Evil and Moral Acts

 The attitudes-follow-behavior principle works with immoral acts as well. Evil sometimes results from
gradually escalating commitments. A trifling evil act can whittle down one’s moral sensitivity,
making it easier to perform a worse act.
 Another way in which evil acts influence attitudes is the paradoxical fact that we tend not only to
hurt those we dislike but also to dislike those we hurt.

When we agree to a deed voluntarily, we take more responsibility for it. EXAMPLE: The phenomenon
appears in wartime. Prisoner-of-war camp guards would sometimes display good manners to captives
in their first days on the job, but not for long. Soldiers ordered to kill may initially react with revulsion
to the point of sickness over their act. But not for long (Waller, 2002). Often they will denigrate their
enemies with dehumanizing nicknames.

 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 harm-doing becomes. Conscience is corroded.
 Harmful acts shape the self, but so, thankfully, do moral acts.
 INTERRACIAL BEHAVIOR AND RACIAL ATTITUDES
 If moral action feeds moral attitudes, will positive interracial behavior reduce racial prejudice—much as
mandatory seat belt use has produced more favorable seat belt attitudes? That was part of social
scientists’ testimony before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to desegregate schools.
 Their argument ran like this: 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.
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
 We have now seen that a society’s laws and, therefore, its behavior can have a strong influence on its
racial attitudes. A danger lies in the possibility of employing the same idea for political socialization on a
mass scale.
 The practice is not limited to totalitarian regimes. Political rituals—the daily flag salute by schoolchildren,
singing the national anthem—use public conformity to build a private belief in patriotism.
 Many people assume that the most potent social indoctrination comes through brainwashing, a term
coined to describe what happened to American prisoners of war (POWs) during the 1950s Korean War.
Why does our behavior affects our attitude ?
 SELF-PRESENTATION: IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT
Who among us does not care what people think?

 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 (Leary, 1994,
2001, 2004b, 2007).
 No one wants to look foolishly inconsistent. To avoid seeming so, we express attitudes
that match our actions.
 To appear consistent, we may pretend those attitudes. Even if that means displaying a
little insincerity or hypocrisy, it can pay off in managing the impression we are making.
 SELF- JUSTIFICATION: 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.
 people. It assumes that we feel tension, or a lack of harmony (“dissonance”), when
two simultaneously accessible thoughts or beliefs (“cognitions”) are psychologically
inconsistent.
 Festinger argued that to reduce this unpleasant arousal, we often adjust our thinking.
 That helps explain why British and U.S. cigarette smokers have been much less likely
than nonsmokers to believe that smoking is dangerous (Eiser & others, 1979; Saad,
2002).
 INSUFFICIENT JUSTIFICATION
 Imagine you are a participant in a famous experiment staged by the creative
Festinger and his student J. Merrill Carlsmith (1959).
 For an hour, you are required to perform dull tasks, such as turning wooden knobs
again and again. After you finish, the experimenter (Carlsmith) explains that the study
concerns how expectations affect performance.
https://youtu.be/CkJc6c3nKMw

 Having insufficient justification for their actions, they would experience more
discomfort (dissonance) and thus be more motivated to believe in what they had
done.
 DISSONANCE AFTER DECISIONS

 The emphasis on perceived choice and responsibility implies that decisions produce
dissonance.
 If you decided to live on campus, you may have realized you were giving up the
spaciousness and freedom of an apartment in favor of cramped noisy dorm quarters.
 After making important decisions, we usually reduce dissonance by upgrading the
chosen alternative and downgrading the unchosen option.
 With simple decisions, this deciding-becomes-believing effect can breed
overconfidence (Blanton & others, 2001): “What I’ve decided must be right.” The
effect can occur very quickly
 SELF-PERCEPTION

 Self-Perception Theory The theory that when we are unsure of our attitudes,
we infer them much as would someone observing us, by looking at our behavior
and the circumstances under which it occurs.

 When our attitudes are weak or ambiguous, we are in the position of someone
observing us from the outside. EXAMPLE: Hearing myself talk informs me of my
attitudes; seeing my actions provides clues to how strong my beliefs are. This is
especially so when I can’t easily attribute my behavior to external constraints.

 “I can watch myself and my actions, just like an outsider.”—ANNE FRANK, THE
DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL, 1947
 EXPRESSIONS AND ATTITUDE

 Going through the motions can trigger the emotions. Contrariwise, extending the middle
finger makes others’ ambiguous expressions seem more hostile (Chandler & Schwarz,
2009).
 Want to feel better? Walk for a minute taking long strides with your arms swinging and
your eyes straight ahead.
 If our expressions influence our feelings, then would imitating others’ expressions help us
know what they are feeling? ANSWER: Yes, it would.
 The implication: To sense how other people are feeling, let your own face mirror their
expressions.
 It also makes for “emotional contagion,” which helps explain why it’s fun to be around
happy people and depressing to be around depressed people. Our facial expressions also
influence our attitudes.
 OVERJUSTIFICATION AND INTRINSIC MOTIVATIONS
Recall the insufficient justification effect: The smallest incentive that will get people to do
something is usually the most effective in getting them to like the activity and keep on
doing it.
 Cognitive dissonance theory- offers one explanation for this: When external
inducements are insufficient to justify our behavior, we reduce dissonance internally, by
justifying the behavior.
 Self-perception theory- offers a different explanation: People explain their behavior by
noting the conditions under which it occurs.
 A folktale illustrates the overjustification effect.
 The overjustification effect occurs when someone offers an unnecessary reward
beforehand in an obvious effort to control behavior. What matters is what a reward
implies: Rewards and praise that inform people of their achievements—that make them
feel, “I’m very good at this”—boost intrinsic motivation.
 COMPARING THE THEORIES
We have seen one explanation of why our actions might only seem to affect our attitudes
( self-presentation theory). And we have seen two explanations of why our actions
genuinely affect our attitudes:
(1) The dissonance -theory assumption that we justify our behavior to reduce our
internal discomfort,.
(2) The self-perception -theory assumption that we observe our behavior and make
reasonable inferences about our attitudes, much as we observe other people and infer
their attitudes.

These two explanations seem to contradict each other. Which is right? It’s difficult to
find a definitive test. In most instances they make the same predictions, and we can
bend each theory to accommodate most of the findings we have considered
(Greenwald, 1975).
 DISSONANCE AS AROUSAL
 Self-Affirmation Theory. A theory that people often experience a self-image threat,
after engaging in an undesirable behavior.
 dissonance conditions do indeed arouse tension, especially when they threaten
positive feelings of self-worth.

SELF-PERCEIVING WHEN NOT SELF-CONTRADICTING

 Dissonance theory successfully explains what happens when we act contrary to
clearly defined attitudes: We feel tension, so we adjust our attitudes to reduce it.
Dissonance theory, then, explains attitude change.
 In situations where our attitudes are not well formed, Self-Perception theory
explains attitude formation. As we act and reflect, we develop more readily
accessible attitudes to guide our future behavior. (Fazio, 1987; Roese & Olson,
1994).
Summing Up: Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?

Three competing theories explain why our actions affect our attitude reports.
 1.) Self-Presentation Theory 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. The available evidence confirms that people do
adjust their attitude statements out of concern for what other people will think.
Two of these theories propose that our actions trigger genuine attitude change.

 2.) Dissonance Theory explains this attitude change by assuming that we feel tension
after acting contrary to our attitudes or making difficult decisions. To reduce that
arousal, we internally justify our behavior.
 3.) Self-Perception Theory assumes that when our attitudes are weak, we simply
observe our behavior and its circumstances, then infer our attitudes.
Thankyou !