are, we make ourselves feel even better about our rare and wonderful qualities. For example, if you donate blood regularly, you may underestimate the number of people who also give blood so that you feel particularly virtuous (Allison, Messick, & Goethals, 1989; Goethals, 1986; Monin & Norton, 2003).

Test Yourself

When are we likely to find the greatest false consensus?

We should find the greatest false consensus about things that we like or when we need to fill in the blanks about someone we do not know yet. We should also find greater false consensus when we are high in need to belong or want to believe our behavior is normal.

What Do Others See? When people feel a strong emotion, they often overestimate others’ ability to discern that emotion. For example, if your new romantic interest baked you terrible-tasting cookies, your feeling of disgust as you ate them might not be as clear to your date as you think it is (Gilov- ich, Savitsky, & Medvec, 1998; Holder & Hawkins, 2007). This tendency to believe that our thoughts or feelings can be more clearly seen by others than they actually are is called the illusion of transparency. If you have ever been surprised that a family member did not know you were upset or that your boss did not notice how hard you worked, blame the illusion of transparency (Gilovich & Savitsky, 1999). Because we believe those we are closest to can read us well, or at least better than others, we are more likely to have an illusion of transparency among those we know well, such as a friend or romantic partner (Kudo, 2007). This principle also applies to our beliefs about our ability to lie. People generally believe that their lies are easier to spot than they actually are (Gilovich, Savitsky, & Medvec, 1998; Rai, Mitchell, & Fael- ling, 2012). In truth, the emotions or behaviors that we thought were so apparent to others are not so clear .

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Illusion of transparency has both drawbacks and benefits. During performance evaluations, managers often think they are more transparent in the feedback they are giving than they actually are (Schaerer, Kern, Berger, Medvec, & Swaab, 2018). This illusion is particularly true for negative feedback. Employees may not get the message about behavior they need to change and suffer professionally for it, because managers are not as transparent as they need to be. But the illusion of transparency is not all bad news. Evidence for the illusion of transparency has proven helpful to those who suffer from speech anxiety. Although people who suffer from speech anxiety believe it is evident to the audience, most people listening to a speech are unaware of how anxious the speaker is. After realizing this, those high in speech anxiety gave better speeches (Savitsky & Gilovich, 2003). The vicious cycle of being anxious, believing others know we are anxious, and therefore becoming more anxious can be broken by knowledge of this illusion.

Along with our illusion of transparency comes a sense that others are aware of our triumphs and trials. This tendency to believe that others notice our behaviors and appearance to a greater extent than they actually do is known as the spotlight effect. Imagine you arrange to meet a new friend at a restaurant. When you get to the restaurant, you realize you have a spot of spaghetti sauce on your sleeve. Although you believe your friend will quickly zero in on the spilled sauce, the likelihood is that person is too focused on making a good impression to notice such a small spot.

In one study of the spotlight effect, college students were asked to wear a T-shirt with Barry Manilow on the front (Gilovich, Medvec, & Savitsky, 2000). Manilow is a singer-songwriter who is well known but not very popular with college students. The Manilow T-shirt was cho- sen because college students reported that they would be embarrassed to be known as a Manilow fan. After the students put on the shirt, they were brought to a room where other students were working, staying there briefly before leaving again. After leaving the room, the students were asked how many people noticed their T-shirt. The T-shirt wearers believed, on average, that about 45% of the people in the room would notice their Manilow shirt. The other students were also asked if they noticed the Manilow shirt. Of the students in the room, on average, just over 20% of the students actually noticed.

Along with this sense that we are noticed, we generally believe that others judge us more harshly than they actually do. For example, if you accidentally set off an alarm by taking the fire exit as you left a university library, you might assume everyone thinks you are stupid. While there may be a few who think so, the vast majority of students are much less harsh in their judgments and are likely to be sympathetic to your plight (Savitsky, Epley, & Gilov- ich, 2001). Embarrassment caused by the behavior of a friend or relative is also often more acutely felt than is necessary. When someone we are known to be associated with makes a blunder, others generally do not connect that action with us, contrary to what we might think (Fortune & Newby-Clark, 2008). Just because your brother picks his nose in public does not mean that others think you are disgusting by association. We can reduce the spotlight effect if we change our viewpoint. Simply thinking about a future, potentially embarrassing event from a third-person perspective rather than our own first-person perspective can reduce the spotlight effect and our embarrassment (Macrae et al., 2016). Imagining the event far in the future also reduces our tendency to feel like we are in the spotlight.

