Bias
Steven911
Socialpsychapter4.docxChapter 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
· Describe when behaviors and attitudes are likely to match
· Explain the theory of planned behavior
· Describe cognitive dissonance theory and insufficient justification
· Describe self-perception theory
· Define an attribution, and differentiate internal and external attributions
· Define the fundamental attribution error
· Explain how explanatory style works, and differentiate between optimistic and pessimistic explanatory style
· Describe the hostile attribution of intent
· Differentiate the false consensus effect and false uniqueness effect
· Explain the illusion of transparency and spotlight effect
Chapter Outline
4.1 Attitudes
4.2 Behavior and Attitudes
· Theory of Planned Behavior
· Behavior and Attitude Mismatch
· What Is My Attitude?
4.3 Explaining the Behavior of Others
4.4 Fundamental Attribution Error
4.5 Explanations and Our Behavior
· Optimistic and Pessimistic Explanatory Styles
· A Hostile World
· Just Like Everybody Else
· What Do Others See?
Chapter Summary
* * *
If you have ever tried online dating, you are in good company. A study by Match.com reported that 40 million people visited orused an online dating site in the previous year, with an annual revenue of 1.9 billion dollars (Laird, 2012). Most online datingsites involve profiles, where potential daters post information about themselves. Others then access that information and decidewhether they would like to communicate with or date the person profiled. People often share their likes or dislikes in theirprofiles, and potential online dates look at those attitudes and form their own attitudes about the person. In meeting newpeople, online or face to face, and in interacting with those we know, we are constantly trying to understand the motivationsbehind people's actions—we make attributions for behavior. In this chapter we look at both of these phenomena, attitudes andattributions, and how they interact with our behavior.
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 all these things, you must make quick evaluations so you know howto react. For example, if you evaluate the neighbor as mean and cream as good, you would avoid interacting with the neighbor and putcream in your coffee. Attitudes are evaluations. These evaluations are based on our reactions—both in terms of how we feel and what wethink—to some attitude or 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 (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). An online dater might have anattitude about his online date, as well as about her dislike of football, her love of cats, and her identity as a runner. The woman, football,cats, and running 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 attitudesfrom around the world, take a look at the Pew GlobalAttitudes Project website at http://pewglobal.org/ .Reports on a variety of surveys are also available.
Attitudes have long been considered important to social psychology(Allport, 1935). Throughout the years, social psychologists have foundthe subject of attitudes a fruitful area of research (Crano & Prislin,2006). The evaluations we make have two measures: strength andvalence. Attitudes may be very strong or very weak. In terms ofvalence, we may have attitudes that are on the positive side of thespectrum (you like cats) or negative side of the spectrum (you hateelephants). Putting together strength and valence, you might have afairly weak positive attitude toward cats and a very strong negativeattitude toward elephants. There is also a body of work on ambivalentattitudes—attitudes that are simultaneously positive and negative (Armitage & Conner, 2000; van Harreveld, van der Plight, de Vries,Wenneker, & Verhue, 2004).
When most of us think of attitudes, we probably think of how we feel about objects, people, or groups, but researchers have found thatconsciously known and reported attitudes are only part of the attitude picture (Nosek & Smyth, 2007; Payne, Burkley, & Stokes, 2008).The attitudes we report, those that rely on our knowledge and beliefs about an attitude object, are called explicit attitudes. Implicitattitudes—attitudes that we are unaware we hold—are based on the automatic, unconscious reactions we have toward an attitudeobject.
We learn implicit and explicit attitudes either through symbolic representations of or through encounters with attitude objects. Explicitattitudes are based in language, logic, or some other symbolic representation. Because of this, we can develop explicit attitudes relativelyquickly through simple communication. For example, if someone told you about a particular group you had not known about before (e.g.,pygmies) and shared with you how much he or she liked this group, you might form a positive explicit attitude toward the group. Implicitattitudes are learned as we encounter the attitude object. For example, if you always encountered representations of a particular group(pictures of pygmies) that were positive, you might develop a positive implicit attitude toward them (Olson & Fazio, 2006; Rydell &McConnell, 2006; Strack & Deutsch, 2004; Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000). This difference in the processing of implicit and explicitattitudes allows for people to hold opposite explicit and implicit attitudes. If people logically believe that a social group is good and reporta positive explicit attitude but society has a negative view of the group and that has been communicated with individuals, they might holda negative implicit attitude.
Implicit attitudes are frequently communicated by society. The particular social environment and culture people are exposed to has alarge impact on their implicit attitudes (Shepherd, 2011). If representations of a particular racial or ethnic group in the media are alwayspaired with violence or poverty, individuals in that society tend to hold negative implicit attitudes toward these groups. Because implicitattitudes are associations that occur outside of conscious awareness, they are not subject to logic. For example, if you found out that anew friend is in a bowling league, you would know logically that your friend may or may not have a number of qualities that youassociate with people in bowling leagues. Your explicit attitude toward this person would, at least for a while, still rely on what you knowabout your friend rather than her membership in this group. Your implicit attitude would, however, not be ruled by logic but wouldautomatically assign the stereotypical characteristics of people in bowling leagues to your friend (Ranganath & Nosek, 2008).
Figure 4.1: Implicit association task
An IAT might first prime you for "good" words, and then ask you to match older faces with "good" words.
Based on Project Implicit® (2011). Four-category race-gender IAT. Retrieved from https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit Photo credit: Amos Morgan/Digital Vision/Thinkstock
Expand Your Knowledge: ImplicitAssociation Test
Information about implicit attitudes and the opportunityto take a variety of implicit association tests can be foundat the Project Implicit website, http://www.projectimplicit.net/ . You can read researchpapers, take an Implicit Association Test, and participatein ongoing research. Most of the research studies takeabout 10 to 15 minutes, and participants must registerbefore taking part in research. Participants are providedwith a summary of their own results at the end of theirparticipation. If you want to see what your scores mightbe but do not want to be part of a research study orregister, you can take a demo test.
