Chicken and then the Egg Egg and then the Chicken…. 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) 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? 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 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. 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). 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. 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. 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 them. 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. 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. 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) 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 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.