Chapter 7 - Attitudes, Behaviour and Rationalisation

Overjustification effect

• Extrinsic rewards can undermine intrinsic interest. Ex: 1/2 of kids do task A then B. Other 1/2 of kids do task A in order to be ALLOWED to do B. For second group, task A was less attractive. • Rewarding good performance undermines intrinsic interest less than rewarding participants for simply doing the task.

Attitudes and other determinants of behaviour

Attitudes compete with other determinants of behaviour and they don't always win out over these determinants, and therefore may not be tightly connected to behaviour. Power determinants: Social norms of appropriate behaviour, situational cues etc. Eg. Influences involved in dieting vs enjoying/studying vs partying.

Predicting Attitudes from Behaviour

Attitudes may be poor predictors of behaviour but behaviours are good predictors of attitudes. This is because attitudes can change to be consistent with behaviours.

Free choice in acting

Ex: Study offering college students either $0.50 or $2.50 in 1967 to write an essay in favour of a state law banning Communists from speaking on college campuses. The students were opposed to the law, and their essays conflicted with their true beliefs. For half the participants, the freedom to write to agree or decline to write this essay was emphasised while for the other half it was not. There was no dissonance effect in the latter participants and the ones paid $2.50 actually expressed attitudes more in favour of the ban than those paid $0.50. But in the free-choice group, those paid $0.50 changed their attitude more than those paid $2.50. • Choosing behaviour that is inconsistent with beliefs produces dissonance. • Forced behaviour doesn't produce dissonance because the reason for the behaviour is clear. ("I didn't have a choice) So there is no need to rationalise these behaviours.

Assimilation and contrast effects

Related with priming. Assimilation effect - When prime produces similar behaviour, judgment. Contrast effect - When prime produces an effect opposite in meaning to the prime.

Predicting Behaviour from Attitudes

Richard LaPiere and study with young Chinese couple in early 1930s: Researcher spent two years touring the US with the couple visiting several hotels, restaurants and cafes at a time when prejudice and discrimination against Chinese people was common. But they were denied service at only 1 of the 250 places they went to. Afterwards, LaPiere wrote to all of the places they had visited and asked whether it was in their policy to serve "Orientals" and 90% of the people who responded said no. Meta-analysis in 1960s of existing literature on attitudes and behaviours also found no evidence that attitudes influence behaviour.

Some behaviours are automatic

Sometimes, the influence of an attitude on behaviour is conscious and deliberate: we reflect on our attitudes and decide how to behave. But often our behaviour is more reflexive and depends on the surrounding context. AUTOMATIC (intuitive, but unconscious) information processing can guide behaviour in ways that escape conscious awareness. Behaviour may even be INFLUENCED by aspects of the situation of which we are NOT AWARE. (eg. PRIMING)

Inconsistent attitudes

1) Attitudes about one object may conflict with one another. 2) The different components of an attitude may not always align: Usually rift between affective (feeling)/cognitive (thinking) component

Attitudes from secondhand experiences

1) Attitudes based on firsthand information predict behaviour better; higher correlation. 2) Attitudes based on secondhand experiences may be weaker and less motivating to action.

Why are attitudes poor predictors of behaviour?

1) Attitudes can conflict with other powerful determinants of behaviour 2) Attitudes can be inconsistent 3) Introspection can influence attitudes 4) Attitudes from secondhand information 5) General attitudes may mismatch specifics 6) Some behaviours are automatic

Measuring attitudes: Explicit

1) Commonly involves SELF-REPORT measures like the Likert Scale. i.e. rate attitude on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). 2) Can measure ACCESSIBILITY of attitude i.e. how readily it comes to mind by measuring RESPONSE LATENCY. 3) Can measure CENTRALITY of attitude i.e. its strength and importance in the person's belief structure and how it correlates with other attitudes.

When does dissonance occur?