To assess implicit attitudes, researchers need to measure our automaticreactions—reactions we are not even aware of. Psychologists developeda 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 evaluatingreaction times. Test-takers match characteristics that are flashed in thecenter of a computer screen to a category of words in the uppercorners of the screen (see Figure 4.1). For example, if "good" is in theleft corner and "bad" in the right, a word like "joy" should be matchedto the left corner and "evil" to the right. Attitude objects are placed inthe same corners as those words, and respondents need to quicklymatch to words for the good and bad categories and words or facesassociated with that attitude object. For a test looking at implicitattitudes toward older adults, "old" might be assigned to the left cornerand "young" to the right. The respondent would need to quickly switchfrom a word (joy) to a face (older adult) and match each with thecorrect corner (left).
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 also contains the category "good"provides evidence of a negative implicit attitude toward older adults.
Test Yourself
Click on each question below to reveal the answer.
· How is it possible to have a mismatch between an explicit attitude and implicit attitude?
4.2 Behavior and Attitudes
Our attitudes involve evaluations of other people, behaviors, and objects. Logically, these evaluations should affect how we behave towardthese attitude objects (Allport, 1935; Droba, 1933). For example, if you have a favorable attitude toward exercise, you should be morelikely to engage in physical activities than if you had a negative attitude. LaPiere (1934) was one of the first to investigate the relation ofattitudes to behaviors. In the 1930s, LaPiere traveled around the United States with some of his Chinese friends. In that time, manyAmericans held negative attitudes toward the Chinese, and LaPiere and his friends were concerned about the service they might get asthey traveled. Despite this fear, they were treated well in all but one location. LaPiere was curious about this reaction, so several monthslater he sent questionnaires to the places he and his friends had visited, as well as a number of hotels and restaurants they had notvisited. Almost universally, these businesses reported they would not serve someone who was Chinese. The negative attitude was presentbut, 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 sort out this problem. Researchers have identified factors that can strengthen andweaken the ability of attitudes to predict behaviors. Attitudes that are particularly accessible are more likely to determine our behavior(Fazio, 2000). Generally, if people respond quickly in reporting their attitudes, these attitudes are highly accessible. If you respond quicklythat you hate blind dates, you are unlikely to find yourself on one. When relatively narrow attitudes are assessed, then relatively narrowbehavior also needs to be assessed, but when broader attitudes are assessed, broad behaviors must be assessed as well (Weigel &Newman, 1976). For example, if you were asked about your attitude toward sports, your answer may not match well with yourattendance or lack thereof at the local high school football game. If we asked about your attitude toward the local high school footballteam, we may have better luck predicting if we will see you at a game. Another factor is whether the behavior is easy or difficult toperform (Wallace, Paulson, Lord, & Bond, 2005). One might have a negative attitude toward smoking but continue to smoke becausequitting is difficult. The social pressure one has to join in or avoid a behavior is also important. If a person feels a strong social pressureto engage in a behavior (wearing a seat belt), that person may engage in the behavior despite a negative attitude (Wallace et al., 2005).
Explicit attitudes can predict consciously controlled behaviors, but implicit attitudes are the best predictors of nonverbal behaviors. Thosewith a negative implicit attitude toward people of a particular racial group tend to show nonverbal behaviors that indicate dislike for amember of the group with which they are interacting, even when their verbal behavior is friendly and welcoming (Dovidio, Kawakami, &Gaertner, 2002). Therefore, negative implicit attitudes can have an unconscious, adverse effect on our interactions. In a study ofphysicians, those with negative implicit attitudes toward Black patients had more negative interactions with Black patients. The clinicianstended to dominate the conversation, and the patients showed less confidence in and were less trusting of the physician (Cooper et al.,2012).
In contrast, consciously controlled, deliberate behaviors are evidence of explicit attitudes (Jellison, McConnell, & Gabriel, 2004; McConnell& Leibold, 2001; Rydell & McConnell, 2006). Because implicit attitudes are less consciously controlled, they are better at predictingbehavior in situations where the ego is depleted and behavior is more instinctual. For example, if you have a negative explicit attitudeabout the healthiness of chocolate, when you are trying to eat healthy and have not already exerted self-control, you would choose to eatfruit over chocolate. However, when you are tired, you might automatically reach for the chocolate bar in the checkout lane, followingyour positive implicit attitude toward chocolate (Friese, Hofmann, & Wanke, 2008).
Test Yourself
Click on each question below to reveal the answer.
· Has attitude research been a topic only recently for social psychology?
· What makes explicit attitudes more likely to match with behaviors?
Theory of Planned Behavior
Behaviors may be difficult to predict from attitudes alone. The theory of planned behavior combines several factors to provide forbetter prediction (see Figure 4.2). According to this theory, if we want to predict both intent to behave and actual behavior, we need toknow three things: (1) attitude toward that specific behavior, (2) subjective norms related to that behavior, and (3) perceived behavioralcontrol (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 behavior control is your belief that you can engage in the behavior. For example, you might think that eating a healthy diet isa lot of trouble, but going to yoga class is easily accomplished. In this example, your perceived behavioral control would be high for yogabut low for healthy eating. If someone has a positive attitude, positive subjective norms, and high perceived behavioral control, we canpredict with some accuracy their intentions to engage in that behavior and their eventual behavior. You might join a yoga program if youhave a positive attitude toward yoga, if people in your environment think it is a good idea, and if you foresee no problems in getting tothe studio for classes.
Figure 4.2: The theory of plannedbehavior
The theory of planned behavior relies on several factors forpredicting behavior.
Reprinted from Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. OrganizationalBehavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179–211. Copyright © 1991, withpermission from Elsevier.
The theory of planned behavior is an extension of an earlier theory calledthe theory of reasoned action. The theory of reasoned action, developed byAjzen and Fishbein (1972), predicted behaviors using just attitudes andsubjective norms. Ajzen (1991) later added the element of perceivedbehavioral control to provide better prediction of behavior. This additioncreated better forecasts about behavior.
