SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
CHAPTER 4: BEHAVIOR AND ATTITUDES
- Private beliefs and feelings determine our public behavior; if we want
to change our behavior, we must first change our hearts and minds.
o Is this true??
- Attitudes: beliefs and feelings related to a person or an event
o ABCs of attitudes:
Affect (feelings)
Behavior tendency
Cognition (thoughts)
HOW WELL DO OUR ATTITUDES PREDICT OUR BEHAVIOR?
State the extent to which, and under what conditions, our inner attitudes
drive our outward actions.
- Allan Wicker reviewed several research studies and concluded that
people’s expressed attitudes hardly predicted their varying behavior.
o Attitude and behavior don’t always match—moral hypocrisy
(appearing moral while avoiding costs of being so)
- When greed and morality are put on a collision course, greed usually
wins
- When attitudes predict behavior
o Our behavior and expressed attitudes are subject to other
influences—possibly 40+ factors that complicate the relationship
between attitudes and behavior
o For an attitude to lead to a behavior, liking must become wanting,
a goal must be set, the goal must be important enough to overwhelm
other demands, and a specific behavior must be chosen.
Attitudes predict behavior when other influences on what we
say and do are minimal, when the attitude is specific to the
behavior, and when the attitude is potent
Potent: having great power, influence, or effect
o When social influences on what we say are minimal
There are never direct readings of attitudes, but expressed
attitudes are measured—expressions are subject to outside
influences
Example: we say what we think others want to hear
Implicit attitudes (unconscious)—often unacknowledged inner
beliefs that may or may not correspond to our explicit
attitudes (conscious)
Implicit association test (IAT): a computer-driven
assessment of implicit attitudes. The test uses
reaction times to measure people’s automatic
associations between attitude objects and evaluative
words. Easier pairings (and faster responses) are
taken to indicate stronger unconscious associations.
o Using reaction times to measure how quickly
people associate concepts
o The IAT has detractors—has low test-retest
reliability, scores differ widely from one
session to another and change more over the
lifespan.
o The IAT is not reliable enough to assess and
compare individuals, unlike an aptitude test—
many tests might be necessary
Implicit biases are pervasive
People differ in implicit bias
People are often unaware of their implicit biases
Behavior is predicted best with a combination of implicit
and explicit (self-report) measures
By themselves, implicit measures are the most
consistent
Implicit attitudes can predict behavior for attitudes formed
early in life (racial and gender attitudes)
The amygdala of our brains (center for threat perception) is
active as we automatically evaluate social stimuli
The existence of distinct explicit and implicit attitudes
confirms our “dual processing” capacity for both automatic
(effortless, habitual, implicit, system 1) and controlled
(deliberate, conscious, explicit, system 2) thinking.
o When other influences on behavior are minimal
Personal attitudes are not the only determinant of behavior,
but situations matter too
Situational influences can be enormous enough to
induce people to violate their deepest convictions
The effects of an attitude become more apparent when we look
at a person’s aggregate or average behavior
o When attitudes are specific to the behavior
When the measured attitude is a general one and the behavior
is very specific, we should not expect a close
correspondence between words and actions
Attitudes did not predict behavior in most studies
Specific, relevant attitudes do predict intended and actual
behavior
To change habits through persuasion, we must alter people’s
attitudes toward specific practices
“theory of planned behavior”-knowing people’s intended
behaviors and their perceived self-efficacy and
control……asking people about their intentions to
engage in a behavior often increases its likelihood
Conditions under which we see attitudes predicting behavior:
1. When we minimize other influences upon our attitude
statements and our behavior
2. When the attitude is specifically relevant to the
observed behavior
o When attitudes are potent
Much of our behavior is automatic—act out familiar scripts
without reflecting on what we’re doing
Mindlessness is adaptive, freeing our minds to work on
other things
Habitual behaviors (seat belt use, coffee consumption, class
attendance)—conscious intentions are hardly activated
o Bringing attitudes to mind
If we were prompted to think about our attitudes before
acting, would we be truer to ourselves?
Our attitudes become potent IF we think about them
Self-awareness promotes consistency between words and deeds
Promotes moral honesty
o Forging strong attitudes through experience
Attitudes that best predict behavior are accessible as well
as stable
When attitudes are forged by experience, not just
hearsay, they are more accessible, more enduring, and
more likely to guide to action
WHEN DOES OUR BEHAVIOR AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?
Summarize evidence that we can act ourselves into a way of thinking.