1) The behaviour was freely chosen 2) The behaviour was not sufficiently justified 3) The behaviour had negative consequences 4) The negative consequences were foreseeable

Bad v/s Good

1) When the amygdala receives sensory information, it immediately provides information about the +ve/-ve valence of the object even before the mind has categorised the object. 2) Negative evaluations are stronger than positive evaluations: Probably for evolutionary reasons as a pronounced negativity bias will increase the chances of survival. 3) Negative stimuli generates greater brain activity than positive stimuli.

Balance theory

A cognitive consistency theory. • People try to maintain a balance between their thoughts, feelings and sentiments (mental attitude produced by feeling). • If things (people, objects etc.) are connected by + or - links, in a person's mind, the network is imbalanced if there are an odd number of - links. • Eg. Having two good friends who dislike each other produces an unbalanced triad. You like both of them (+ +) but they dislike each other (-). • People try to RESOLVE UNBALANCED TRIADS. Eg. In the previous case, you may decide that you like one friend less than the other. • When making social judgments, people: 1) Infer balance relationships (if they don't know) 2) Remember balanced relationships better 3) Distort memories to produce balance.

Attitude: definition and components

An evaluation of an object in a positive or negative fashion includes three components: 1) AFFECT, (emotion, evaluation) 2) BEHAVIOUR, (action tendency or inclination/in most general sense: approach/avoid) and 3) COGNITION (beliefs, thoughts, ideologies, knowledge/usually ones that reinforce feelings). i.e. The ABC of attitude.

Measuring attitudes: Implicit

Implicit attitude measure: An indirect measure of attitudes that does not involve a self-report. Used when there is reason to believe people may be unwilling or unable to report their true feelings or opinions. Researchers tap NON-CONSCIOUS ATTITUDES - people's immediate evaluative reactions they may not be aware of, or that may conflict with their consciously endorsed attitudes. 1) Affective priming 2) Implicit Association Test (IAT) 3) Non-verbal behaviours like smiling and degree of physical closeness. 4) Physiological indicators like increased heart rate and sweaty palms indicating fear.

Response Latency

The amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus, such as an attitude question.

Priming

The mental activation of a knowledge structure. Ex: Priming the CONCEPT of "professor" made participants do better on a test than priming "soccer hooligan" or "supermodel." (assimilation effects) But priming EXEMPLARS of genius (Einstein) made participants do worse. Super model exemplar (Claudia Schiffer) made participants do better. (contrast effects)

Foreseeability of negative consequences

We don't hold people or ourselves responsible for harm if the harm wasn't foreseeable. Therefore, dissonance will not occur in this case.

Culture and cognitive dissonance

• Cognitive dissonance may be universal, but aroused by different situations in different cultures. - For individualists, dissonance results from threats to how people see themselves. - For collectivists, dissonance results from threats to how people believe others see them. • Euro-Canadians had more post-decision dissonance when making a choice for themselves than for a friend. • Asian-Canadians had more post-decision dissonance when making a choice for a friend than for themselves. • COLLECTIVISTS experience more dissonance when PRIMED with thoughts of how OTHER PEOPLE would view their choices and behaviour.

Dissonance v/s self-perception

• Cognitive dissonance occurs when a behaviour doesn't fit a preexisting attitude, and the attitude is important to self-concept. (Inconsistency is threatening to the self-concept.) • Self-perception occurs when attitudes are WEAK or AMBIGUOUS.

Self-affirmation theory

• Cognitive dissonance poses challenges or threats to people's sense of themselves as rational, moral and competent. • Self-affirmation refers to boosting our self-esteem and identity by focusing on and affirming important aspects of ourself. • Self-affirmation can reduce dissonance. Ex: Lab coat study. Business and science majors were in a study on post-decision dissonance. In one condition, the experiment was done while wearing a lab coat. Science majors wearing lab coats, which affirmed an identity that is important to them, did not experience decision dissonance. • Self-affirmation protects against threats to the sense of self. Cognitive dissonance is resolved by adding other thoughts about the self. • Self-affirmation may be in another domain and not relevant to the specific threat.