Some behaviors are difficult to control. For example, many people findquitting smoking a very difficult thing to do. Taking into account theamount of control people have for such behaviors is helpful to predictingbehavior. For behaviors like quitting smoking, where a perceived lack ofcontrol interferes with actually engaging in the behavior, assessingsmoker's beliefs about their control makes predicting smoking cessationmore reliable (Madden, Ellen, & Ajzen, 1992). Since the addition ofperceived behavior of control to the model, the theory of planned behaviorhas been used to help explain an extremely wide variety of behaviors, fromsmoking cessation (Norman, Conner, & Bell, 1999), to using dental floss(Rise, Astrom, & Sutton, 1998), to composting (Kaiser, Wolfing, & Fuhrer,1999). Evaluating these behaviors through meta-analysis, Armitage andConnor (2001) found that this model can accurately predict behavior, andthat attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control are allimportant to accurate prediction.
This theory does not predict behavior perfectly; there are a few factors that may make it more or less likely to lead to accuratepredictions. Habitual behaviors, such as driving a car to work instead of taking the bus, may not be well-predicted by the model. However,habit may undergo a change if circumstances change, such as when bus tickets become cheap and a bus stop comes to one's street(Bamberg, Ajzen, & Schmidt, 2003; Verplanken, Aarts, van Knippenberg, & van Knippenberg, 1994). The theory of planned behavior alsoassumes that people make rational decisions about their actions. This may be true some of the time, but at the moment of decision, one'sgood intentions may not be enough to deter behavior. In one study of risky sexual behavior, anticipated emotions that would occur aftersex, such as regret, were a strong predictor of actual sexual behavior (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 havesome control. The theory also is more accurate when people are in the process of actually making decisions, rather than relying on habitsor other mindless behaviors to determine their actions (Manstead, 2011).
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Edward, a longtime smoker, wants to stop smoking,but has doubts that he will be able to do so.According to the theory of planned behavior, thesedoubts might inhibit his actual behavior of quitting.
The theory of planned behavior may be particularly helpful to those who want toencourage people to engage in healthy behaviors by determining what might bestanding in the way of the healthy behavior. As noted previously, research using themodel has been done on a number of health-related behaviors. Other researchers haveinvestigated exercise (Spink, Wilson, & Bostick, 2012), fruit and vegetableconsumption (Kothe, Mullan, & Butow, 2012), screening programs (Cooke & French,2008), and risky drinking behavior (Collins, Witkiewitz, & Larimer, 2011). If anindividual believes eating lots of vegetables is a good idea (positive attitude) andthose in his or her environment also think so (subjective norm), but this individualfeels unable to buy or prepare vegetables, an intervention might be targeted at theelement of perceived behavioral control— the individual's belief in the inability toattain and prepare enough veggies. An information campaign might be launched thatgives hints where to find reasonably priced vegetables and provides recipes forcooking vegetables. On the other hand, if people did not see the value in eatingvegetables (negative attitude), but others in their environment were encouraging themto eat vegetables (subjective norm) and vegetables were easy to find and prepare(perceived behavioral control), a campaign to change attitudes might be launched.
Test Yourself
Click on the question below to reveal the answer.
· What are the three components of the theory of planned behavior?
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 anhour. As you finish, the researcher looks distressed; there was supposed to be another student coming to introduce the tasks you justcompleted to the next participant. The researcher tells you that the next participant is supposed to be told that these tedious tasks youjust completed are fun and interesting, with the goal of measuring how expectations influence performance. The researcher asks if youmight 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 youjust did were and whether you'd be willing to participate in similar types of studies in the future. How would you have answered? Wouldyour answer be different if the researcher had given you $20?
A group of male college students faced exactly this situation in a study by Festinger and Carlsmith (1959). In their study, one third ofparticipants received $1 to tell the next participant that the study they were about to participate in was fun and interesting, another thirdreceived $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 anymoney. Unbeknownst to the participants, the hesitant request was part of the experiment and the other participant was working for theexperimenter. What the researchers were really interested in was whether the different amounts of pay would affect how participants feltabout the study. According to Table 4.1, which group thought the research was most interesting when later asked? Who was mostinterested in participating in similar studies in the future?
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Table 4.1: Results from Festinger and Carlsmith's (1959) study of cognitive dissonance |
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Interview Question |
Experimental Condition |
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|
|
$1Group |
$20Group |
ControlGroup |
|
Were the tasks interesting and enjoyable? (rated from –5, extremely dull andboring, to +5, extremely interesting and enjoyable) |
+1.35 |
–0.05 |
–0.45 |
|
Would you have any desire to participate in another similar experiment? (ratedfrom –5, definitely dislike to participate, to +5, definitely like to participate) |
+1.20 |
–0.25 |
–0.62 |
|
From Festinger, L. & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cogintive consequences of forced compliance. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58(2), 203-210. doi:10.1037/h0041593. |
As you can see, the participants who received $1 seemed to like the study best. Festinger and Carlsmith proposed that those participantswho received $1 for lying to another person felt they had insufficient justification for doing so. In other words, these participants liedfor a very small amount of money and could not explain (justify) what they did by the monetary reward. These participants were facedwith two things: knowledge that the research was boring (the researchers had deliberately made it mind-numbingly tedious) and abehavior that involved telling someone else it was interesting. The gap between what they believed and what they did created a type oftension known as cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable because it indicates an inconsistency in what peoplethink or feel and do. People are motivated to reduce this tension. The participants could not go back in time and change what they haddone, 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 didand how they truly felt, but these people did not experience any tension. They had sufficient justification for what they did: $20. Thepeople in the $20 condition later reported that the study was boring because they had no need to justify what they did. When thediscomfort of cognitive dissonance is felt, it results in an attitude change to reduce tension.
Cognitive dissonance can be reduced without changing one's attitude. For example, if you decided you needed to be on a diet but thenwent to a dinner and had chocolate mousse, you could change your attitude toward the diet (maybe you do not really need to diet), butyou could also reduce that tension by doing other things.
Expand Your Knowledge: Attitude andBehavior Mismatch
Do your attitudes and behaviors always match? If you aresimilar to most people, you see distracted driving asdangerous, but also engage in the behavior.
A post on this issue can be found here . The authordescribes a study in California in which almost 60% ofparticipants listed talking on the phone as a seriousdistraction for drivers while almost 46% admitted tomaking a driving mistake while talking on the phone.