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Conclusion

Conclusion Our lives are full of things that demand explanation. People form attitudes by evaluating the things and objects in their environment. Although we may not always be aware of the atti- tudes we hold, they may still affect our behavior. These attitudes can be helpful in predicting our behavior, although many other factors come into play. Our attitudes can change because of our behavior (as in cognitive dissonance theory) or be formed because of our behavior (as in self-perception theory). As we make judgments, our attributions tend to follow certain patterns. Those patterns can be fairly common across a culture, as is so with the fundamental attribution error, or be based on our experiences in life, as is so with the hostile attribution of intent .

The spotlight effect applies to behaviors others might notice, particularly those about which we are embarrassed or feel self-conscious. Overall, however, we tend to believe that oth- ers observe us less than they do. If you have ever people-watched in a coffee shop, mall, or other public place, you have observed a great deal of behavior. Sitting in or walking through those spaces, however, you may have felt anonymous or somewhat invisible. The invisibil- ity cloak illusion is the incorrect perception people have that they observe others more than others observe them (Boothby, Clark, & Bargh, 2017). While we might believe we have a spotlight on us when we are embarrassed, we often believe we wear an invisibility clock when in public places.

Test Yourself

• Why is the illusion of transparency called an illusion? With the illusion of transparency, people believe that others readily see what they feel and believe, but they do not. Our perceived transparency is an illusion, a false belief.

• If you dropped your books all over the sidewalk, what would the spotlight effect predict you would feel and others would notice? The spotlight effect predicts you would feel like a spotlight was shining on you and your mistake, like everyone would notice. Most other people would fail to notice your blunder.

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Summary & Resources

Chapter Summary

Attitudes

Attitudes involve an evaluation of an entity or behavior. Attitudes can be placed on a con- tinuum from weak to strong and from positive to negative. When people report on an attitude, they are describing an attitude that they are consciously aware of, called an explicit attitude. Attitudes that emerge from automatic processes are implicit attitudes. Implicit attitudes can be assessed with the Implicit Association Test (IAT).

Behavior and Attitudes

Attitudes and behaviors are often misaligned. We are more likely to see an agreement between attitude and behavior when the attitude is accessible, it matches the behavior in level of specificity, the behavior is easy to perform, and social pressures support an alignment. The theory of planned behavior allows for the prediction of behaviors from attitudes, sub- jective norms, and perceived behavioral control. Cognitive dissonance theory proposes that when our attitudes and behaviors do not match and we have insufficient justification, we are likely to change our attitude. Self-perception theory involves figuring out our attitudes from observing our own behavior.

Explaining the Behavior of Others

When making attributions, we attempt to explain the behavior of others. Internal attributions involve attributing an action to something internal to the person, such as personality. When we make external attributions, on the other hand, we attribute actions to something outside the person, such as current circumstances. When we make internal attributions despite plau- sible external causes, we are making the fundamental attribution error. The actor-observer bias adds the idea that as actors we point to situational factors in our behavior.

Explanations and Our Behavior

Our habitual patterns of making attributions can vary in terms of whether we make an attribu- tion that is internal versus external, stable versus unstable, and global versus specific. When we make internal, stable, and global attributions for positive things and external, unstable, and specific attributions for negative things, we are showing an optimistic explanatory style. Pessimistic explanatory styles are the direct opposite of optimistic styles. Patterns of attri- butions can also involve how much hostility one expects from others and therefore sees in actions, known as hostile attribution of intent. At times we overestimate the extent to which our attributions or abilities are shared, engaging in false consensus. At other times we over- estimate how rare our abilities or beliefs are, engaging in false uniqueness. With an illusion of transparency we think that when others look at us, they see more than they actually do.