Decision dissonance

• Difficult choices have more dissonance. • Any choice involves accepting the negatives of the chosen choice while sacrificing the positives of the relinquished choice. • "Decision dissonance" is typically resolved by emphasising positives and minimising negatives of the selected choice. Or by emphasising the negatives of the rejected choice and minimising the positives. Ex: Bettors at a racetrack had lower expectations from the horse they were going to bet on before they placed the bet and higher expectations immediately after placing them. • Making hard decisions triggers dissonance which triggers rationalisation. This can occur BEFORE or AFTER the decision is made. • This theory was originally referred to only as the post-decision dissonance theory because it was assumed that rationalisation occurs only after the decision has been made, but research shows that it also occurs before the decision. • Once people develop a slight preference for one option over the others, they DISTORT SUBSEQUENT INFORMATION to support their initial preference. • Post-decision efforts to reduce dissonance can have very LONG-LASTING effects.

Negative consequences

• If nothing of consequence results from actions that are conflicting with our values, we dismiss those actions as trivial. • Even if those actions are freely chosen, if nothing happens as a result, there is nothing to rationalise. Ex: In the study where participants had to lie about a boring task being interesting to another "participant" (who was actually a confederate), in half the cases the confederate would be convinced that the task will be interesting and in the other half, they were unconvinced. In the latter case, there was no dissonance as there were no negative consequences but that didn't hold for the first case. So those participants who "convinced" the confederate rated the task more favourably than the others.

Induced compliance and extinguishing undesired behaviour

• Involves use of mild vs severe punishments. Ex: "Forbidden toy" study: Children asked to rate each toy in a set of toys. The researcher leaves the room but says he'll be back soon and the children are told they can play with any of the toys except the one they rated as their "second-favourite. The experimenter told half the children that he would be "annoyed" (mild threat) if they played with that toy or he would be "very angry and would take all the toys with him and go home and never come back." (severe threat) All children did not play with the forbidden toy (or were dropped from the analysis). They were then asked to rate the toys again. The ones with the severe threat rated the forbidden toy the same or more favourably but the ones with the mild threat rated it less favourably than before. • Mild threats of punishment are a weak reason for resisting something so desirable, so attitude changes to rationalise behaviour i.e. makes them decide to rate it lower. • Severe threats are a good reason to resist but may make the behaviour more appealing. • Both minimum reward and maximum threat produce maximum attitude change.

Cognitive dissonance theory

• Leon Festinger • Inconsistencies (dissonances) between thoughts, feelings and/or behaviour create an unpleasant mental state (cognitive dissonance) that motivates efforts to resolve them. • Cognitive dissonance can be reduced by changing thoughts, feelings or behaviour to make them more consistent. Eg. Smoking may cause dissonance because people want to be healthy and know smoking is unhealthy. This dissonance can be reduced by quitting smoking. • Cognitive dissonance can also be reduced by adding thoughts, feelings or behaviours to reduce apparent inconsistencies. Eg. It can be hard to quit smoking, so the person might add thoughts like "my grandfather used to smoke and he lived to be a 100" or "I know it's bad for me but it helps me relax." • Because behaviours cannot be taken back, dissonance often causes changes in thoughts and/or feelings to RATIONALISE behaviours.

Terror management theory (TMT)

• People deal with the potentially crippling anxiety associated with the knowledge of the inevitability of death by striving for symbolic immortality through - 1) Feeling connected to long-lived institutions 2) Seeking high self-esteem related to values. • This theory predicts that attitudes will change when mortality is made salient and they do. • Occurs in all cultures. Eg. Iranian participants endorses more radical negative statements about the US after a mortality salience manipulation. • So this form of rationalisation is universal.

Cognitive consistency theories

• People seek cognitive consistency as a first approximation. • Consistency theories explain how people describe, explain and rationalise behaviours. • Attitudes may be UPDATED or ALTERED to be consistent with previous behaviour.