One option would be to minimize the importance of one of theelements (Festinger, 1957). You could say that dieting is not thatimportant to you or that chocolate mousse is not a big deal. Anotheroption would be to reduce your perceived choice (Beauvois & Joule,1999; Wicklund & Brehm, 1976). You might tell yourself it would havebeen rude if you had not eaten your host's dessert. You might also addthoughts that support or explain your behavior. You could tell yourselfthat chocolate mousse is healthy; after all, chocolate containsflavonoids that are good for your health.
The principle of cognitive dissonance can be helpful in understandingor promoting behavior change. Researchers have found that differencesbetween attitudes about dating aggression and behaviors resulted in adecrease in dating aggression over time (Schumacher, 2004). In a studyinvolving high school students at risk for eating disorders like anorexiaor bulimia, researchers induced behavior change by creating dissonance (Stice, Rohde, Gau, & Shaw, 2009). The students were part of aprogram where they were asked to engage in behaviors that went against their unhealthy attitudes toward their bodies and food. Forexample, they were asked to write a letter to a young girl about the dangers of the thinness ideal, to share what they like aboutthemselves, and to practice what they would say to others to challenge the thinness ideal. This intervention decreased risk factors in theparticipants for an eating disorder.
Cognitive dissonance has different manifestations across cultures (Hoshino-Browne et al., 2005). Individuals in independent cultures likethe United States are more concerned about their own individual identity and attributes. Therefore, internal consistency is the primarygoal for someone in an independent culture. For example, if Alice had a positive attitude toward children and disliked her neighbor's 4-year-old, she would know these two things were inconsistent. Even if she never told anyone of about her dislike of the child, she wouldstill feel guilty because her attitudes and feelings were inconsistent. Individuals in interdependent cultures, like that found in Japan, aremore concerned about how they fit with the expectations of others—in particular, others that are part of their own group. The approvalof others is, therefore, of great importance.
For interdependent cultures, internal consistency is not as important as consistency between attitudes or behaviors, especially whenothers are going to be appraised of one's behavior. In a study by Shinobu Kitayama and colleagues (Kitayama, Snibbe, Markus, & Suzuki,2004), Japanese and American 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 therewas no potential of others being made aware of their choices, dissonance did not appear to come into play. When this study was done onAmerican college students, the results showed that the potential for public scrutiny did not matter. Because the American students wereattempting to be internally consistent, they showed a similar degree of dissonance in both situations. The amount of dissonance theAmerican students showed was not as high as that shown by the Japanese students who thought their choices would be public, but washigher than that of the Japanese students who believed others would not know of their choices.
Test Yourself
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Social Psychology in Depth: Cognitive Dissonance, Children, and Monkeys
Where does cognitive dissonance come from? In investigating the origins of cognitive dissonance social psychologistsinvestigate whether children feel cognitive dissonance, or if it develops later in life. We may also want to know if cognitivedissonance occurs in nonhuman primates, or if it is unique to humans. This would help us understand the potentialevolutionary origin of the phenomenon.
Egan, Sanatos, & Bloom (2007) investigated cognitive dissonance in children and in monkeys. For both populations, theycreated cognitive dissonance by having the child or monkey make a choice between two alternatives, two different stickersfor the children or two different M&M candies for the monkeys. Frequently, when faced with two equally good options, wewill reduce our cognitive dissonance by increasing our liking of our chosen option, and decreasing our liking of the optionwe did not choose.
In this study, the participants made an initial choice and were then asked to make a second choice. The second choiceincluded the option not chosen on the first trial and a new option. Presumably, if cognitive dissonance was at play, theparticipants would have decreased their liking of their un-chosen option and be less likely to choose that option in thesecond trial. For example, if children originally rated stickers with a flower, a bird, and a rainbow equally, they mightinitially be asked if they wanted the flower or the bird sticker more. Having chosen the flower, they would then be asked tochoose between the bird (the option not chosen in the previous trial) and the rainbow. If cognitive dissonance is in play,they should choose the rainbow. The initial choice would have created cognitive dissonance, leading the children to discounttheir liking of the bird sticker to reduce that dissonance. Even though the participants initially liked all three optionsequally, the results showed that after making a choice, they were less likely to choose the option they had not chosen on thefirst trial. The authors proposed that due to the fact this effect is found among young children (4-year-olds) and monkeys,cognitive dissonance may be impacting us before we have much experience in making choices; language and socializationmay not be necessary precursors to cognitive dissonance.
What Is my Attitude?
If attitudes help determine our behaviors, do behaviors ever help us define our attitudes? If you were wondering about your attitudetoward sushi, one place you could look to determine your attitude is your behavior. If you have chosen sushi restaurants over those thatdo not serve sushi and order sushi when you get the chance, you are likely to conclude that you have a positive attitude toward sushi. Ifyou have spent a lot of time making fun of people who eat sushi, you might conclude, looking at these actions, that your attitude towardsushi is negative. 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 explainshow our attitudes change.
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An example of self-perception theory is when youassume that you don't like the news just because yourepeatedly change the channel when a news reportcomes on TV.
To evaluate the extent to which our actions influence our attitudes, Zak, Gold,Ryckman, & Lenney (1998) asked 64 dating couples to come to their lab. Eachmember of the couple was asked to provide information on how much they trustedtheir partner. The couples were separated and told one of three things. The first thirdof participants were told that their partner would be dancing with a researchassistant to a Debbie Gibson or Madonna song. These participants were asked if thatwas okay with them—if they trusted their partner to dance with someone else. Thenext third of participants were told they would be dancing with a research assistantto a Debbie Gibson or Madonna song. The researchers told them that their partnerhad been asked if that was all right, and their partner had said yes, they trusted theirsignificant other. The final third of participants, the control group, were told that theirpartner 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 thestudy, they found that both the participants who acted in a trusting way and thosewho were trusted showed an increase in trust when compared to the control group.The biggest change, however, was with the participants who acted in a trusting matter.The act of trusting, it seems, increases trust.
Behavior can be affected in more subtle ways by our self-observations, such as withour relationship 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 orblackmailed, or their reputation might be blackened. Even dark colored chocolate cakeis called devil's food cake. Would members of sports teams in black uniformstherefore observe themselves in that bad color and be more willing to engage inaggressive behavior? Frank and Gilovich (1988) investigated whether what we arewearing has an impact on 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 HockeyLeague teams wearing black were more aggressive on the rink than those wearing other colors; that is, members of teams wearing blackspent more time in the penalty box than teams wearing other colors. A similar result was found in online gaming with people whoseavatars were wearing black (Yee & Bailenson, 2009).
