BEHAVIOR AND

ATTITUDES
WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
WHAT WE ARE (ON THE INSIDE) AND WHAT
WE DO (ON THE OUTSIDE)?
ATTITUDE

Favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction or

stand toward something or someone
Often rooted on one’s belief
Components of attitudes:
•1. Affective – emotions; feelings toward the attitude object;
like or dislike; constitute the direction (+ or -) as well as the
intensity of individual’s evaluation/assessment toward the object
of attitude.
•2. Behavioral – action tendencies toward the object of
attitude; predisposition to respond in a certain manner toward the
attitudinal object.
•3. Cognitive – composed of beliefs, thoughts, ideas toward
the attitude object.
DO ATTITUDES DETERMINE BEHAVIOR?

 Leon Festinger, judged to be Social Psychologist most

important contributor, concluded that evidence did not show
that changing attitudes change behavior. He believed it is the
other way around.

 According to Robert Abelson, we are very well trained and

very good at finding reasons for what we do but not very
good at doing what we find reasons for.
• According to Allan Michen, people’s expressed attitudes
hardly predicted their behavior. For example, students'
attitudes toward cheating has little relation to the likelihood
of their actual cheating. Attitude towards church were only
modestly linked with church attendance.
• Moral Hypocrisy (Daniel Batson, et al) – appearing moral while
avoiding the costs of being so.
WHEN DO ATTITUDES PREDICT/DETERMINE
BEHAVIOR?

1. When social influences on what we say are minimal

- Implicit and Explicit attitude
-In late 2002, many US legislators, sensing their
country’s post 9/11 fear, anger, ang patriotic fervor, publicly
voted to support President Bush’s planned war against
Irag while privately having reservations. On the roll call
vote, strong social influence – fear of criticism – had
distorted the true sentiments.
• To minimize social influences on people’s attitude reports
- Implicit association test – a computer-driven assessment
of implicit attitudes. The test uses reaction times to measure
people’s automatic associations between attitude objects
and evaluative words.
- Implicit and Explicit
WHEN DO ATTITUDES
PREDICT/DETERMINE BEHAVIOR?

2. Principle of aggregation – the effect of an attitude on behavior

becomes more apparent when we look at a person’s aggregate or
average behavior rater than insolated facts.

3. Examine attitudes specific to behavior –inconsistencies between

expressed attitudes and behavior happen when measured attitude is
general and behavior is specific.
•e.g. attitude toward healthy lifestyle poorly predicts food choices.
Attitude towards eating vegetables predict eating vegetables much
better.
WHEN DO ATTITUDES
PREDICT/DETERMINE BEHAVIOR?

• 4. Making attitudes potent

a. Bringing attitudes to mind (internalization promotes
consistency in behavior; attitudes guide behavior if we
think about them)
b. If attitudes are forged by experience, they become
more clearly defined, likely to endure, stable over time,
more certain, more remembered.
WHEN DOES OUR BEHAVIOR
AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?
1. Role Playing
 Role
 Set of norms that defines how people in a given social position
ought to behave
 Certain attitude is desired
 Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford’s prison study
 Abu Ghraib controversy
 An artificial role can morph into what is real
WHEN DOES OUR BEHAVIOR
AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?
2. When Saying Becomes Believing
• When there is no compelling external explanation for one’s words,
saying becomes believing
• People adjust their message towards their listener
• When induced to give support ,people will believe into what they
same if it is not bribed or coerce
• When your friend is mad at someone
WHEN DOES OUR BEHAVIOR
AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?
3. Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon
• Tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to
comply later with a larger request
• Low-ball technique
• Tactic for getting people to agree to something. People who agree
to an initial request will often still comply when the requester ups
the ante
• Used by some car dealers
WHEN DOES OUR BEHAVIOR
AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?
4. Evil and Moral Acts
• Wartime
• Actions and attitudes feed on each other sometime to the point
of moral numbness
• When evil behavior occurs we tend to justify it as right
• Peacetime
• Moral action, especially when chosen rather than coerced,
affects moral thinking
WHEN DOES OUR BEHAVIOR
AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?
5. Interracial Behavior and Racial Attitudes
• Racial behaviors help shape our social consciousness
• By doing, not saying racial attitudes were changed
• Legislating morality- desegregate schools in the US

• If we wait for the heart to change – through preaching and teaching –

we will wait a long time for racial justice. But if we legislate moral
action, we can, under the right conditions, indirectly affect heartfelt
attitudes.
6. Social Movements
 Political and social movements may legislate behavior designed to lead to attitude change
on a mass scale
Ex. Political rituals like daily flag salute by school children singing the national anthem
use public conformity to build a private belief of patriotism
 Many people believe that the most potent social indoctrination comes through
brainwashing the term was coined to describe what happened to the American prisoners of
war in the 1950’s.
 21 soldiers remain even if after being granted a permission to return to america
WHY DOES OUR BEHAVIOR
AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?
1. Self-Presentation: Impression Management
• Some people care about how other people see them
• Assumes that people, especially those who self-monitor their
behavior hoping to create good impressions, will adapt their attitude
reports to appear consistent with their actions
• a. high self-monitoring – deliberately alters behavior to produce the
desired effects, they are more likely to express attitudes they don’t
privately hold.
• b. Low self-monitoring – more likely to talk, act, and feel as they
believe, their attitudes therefore predicts their behavior
WHY DOES OUR BEHAVIOR
AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?
• 2. Self-perception theory – it assumes that when we are
unsure of our attitudes, we infer them as much as someone
observing us would! We observe ourselves like an outsider!
We discern our own attitude by observing our behavior
 WHY DOES OUR BEHAVIOR AFFECT
OUR ATTITUDES?

3. Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance

• Tension that arises when one is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions
• To reduce this tension, we adjust our thinking
• According to this theory our attitude change because we are motivated to maintain
consistency among our cognition
• Selective Exposure – the tendency to seek information and media that agree with
one’s views and to avoid dissonant information.
WHY DOES OUR BEHAVIOR
AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?
a. Insufficient justification
 Reduction of dissonance by internally justifying one’s behavior when
external justification is insufficient
b. Dissonance after decisions
 Deciding-becomes-believing effect
 In making a decision we reduce dissonance after by uprgrading
the chosen alternative and downgrading the other option
 Can breed overconfidence
c. overjustification effect – result of bribing people to do what they already
like doing, they may see their actions as externally controlled rather than
internally controlled.