- To some extent, our attitudes matter and we can think ourselves into a
way of acting.
o Behavior determines attitude—we come to believe in what we stand
up for
- Role playing
o Role: a set of norms that defines how people in a given social
position ought to behave
o When placed in a rotten barrel, some people become bad apples, and
others do not
o What is unreal (an artificial role) can subtly morph into what is
real
When we act out a role, we slightly change our former selves
into being more like the role
- Saying becomes believing
o People often adapt what they say to please their listeners
Quicker to tell good news than bad, and adjust the message
toward listener’s views
o When there is no compelling external explanation for one’s words,
saying becomes believing
Trying to convince yourself, continuously looking for
justification, etc.
- Evil and moral acts
o Attitudes-follow-behavior principle also occurs for immoral acts
o Evil sometimes results from gradually escalating commitments
A trifling evil act erodes one’s moral sensitivity, making
it easier to perform a worse act
o Harmful acts change us in other ways, too
We tend to hurt those we dislike, but also dislike those we
hurt
Harming an innocent victim typically leads aggressors to
disparage their victims, thus helping them justify their
cruel behavior
o Attitudes-follow-behavior happens in wartime
Desensitization
o Attitudes-follow-behavior happens in peacetime
o Actions and attitudes feed each other, sometimes to the point of
moral numbness—the more one harms another and adjusts one’s
attitudes, the easier it becomes to do harm
Conscience is corroded
o Harmful acts and moral acts shape the self—our character is
reflected in what we do when we think no one is looking
o Moral action, especially when chosen rather than coerced, affects
moral thinking
o Positive behavior fosters a liking for the person—if you wish to
love someone more, act as if you do
WHY DOES OUR BEHAVIOR AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?
State the theories that seek to explain the attitudes-follow-behavior
phenomenon. Discuss how the contest between these competing theories
illustrates the process of scientific explanation.
- Three possible sources:
1. Self-presentation theory: for strategic reasons, we express attitudes
that make us appear consistent
2. Cognitive dissonance theory: to reduce discomfort, we justify our
actions to ourselves
3. Self-perception theory: our actions are self-revealing: when
uncertain about our feelings or beliefs, we look to our behavior,
much as anyone else would
- Self-presentation: impression management
o We all care about what other people think about us
We see making a good impression as a way to gain social and
material rewards, to feel better about ourselves, even to
become more secure in our social identities
o To avoid seeming inconsistent, we express attitudes to match our
actions
- Self-justification: cognitive dissonance
o Our attitudes change because we are motivated to maintain
consistency among our thoughts (cognitions)
o cognitive dissonance: tension that arises when one is
simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions. For example,
dissonance may occur when we realize that we have, with little
justification, acted contrary to our attitudes or made a decision
favoring one alternative despite reasons favoring another.
Assuming we feel tension when two of our thought/beliefs are
inconsistent
o People whose confident beliefs are shaken will often respond by
seeking to persuade others
o Selective exposure: the tendency to seek information and media
that agree with one’s views and to avoid dissonant information
A way people minimize dissonance
prefer to be affirmed over informed
o Sometimes we choose to ignore or not focus on uncomfortable
information
o Dissonance theory pertains mostly to discrepancies between
behavior and attitudes
o If we sense inconsistency, possibly hypocrisy, we feel pressure
for change
o Insufficient justification: reduction of dissonance by internally
justifying one’s behavior when external justification is
“insufficient”
Dissonance theory predicts that when our actions are not
fully explained by external rewards or coercion, we will
experience dissonance, which we can reduce by believing in
what we have done.
Cognitive dissonance theory focuses on what induces a
desired reaction. Research suggests that parents use “only
enough” incentive to elicit desired behavior
Attitudes follow behavior for which we feel some
responsibility
People are unlikely to internalize forced behavior—
authoritarian management will be effective only when the
authority is present
Dissonance theory insists that encouragement and inducement
should be enough to elicit the desired action
o Dissonance after decisions
Emphasis on perceived choice and responsibility implies that
decisions produce dissonance
Reduce dissonance by upgrading the chosen alternative and
downgrading the unchosen option
Deciding-becomes-believing
Our preferences influence our decisions, which then sharpen
our preferences
Made decisions grow their own self-justifying legs of
support, strong enough that when one leg is pulled away, the
decision does not collapse
- Self-perception theory: the theory that when we are unsure of our
attitudes, we infer them as much as would someone observing us—by
looking at our behavior and the circumstances under which it occurs
o Assumes that we make similar inferences when we observe our own
behavior
o The acts we freely commit are self-revealing
o
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