Test Yourself
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.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 yourboss intended her behavior as encouragement to pursue a raise or as a clue that your job might be in danger. Attributing your friend'slate-night phone call to concern will affect the relationship differently than attributing it to rudeness. Attributions are also involved indeciding the proper punishment of a misbehaving child or a criminal. Attributions—our explanations of the behavior of others andourselves—have been of interest to psychologists for a long time. In 1958, Fritz Heider wrote a book on how we make judgments aboutone another. According to Heider, and others who came after him, we generally explain others' behavior as due either to somethinginternal to the person or to something external to the person.
Imagine you are sitting in a coffee shop waiting for a date you met online. Your date is late. If you decide that your date is inconsiderate,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 the traffic or someemergency at work, you have made an external attribution. When you make an external attribution, you attribute situational factors forthe action. We do find differences in the patterns of attributions in different cultures. Generally, individuals from more independentcultures make more internal attributions while those in more interdependent cultures make more external attributions (Triandis, 2001).For example, in the United States, salespeople tend to attribute their performance to internal factors—their sales are due to their hardwork and wonderful people skills. In more interdependent cultures, such as that found 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 canimpact how we handle criminals. If a society and the people within that society believe that criminals engage in crime because it wastheir choice or because they have no morals, then that society will lock up its criminals and try to prevent them from ever getting out tooffend again. On the other hand, a society that believes that lack of job opportunities, racism, or peer pressure is primarily to blame forcriminal 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).
4.4 Fundamental Attribution Error
Daily life offers many opportunities to make attributions. When a neighbor fails to greet or wave at you while passing in the hallway orstreet, you might declare your neighbor rude and unfriendly. Blaming a behavior on a dispositional factor, like rudeness, may not beaccurate. Your neighbor might not have seen you because of the large bag of groceries you were holding, or been distracted by a fight shejust had with her child. When people attribute behavior to dispositional factors when there are clear situational factors at work, they areengaging in correspondence bias, also known as the fundamental attribution error (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.
Based on Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2004). Interactive lectures. In Psychology, Media and Research Update (7th ed., Chapter 8). Retrieved from http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_wade_psychology_7_mru/21/5605/1434950.cw/content/index.html .
In Ross, Amabile, and Steinmetz's (1977) study on the subject, participants were randomly assigned the role of questioner or contestantin a quiz game. The questioners came up with questions from their own storehouse of esoteric knowledge. Depending on the backgroundof the questioners, they might develop questions on geography or cars or breeds of cows or any number of other odd topics. Contestantscompleted the quiz and rated the general knowledge of the questioner. Given the freedom of the questioner to develop difficult questionsfrom any realm, most contestants did not do very well. When rating the general knowledge of the questioner, they overestimated thatknowledge. The contestants overestimated 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 fundamental attribution error more when they arehappy versus when they are sad. Because happy people process less information from their environment, they tend to make quick andeasy decisions about the cause of the behavior of others (Forgas, 1998). The attributions people make with the fundamental attributionerror grow more situational over time. When making an immediate attribution, we tend to show the bias toward dispositionalattributions predicted by the fundamental attribution error. When time has passed, our judgments take the situation into account to agreater degree (Burger & Pavelich, 1994; Truchot, Maure, & Patte, 2003). Over time, then, the power of the fundamental attribution errordiminishes. The likelihood of making the fundamental attribution error also diminishes from young adulthood to middle age. After middleage, the likelihood of making the error begins to increase again (Follett & Hess, 2002).
Fundamental Attribution Error
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The nature of the fundamental attribution error.
Critical Thinking Questions
· Why do people assume that hosts are smarter thancontestants?
· How have you seen the fundamental attributionerror play out in your own life?
There are certainly times when behavior is due to rudeness, so your decisionthat your neighbor is inconsiderate could be appropriate. The fundamentalattribution error is an error because we make these kinds of decisions aboutsomeone's disposition even when clear situational factors are at work. But youdon't make this error, do you? Most people believe themselves to be lessvulnerable to the fundamental attribution error than others, even though we aregenerally 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 incommunication using a computer. Messages in one's email inbox provide fewcues as to the situation of the writer. Without these cues, it is easy to misjudgedetails about the sender and the message. For example, if you received a messagewith a number of misspellings and grammar mistakes, it is likely you wouldjudge the writer of that message as not very intelligent or competent. Withoutknowing the writer was pressed for time, distracted by a crying child, anddealing with a faulty computer keyboard, you may judge that dispositional, ratherthan situational, factors were at work (Cramton, 2001). It is only when we aremade 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 adifferent culture, the email recipients are less harsh in their dispositionaljudgments for language errors like misspellings, although dispositional judgmentsare still made for etiquette errors (Vignovic & Thompson, 2010).
With a name like fundamental attribution error, one would assume that this error is common in all people in all cultures. Not so. Whencomparing 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; Miyamoto & Kitayama, 2002; Morris & Peng, 1994). When research participants were told that the personwhose behavior they were evaluating had no choice in his behavior, and simply followed the directions of the experimenter, Koreanparticipants were more likely to take into account the situational constraints on the person, whereas American participants largelyignored the situational factors (Choi & Nisbett, 1998). For example, someone raised in an East Asian culture might say that a person isrude because his parents never taught him manners rather than rude because it is part of his nature. East Asians also think moreholistically about the person (Choi, Nisbett, & Norenzayan, 1999). Even if someone's behavior is blamed on internal factors, these internalfactors are explained situationally. Although the phenomenon came to be known as the fundamental attribution error because so manyresearchers found similar results over a number of years (Jones, 1998), it turns out the fundamental attribution error is not asfundamental as we thought.
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When a driver assumes the personwho cut him off is inconsiderate andincompetent, even though they mayhave had to switch lanes to avoid anaccident, it is an example of thefundamental attribution error.