Self-perception is basic, automatic

• Self-perception may be very basic to the mind. • We may have a module for interpreting our own behaviour. • Split-brain patients rely on self-perception when having to verbally explain (using the left hemisphere) behaviours influenced by information shown only to the right hemisphere. Ex: A split-brain participant watches as different images flash simultaneously on the left and right. Left hemisphere -> right image, right hemisphere -> left image. Below the screen is a row of other images and the patient is asked to point, with both hands, to the image that they just saw. The left hemisphere, controlling the right hand, points at a picture of a related image and explains why. The right hemisphere, controlling the left hand, points at a related image. But the left hemisphere controls the language part and so it explains this choice by making an unrelated claim about the right hemisphere's pick as it does not see the image that the right hemisphere saw.

Induced (forced) compliance

• Subtly compelling people to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with their beliefs, attitudes, or values, in order to elicit dissonance, and therefore a change in their original views. Ex: Participants were made to do really boring tasks for an hour. Then they were deceived and told they are actually the control group for an experiment of the relationship between expectations and performance, and the confederate was absent so they had to play that role and tell the next participant that the experiment is really interesting. All the participants agreed to do this. Half were paid $1 for it and half were paid $20 for it. Those paid $20 had less dissonance associated with their lie because the money justified it. But there was greater dissonance in the $1 condition and as a result, those participants later rated the boring experiment more favourably than any of the others. As attitude towards the task changed to match behaviour. • So if you want to persuade people to do something and internalise the broader message about it, then you have to give them less incentives or the incentives will be their justification for performing the task and they will not have the need to rationalise producing a positive attitude change in them.

Mortality salience

• TMT uses mortality salience manipulations: People are asked to write about death, read information about death, or look at images associated with death. This is often compared to a pain salience condition. • Effects of mortality salience: 1) More commitment to ingroups and more hostility to outgroups. 2) Increased hostility to people who criticise one's country. 3) More punitive to people who challenge prevailing laws. 4) Reluctance to use cultural artifacts (flag, crucifix etc.) for mundane purposes. 5) More acceptance of positive feedback about the self. Ex: During the 2004 election, mortality salience manipulation made people more favourable toward Bush and less favourable towards Kerry. Perhaps because Bush was seen as defending the country against threats.

Effort justification

• The tendency to reduce dissonance by justifying the time, effort or money devoted to something that turned out to be unpleasant or disappointing. • More effort/money leads to more dissonance leads to more attempts at rationalising the behaviour. Ex: Female undergraduates in study involving a discussion group about sex. The participants were told that they had to pass a screening test to join the group which varied in the severity of the initiation. Those in the control group simply read words out to a male experiments, while those in the mild group read out mildly embarrassing words, and those in the severe initiation group read aloud obscene words and a passage describing intercourse. They were all told they passed the test and had to listen to a very boring discussion about the sex life of invertebrates in the group. While this discussion was boring for all, there was the largest amount of dissonance for those that had the severe initiation and therefore they rationalised their having to hear it by rating it more favourably than others. E.g. Fraternity hazing rituals.

System justification theory

• The theory that people are motivated to see the existing sociopolitical system as desirable, fair and legitimate. • System justifiers are more CONSERVATIVE i.e. they justify the status quo, support hierarchies and oppose equality. • It is another RATIONALISATION. People are motivated to believe the world is fair. - Belief in a just world is psychologically reassuring. (If I do good, good will happen to me) - Bad things happening to good people creates dissonance. (And we all believe we're good people) • BUT, Social inequalities are highly salient. Discrimination based on gender, race, class, sexual orientation, disabilities etc. is evident. • So, system justification reduces dissonance. - It promotes the virtues of the status quo. - It includes positive, compensatory stereotypes.

Self-Perception theory

• Theory that people infer their attitudes from observing their behaviour, not from direct introspection. • If the prior attitude is weak or ambiguous, people may use their behaviour to learn their attitude. • Self-perception theory originally offered an alternative interpretation of the cognitive dissonance findings. - Cognitive dissonance argues that people change attitudes to fit their behaviour because inconsistencies are mentally unpleasant. - Self-perception theory argues that an unpleasant mental state is not needed as explanation for the results of the cognitive dissonance studies. It says that people didn't change their attitudes, they inferred them from their behaviour in the situation. Ex: When observer-subjects read descriptions of dissonance experiments and are asked what attitude a participant would have had, the observer-subjects replicate the attitudes of the actual participants. • Memory distortions also support it: people misremember original attitudes. • Foot-in-the-door compliance: agreeing to a small request increases compliance to larger request later. • Inferences about emotions are influenced by the surrounding context.