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Summary & Resources

Key Terms actor-observer bias The tendency for people to explain their own behavior (as actors) as due to situational factors and the behaviors of others (as observers) as due to dispositional factors.

affective reaction The implicit response to an attitude object involving feeling or affect.

attitude An evaluation based on a reaction—both in terms of how we feel and what we think—about some attitude object. The evaluation we have involves two aspects: strength and valence. Valence is how positive or negative that attitude may be.

attribution An explanation of the behavior of others or one’s own behavior.

cognitive dissonance The tension felt when there is a gap between attitudes or between attitudes and actions. Often results in a change of attitudes when faced with a high level of dissonance.

cognitive reaction The implicit response to an attitude object involving thoughts or beliefs.

evaluative conditioning A technique designed to change implicit attitudes. Attitude objects are repeatedly paired with positive images to create positive implicit attitudes or with negative images to create negative implicit attitudes.

explanatory style The way a person explains events. Explanations include whether the event is explained as internal or external, stable or unstable, and global or specific .

explicit attitude An attitude that is conscious and can be reported. Contrast with implicit attitude.

external attribution Attribution of an action that involves something external to the person, such as an unforeseen circumstance.

Critical Thinking Questions

1 . If implicit attitudes are something we are not even aware of, do they matter? 2 . What other influences on attitudes and behaviors might researchers study? 3 . If you were to add a factor to the theory of planned behavior, what might it be? What

additional variable might be added to better predict behavior? 4 . Have you ever had an experience where your attitudes and actions did not match?

Did you do any of the things suggested to reduce cognitive dissonance? 5 . How might making the fundamental attribution error affect your relationships? Are

there times when the effect might be positive and times when it might be negative? 6 . Is the fundamental attribution error common within your own cultural tradition? 7 . An optimistic explanatory style was represented as generally positive for well-being

and persistence. When might an optimistic explanatory style be detrimental to a person?

8 . The text points out one positive to knowing about the illusion of transparency— lower speech anxiety. What might be some negative effects of knowing about the illusion? In other words, why might it be good for us to believe others see more than they actually do?

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Summary & Resources

false consensus effect The tendency for people to overestimate how much their opinions or behaviors are shared by others.

false uniqueness effect The tendency for people to underestimate the extent to which their opinions or behaviors are shared by others: also known as the uniqueness bias.

fundamental attribution error Attributing behavior to dispositional factors when there are clear situational factors at work; also known as correspondence bias.

hostile attribution of intent A way of attributing the actions of others as having the intent of harm, even when those actions are friendly or ambiguous; also known as hostile attribution bias.

IKEA effect The tendency for individuals to evaluate more highly things that they make themselves.

illusion of transparency The tendency to believe that one’s thoughts or feelings can be more clearly seen by others than they actually are.

Implicit Association Test A test to measure implicit attitudes that uses reaction time; also known as the IAT.

implicit attitude An attitude that is based in the automatic, unconscious reactions one has toward an attitude object. Contrast with explicit attitude.

insufficient justification When attitudes and behaviors are in conflict and the person has no adequate explanation for why. Important for cognitive dissonance theory.

internal attribution Attribution for an action that involves something internal to the person, such as personality or attitude.

invisibility cloak illusion The incorrect belief that one is not observed to the same extent that one observes others.

learned helplessness The belief that nothing one does will have an impact on events. Learned through repeated experiences of helplessness.

motivational interviewing A behavioral intervention in which a practitioner helps individuals explore their own motivations for and barriers to engaging in behavior change and the discrepancies they have in their own attitudes or values and behavior.

optimistic explanatory style Someone with an optimistic explanatory style will explain positive events as internal, stable, and global and negative events as external, unstable, and specific.

overjustification effect The reduction in intrinsic motivation that occurs when an intrinsically motivated behavior is rewarded.

perceived behavioral control The belief that one can engage in the behavior; part of the theory of planned behavior.

pessimistic explanatory style Someone with a pessimistic explanatory style will explain positive events as external, unstable, and specific and negative events as internal, stable, and global.

self-perception theory The idea that attitudes can be determined by looking at one’s behavior.

spotlight effect The tendency to believe that others notice one’s behaviors and appearance to a greater extent than they actually do.

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Summary & Resources

strength In relation to attitudes, how robust an attitude is on a continuum from very weak to very strong.

subjective norm A belief of important people in one’s environment; an important aspect of the theory of planned behavior.

theory of planned behavior A theory predicting behavior from (1) attitude toward that behavior, (2) subjective norms related to that behavior, and (3) perceived behavioral control.

valence In relation to attitudes, whether the feeling is more on the positive or negative side of a spectrum.