A related concept to the fundamental attribution error is the actor-observer bias. Thefundamental attribution error suggests that as observers, people discount situational factorsand overestimate dispositional factors. The actor-observer bias expands this tendency to explainour own behavior as actors. Actors tend to make more situational attributions for behavior(Jones & Nisbett, 1972). The situationally based explanations for our own behavior are strongerwhen we are explaining negative rather than positive events (Green & McClearn, 2010). Whenexplaining positive events, like doing well on a test, the self-serving bias leads us to account forour behavior using more dispositional explanations, such as our own intelligence.
Recent research has called into question the traditional formulation of the actor-observer bias.In a meta-analysis, Bertram Malle (2006) found that actors are not more likely to makesituational inference, and observers are not more likely to make dispositional inferences. Actorsand observers do, however, explain behaviors differently. Malle and colleagues (Malle, Knobe, &Nelson, 2007) proposed an asymmetry in explanations based in different desires and differentknowledge. Actors know the reasons behind a decision and are motivated to present themselves as rational people. Imagine Jill cleaned out the work refrigerator and in the process threw outseveral people's lunches. She would describe her action as due to the boss's request to clean therefrigerator, the lack of clear markings on containers about who they belonged to, and heroverall helpfulness in keeping the office clean.
Observers can only guess at the reasons for a behavior and must instead rely on their generalknowledge 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 coworkers might explain her actions as irrational, makingthe argument that the refrigerator did not need to be cleaned and Jill should not throw out things that do not belong to her. Thecoworkers would describe Jill's actions as due to her rude and inconsiderate nature. Observers are more likely to distance themselvesfrom 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 refrigeratorwas 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 for differences between actors and observers provide a more nuanced approach to these differencesand help explain inconsistencies in past research.
Test Yourself
Click on each question below to reveal the answer.
Which of these people may have made the fundamental attribution error?
· Janelle believes the clown she hired for her son's birthday party is a happy and joyful person.
4.5 Explanations and our Behavior
As we make attributions day after day, we may develop patterns for making these judgments. These patterns then influence how weapproach others and react to events. Two of the major patterns investigated by researchers are those surrounding whether we explainevents in an optimistic or pessimistic way and the extent to which we expect hostility from others in our interactions. The attributions wemake are influenced by our need to fit in with others but also by our need to differentiate and stand out from the crowd. However, wetend to overestimate the amount we stand out and are noticed by others. The behaviors we engage in are influenced by these variouspatterns 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. Onepattern of attributions is optimistic and leads us to expect positive outcomes from our interactions. Another pattern is more pessimisticand leads us to expect negative outcomes from our interactions. Consider how you would explain these two events: your datecomplimenting you on your appearance and your inability to find a job. According to researchers, you have three decisions to make asyou interpret those events (Seligman & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1987; Seligman & Schulman, 1986). When you are explaining a compliment youreceive, you could assume the other person was just having a good day and complimented everyone. On the other hand, you couldassume that the compliment was prompted by your own appearance. In this case you are attributing the compliment to either an externalcause, something about the other person or the circumstance, or an internal cause, something about you. Your second choice involveswhether you consider the compliment to be an event that will likely never or rarely happen again, like a free makeover you just had, orsomething that will always be around, your attractive face. In this case, you are making an attribution that is either unstable, meaningthat 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 thecompliment just applies to your present appearance at the mall where you got the makeover, or whether you will likely get complimentsin all situations in your life. In this case you are making a decision of whether the cause is specific, applying only in this particularsituation, or global, applying to all situations. Putting this all together: When you decide on the cause for a behavior or event, you decidewhether 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 characterize a person's explanatory style. If youreceived a compliment, what kind of attribution do you think would make you feel the best? If you consider the cause of the complimentto be internal (something about you), stable (something that will always be there), and global (something that will be found in allsituations), you are likely to feel better about yourself.
Would the same be true in explaining long-term unemployment? If you think about a negative event like long-term unemployment, anexplanation 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 asinternal, stable, and global. Negative events, on the other hand, will be explained as external, unstable, and specific.
Individuals with a pessimistic explanatory style have exactly the opposite pattern. Pessimistic people generally blame themselves fornegative events and believe those events are typical of what is likely to happen in many aspects of their lives. They also tend to imaginesuch events continuing in the future. Optimistic people generally blame outside influences for negative events and interpret these eventsas temporary. See Figure 4.4 for examples of how optimists and pessimists may respond to certain events.
Figure 4.4: Explanatory style
Optimistic people see bad events in the same way as pessimistic people see good events. Conversely, pessimisticpeople see bad events in the same way as optimistic people see good events.
Optimistic explanatory style is related to more positive well-being in both younger and older adults (Forgeard & Seligman, 2012; Mohanty& Begum, 2012). Individuals with optimistic explanatory styles are more likely to persist in the face of failure. This can be seen in thecase of sales agents. Sales agents experience a lot of failure, as the majority of their potential clients say no to their product. Researchersassessed the explanatory style of beginning life insurance agents using a questionnaire and followed them to see how much life insurancethey would sell and how long they would remain in their jobs (Seligman & Schulman, 1986). Those agents who were most optimistic soldthe most insurance. At the end of the first year, those who were the most optimistic were twice as likely to still be selling insurance.
In contrast, individuals with a pessimistic explanatory style are more likely to get sick when they encounter stressful events (Bennett &Elliott, 2005; Jackson, Sellers, & Peterson, 2002). Pessimistic explanatory styles have been linked to depression and suicide (Hirsch,Wolford, LaLonde, Brunk, & Parker-Morris, 2009; Peterson & Seligman, 1984). When people with negative explanatory styles encounter abad event, like losing a job, they are likely to explain it as due to something about them, such as having unmarketable skills—somethingthat 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 theirskills are useless. These explanations lead to a state of learned helplessness. Learned helplessness occurs when we have acquiredthrough our experiences a sense that no matter what we do, our actions will not have a positive impact on negative experiences(Seligman & Maier, 1967). When a job loss is explained as internal, stable, and global, it is unlikely anything the person does will changethe situation; so giving up is the most rational response to the problem.
Expand Your Knowledge: Martin Seligman
Martin Seligman, a prominent researcher in the area ofexplanatory style, has a website dedicated to his research.The website is primarily focused on his work on positivepsychology, but some references to work on explanatorystyle and learned helplessness are provided.