Embodied nature of cognition and emotion

• There is a behavioural component of attitudes i.e. MOTOR ACTIONS like smiling, pushing and nodding are important parts of our attitudes. If we're induced to make the bodily movements associated with certain attitudes, beliefs or emotions, we might come to have those attitudes, beliefs or emotions as in figuring out what we feel/believe we take CUES from around us including what out body is doing without conscious awareness. • Nodding v/s shaking ahead affects agreeability. • Facial expression of smile v/s frown affects amusement. • Pushing away v/s pulling towards gestures affect -ve/+ve evaluation. • Certain PHYSICAL SENSATIONS might activate the more ABSTRACT, complex ideas to which they are linked and have predictable effects on people's thoughts, feelings, and actions. i.e. Our attitudes and beliefs are partly EMBODIED in the associated physical movements. • Our language is full of bodily metaphors. (seeing = understanding, looking up = optimism, warm = kind) Ex: Participants asked to recall a time they had either been socially excluded or welcomed by others and then asked to estimate the temperature of the room. Those who recalled rejection i.e. feeling "cold and lonely" felt the room was significantly cooler. • Heavy v/s light clipboard (weight = importance) => larger estimates of currency. • Recalling past misdeed (= feeling dirty) => more likely to select antiseptic hand wipe gift instead of pencil.

Self-perception theory - testing for arousal

• Unpleasant internal arousal (dissonance) is CRITICAL difference between cognitive dissonance and self-perception theories. Ex: Counter-attitudinal advocacy (essay) creates arousal which increases performance on easy tasks, reduces it on hard tasks, like arousal from other sources. Participants were told a drug (actually a placebo) would make them feel TENSE and anxious did NOT SHOW attitude change after counter-attitudinal advocacy. But participants told the placebo would make them RELAXED or would have no effect DID SHOW attitude change. - Believing arousal was due to the drug removed the need to resolve dissonance so there was no attitude change.

Insufficient justification

• When reason for behaviour is weak/unclear. • With sufficient justification, (like more money or threat), behaviour needn't be rationalised.

Mismatch between general attitudes and specific targets

•Consistency between attitudes and behaviours is higher when they are both at the same level of specificity. •Highly specific attitudes typically do a better job of predicting specific behaviours. •Ex: A study found that asking about attitudes towards the birth control pills did not predict its use. But attitudes about USING the pill in the NEXT TWO YEARS did predict its use. •What most people think of as attitudes about different classes of people, places, things and events are often just attitudes about a PROTOTYPE of a given category. When we encounter a situation/person that doesn't fit our prototype, our behaviour won't reflect that attitude. Ex: John B and attitudes about gay men. Several male college students were asked about their attitudes about gay men and asked to write down their description of a prototypical gay man. Two months later they were called back and asked to give a tour to a student who was suggested as being gay. The second half of his description was individually crafted to be the same as their prototype for half the group and wasn't for the other half. Their attitudes about gay men strongly predicted their +ve/-ve responses when John B. resembled their prototype but didn't when he didn't.

Introspection about attitudes

•Introspection may miss our full attitudes. •Rational reasoning may miss emotional components; coming up with the wrong reasons for an attitude you hold can mislead you about what your attitude actually is. •Ex: Romantic couples who described their INTUITIONS about their relationship predicted the status of their relationship 9 months later better than those who were asked for REASONS for their feelings. •Introspection leads up to focus on the EASIEST-TO-IDENTIFY reasons for liking or disliking something at the expense of the REAL reasons for our likes and dislikes. •But the problematic effect of introspection is limited to the times when the TRUE SOURCE of our attitude is hard to pin down, like when it is mostly AFFECTIVE. When the basis is COGNITIVE, the search for reasons yields the RIGHT REASONS and doesn't diminish the relationship between attitude and behaviour.