Behavior and Attitudes

Attitudes and Behavior

Chicken and then the Egg
Egg and then the Chicken….

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 Definition
• Attitude
– A favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction
toward something or someone exhibited in
one’s beliefs, feelings, or intended behavior.
– Sometimes referred to as the ABC’s of
attitudes (affect, behavior, cognition)

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 Attitude-Behavior Consistency

• Despite intuitive belief that attitudes

determine behavior, large body of
research indicates that attitudes are
actually a poor predictor of behaviors
• This begins with LaPiere (1934) and his
travels with a Chinese couple
– 1 out of 184 refuse them service, when he writes after
the trip 91% of the 128 who respond say that they
would refuse service to Chinese
• Question can be asked – why the inconsistency?
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 Attitude-Behavior Consistency
• Wicker (1969) presented seminal review
article on the lack of correspondence
between expressed attitudes and
behavior. Domains include:
– Cheating
– Church attendance
– Racial attitudes
– Breast feeding

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 Do attitudes ever guide behavior?
• Yes! What factors lead to attitude-
behavior correspondence?
• Real vs. expressed attitudes. A measured
attitude may not be a person’s ‘true’
attitude.
– Bogus pipeline: convince subjects that you
have a machine that measures hidden
attitudes. Once convinced they are more
truthful.

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 Do attitudes guide behavior?
• One instance vs. aggregate
– Think of sports statistics
• Look at attitudes that are specific to the behavior
(Ajzen and Fishbein)
– Do you like to go out to eat vs. do you like Thai food.
• Attitudes are more likely to guide behavior if
attitude is made salient (e.g., ask people to
consider their attitudes, make self-conscious).

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Does Behavior Determine Attitude?
• Role Playing
– Stanford Prison Study
• Foot in the door phenomenon
– Agreeing to a small commitment frequently
leads to larger commitments
• Tendency for both good and evil acts
toward others to escalate.

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 How does behavior “cause”
attitude?
• Self-presentation theory
– Suggests that it is an issue of impression
management. That is, we desire, and it is
favorable, to appear consistent.
– True at times, however, does not indicate how
people may ‘internalize’ and come to adopt
these new attitudes.
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 How does behavior “cause”
attitude?
• Cognitive Dissonance Theory
– Proposed by Leon Festinger
• Original definition: a state of tension that
occurs whenever an individual
simultaneously holds 2 cognitions that are
psychologically inconsistent.
– For example, if I say I hate someone and then I
am nice to them (without being forced to be) I am
likely to view them more positively.
– However, attitude won’t change if there is
sufficient justification for having been nice to
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 Dissonance as a consequence
of making a decision
• Dissonance arises when choosing between 2
equally attractive alternatives.
– After our choice we reduce dissonance through
confirmation bias
• Jack Brehm – Participants rate two gifts as
equally desirable. Give participants choice of
1 of these 2 gifts. Immediately after, chosen
gift is now evaluated as more attractive.
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 Educational and Parenting
Implications
• Both reward and severe punishment provide
external or sufficient justification.
• If we desire students to internalize educational
lessons and to form a desire to learn, we must
avoid rewarding them too much for their efforts
• Mark Lepper: children who play with a puzzle in
order to gain a greater reward are much less
likely to spontaneously play with that toy in the
future
– Can explain previous effort on the puzzle in terms of
external justification, not enjoyment.
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 Parenting Implications
• If we want the child to internalize an attitude,
severe punishment may not be effective
– Severe punishment = external justification (e.g., I am
doing this because my hide will be tanned otherwise,
not because I want to)
• Aronson and Carlsmith: mild threat and toy
choice
– Children who received a mild threat were much less
likely to choose that toy in the future than were those
exposed to a severe threat (e.g., forbidden fruit)

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 Self Perception Theory
• First proposed by Daryl Bem
• Effects are nothing more than reasonable
inferences that people make about their
own attitudes based upon their
perceptions of their behaviors.
– Similar to how observers draw conclusions
about our attitudes from our behaviors
– Does not work well when applied to important
attitudes, but may explain ambivalent
situations
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 Overjustification Effect
• Rewarding people for activities they enjoy
may backfire.
• According to self-perception theory a
person may observe the situation and
attribute their actions to the reward not
their intrinsic motivation.
• For example, professional athletes who
begin to view their sport as opposed to
something they used to love.
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