Seligman's website: http://www.ppresearch.sas.upenn.edu/.
Opportunities to participate in Seligman's ongoingresearch are available. Seligman is known for his work onexplanatory style, so there may be some related to thematerial within the text. Seligman also does research inthe area of positive psychology, studying humanflourishing.
Negative explanatory styles are linked to poorer academic performance(Peterson & Barrett, 1987). Researchers found that first-year universitystudents who interpreted negative events as internal, stable, and globalreceived lower grades. These lower grades seemed to be due to areluctance to seek help when struggling (why do so if you believe yourpoor performance is due to your lack of intelligence?) and a lack ofacademic goal setting. Similarly, college students with a pessimisticexplanatory style were less likely to actively deal with their symptomswhen they got ill, prolonging or exacerbating their illnesses (Lin &Peterson, 1990).
Pessimism does not always link to poor performance. In a longitudinalstudy of law students, researchers assessed explanatory style with asurvey at the beginning of law school and revisited the studentsthroughout their time in school (Satterfield, Monahan, & Seligman,1997). The students with a more pessimistic style at the beginning ofschool ended up with higher grade point averages and did better inpublishing in law journals. The difference may come from the fact thatthe law students had already proven to be resilient in the face ofproblems, given their ability to get into law school, as well as a profession that rewards skepticism and cautious decision making.
Social Psychology in Depth: Attribution, Story, and Depression
Lewis J Merrim/Photo Researchers/Getty Images
As part of their study, Peterson and Ulrey gave participantsThematic Apperception Tests. Subjects were given anambiguous scene and asked to describe what was happeningin the scene.
Our explanations for behavior influence how we feel aboutourselves. Adler, Kissel, and McAdams (2006) interviewed adultswithin the community, asking them to tell about eight differentepisodes in their life (e.g., childhood memory, high point, lowpoint) as well as themes they saw in their life and how theywould divide their life into chapters. When the researchers lookedat attributions made in the stories, they found that whenindividuals explained negative events in their stories as stable andglobal, they were more likely to report symptoms of depression ina depression scale. Keep in mind that these were attributions thatappeared spontaneously and were not solicited by the researchersthrough a questionnaire or direct questions.
Depression was also related to contamination sequences instories. A contamination sequence occurs when a story beginswell but is ruined or spoiled by negative events. For example,someone might tell a story about a fun day at the beach that wasspoiled by a fight and ended in a car ride home in stony silence. The presence of these types of stories independentlypredicted depression, apart from attributional style.
Other evidence linking stories with attributional style and depression was found by Peterson and Ulrey (1994). In theirstudy, they showed people pictures of ambiguous scenes and asked them to describe what was happening in the picture.The researchers then analyzed the stories that were told. They found that individuals who used a negative attributionalstyle to tell stories explaining the events were at greater risk for depression. We may often think of depression as simplyfeeling bad about oneself and the world, but these studies reveal that depression is related to the way we view and describethe world around us.
Test Yourself
For each of the following indicate whether the explanation is internal or external, stable or unstable, global or specific. Clickon each explanation below to reveal the answer.
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 engagedin 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 hasdeliberately 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 wereunintentional. Hostile attribution of intent does tend to lead to more aggressive behavior, at least in children, where this has been studiedthe most (de Castro et al., 2002). One source of these attributions may be peer interactions or interactions in the home. Freeman andcolleagues (Freeman, Hadwin, & Halligan, 2011) conducted a study in which kids in their early teenage years communicated with hostileor non-hostile teens in an online chat room. Some of the teens from this chat room explained behavior of others in a hostile way, but forothers the explanations were more benign. For example, when explaining why a group of unknown kids stood up when approached, somesaid it was a desire to defend territory, a hostile attribution. For others a more nonthreatening explanation was given—that the kids weregoing 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 othersrejected a personal profile they posted online believed that others had more hostile intent toward them and were angrier and moreaggressive toward the rejecters (Reijntjes et al., 2011). Family also plays a role. Negative interactions within the home are related to morehostile attributions (Bickett, Milich, & Brown, 1996; Gomez & Gomez, 2000). For example, parents who reported using harsh disciplinetactics had children with more hostile interaction goals and more aggressive behavior (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,Bégue, Scharkow, & Bushman, 2013).
Test Yourself
Click on the question below to reveal the answer.
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 tooverestimate the extent to which people have similar interests and preferences, a phenomenon called the false consensus effect. Forexample, we assume that our friend will love going to 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 particular types of music, and then asked toestimate the degree to which others like those things, they tended to overestimate the extent to which their own preferences are sharedby other people (Gilovich, 1990; Ross, Greene, & House, 1977). False consensus is stronger for our likes than our dislikes (Gershoff,Mukherjee, & Mukhopadhyay, 2008). We more easily come up with reasons for liking what we like, so we may overestimate how commonthose opinions are (Mullen et al., 1985). We engage in the false consensus effect for a wide variety of opinions, from favorite ice creamsundae toppings or movie posters (Gershoff et al., 2008) to favorite celebrities (Bui, 2012), from sexual behavior (Whitley, 1998) to illegaldrug use among both college students and elite athletes (Dunn, Thomas, Swift, & Burns, 2012; Wolfson, 2000).
False consensus comes, in part, from selective exposure to others that are like us and agree with us (Whitley, 1998). Online groups areone way people connect with others who are like-minded. Being part of one of these groups may increase false consensus by giving one afeeling that there are many people who share one's opinions, even though there may be few in the general population (Wojcieszak, 2008,2011). When trying to estimate how many other people share our opinions, instances where we remember others agreeing with us (e.g., Ilike cats too!) more easily come to mind and may therefore lead us to overestimate how many others do 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 inthat behavior. For example, college women who were sexually experienced gave higher, and less accurate, assessments of peer sexualbehavior; the further their own behavior was from the norm, the higher their estimates of their peers' behavior (Whitley, 1998).
False consensus may lead us to make judgments about others that can create later problems. For example, not knowing if your onlinedate likes the singer Beyoncé or not, you may simply assume he or she does because you do. This can make additional conversations andface-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 judgmentsabout HIV risk in intimate relationships (Harman, O'Grady, & Wilson, 2009). If judgments based on false consensus translate into riskybehavior, severe consequences can result.
In contrast, we also have behaviors or beliefs that we view as unique. The tendency for people to underestimate the extent to which theiropinions or behaviors are shared by others is the uniqueness bias, or the false uniqueness effect. This underestimation usually involvesbeliefs or behaviors that are desirable or a source of pride. When we perceive our attributes to be more unique than they really are, wemake ourselves feel even better about our rare and wonderful qualities. For example, if you give blood on a regular basis, you mayunderestimate 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
Click on the question below to reveal the answer.
· When are we likely to find the greatest false consensus?
What do Others See?
When people feel a strong emotion, they often overestimate others' ability to discern that emotion. For example, if your new romanticinterest 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(Gilovich, Savitsky, & Medvec, 1998; Holder & Hawkins, 2007). This tendency to believe that our thoughts or feelings can be more clearlyseen by others than they actually are is called the illusion of transparency. If you have ever been surprised that a family member didnot 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 can, we are more likely to have anillusion of transparency among those we know well, such as a friend or romantic partner (Kudo, 2007). This principle also applies to ourbeliefs 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, & Faelling, 2012). In truth, the emotions or behaviors that we thought were so apparent to others are not soclear.
Evidence for the illusion of transparency has proven helpful to those who suffer from speech anxiety. Although most people who sufferfrom speech anxiety believe their anxiety is evident to the audience, most people listening to a speech are unaware of the extent of theanxiety the speaker suffers. After realizing this, those high in speech anxiety gave better speeches (Savitsky & Gilovich, 2003). The viciouscycle of being anxious, believing others know we are anxious, and therefore becoming more anxious can be broken by knowledge of thisillusion.
Hans Neleman/Getty Images
Sometimes you might feel that everyone notices your behaviors orappearance, when in reality, most people aren't paying attention.This is called the spotlight effect.
Along with our illusion of transparency comes a sense that others areaware of our triumphs and our trials. This tendency to believe that othersnotice our behaviors and appearance to a greater extent than theyactually do is known as the spotlight effect. Imagine you arrange to meeta new friend at a restaurant. When you get to the restaurant, you realizeyou have a spot of spaghetti sauce on your sleeve. Although you believeyour friend will quickly zero in on the spilled sauce, the likelihood is thatperson is too focused on making a good impression to notice such a smallspot.
In one study of the spotlight effect, college students were asked to don aT-shirt with a depiction of Barry Manilow on the front. Manilow is asinger-songwriter who is well known but not very popular with collegestudents. The Manilow T-shirt was chosen because college studentsreported that they would be embarrassed to be known as a Manilow fan.After the students had put on the shirt, they were brought to a roomwhere other students were working, staying there briefly before leavingagain. After leaving the room, the students were asked how many of theother students noticed their T-shirt. The T-shirt wearers believed, onaverage, that about 45% of the people in the room would notice their Manilow shirt. The other students were also asked if they noticedthe Manilow shirt. Of the students in the room, on average, just over 20% of the students actually did notice (Gilovich, Medvic, & Savitsky,2000).
Along with this sense that we are noticed, we generally believe that others judge us more harshly than they actually do. For example, ifyou 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 besympathetic to your plight (Savitsky, Epley, & Gilovich, 2001). Embarrassment caused by the behavior of a friend or relative is also oftenmore acutely felt than is necessary. When someone we are known to be associated with makes a blunder, others generally do not connectthat action with us, contrary to what we might think (Fortune & Newby-Clark, 2008). Just because your brother picks his nose in publicdoes not mean that others think you are disgusting by association.
Test Yourself
Click on each question below to reveal the answer.
· Why is the illusion of transparency called an illusion?
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 attitudes we hold, they may still affect our behavior. These attitudes can be helpful inpredicting our behavior, although many other factors come into play. Our attitudes can change because of our behavior (as in cognitivedissonance theory), or be formed because of our behavior (as in self-perception theory). As we make judgments, our attributions tend tofollow certain patterns. Those patterns can be fairly common across a culture, as is so with the fundamental attribution error, or be basedon our experiences in life, as is so with the hostile attribution of intent.
Chapter Summary
Definition of Attitudes
Attitudes involve an evaluation of an entity or behavior. Attitudes can be placed on a continuum from weak to strong, and on a continuumfrom positive to negative. When people report on an attitude, they are describing an attitude that they are consciously aware of, called anexplicit attitude. Attitudes that emerge from automatic processes are implicit attitudes. Implicit attitudes can be assessed with the ImplicitAssociation 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 isaccessible and 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, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control.Cognitive dissonance theory proposes that when our attitudes and behaviors do not match up and we have insufficient justification, weare 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 somethinginternal to the person, such as personality. When we make external attributions, on the other hand, we attribute actions to somethingoutside the person, such as current circumstances. When we make internal attributions despite plausible external causes we are makingthe 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 internal versus external, a stable versus unstable,and a global versus specific attribution. 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 directlyopposite optimistic styles. Patterns of attributions can also involve how much hostility one expects from others and therefore sees inactions, 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 times we overestimate how rare our abilities or beliefs are, engaging in false uniqueness. With an illusionof transparency we think that when others look at us they see more than they actually do.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. How might making the fundamental attribution error affect your relationships? Are there times when the effect might be positive andtimes when the effect might be negative?
2. Within your own cultural tradition, is the fundamental attribution error common?
3. An optimistic explanatory style was represented as generally positive for well-being and persistence. When might an optimisticexplanatory style be detrimental to a person?
4. The text points out one positive to knowing about the illusion of transparency, lower speech anxiety. What might be some negativeeffects of knowing about the illusion? In other words, why might it be good for us to believe others see more than they actually do?
5. If implicit attitudes are something we are not even aware of, do they matter?
6. What other influences on attitudes and behaviors might researchers study?
7. If you were to add a factor to the theory of planned behavior, what might it be? What additional variable might be added to betterpredict behavior?
8. Have you ever had an experience where your attitudes and actions did not match? Did you do any of the things suggested to reducecognitive dissonance?
Key Terms
Click on each key term to reveal the definition.
