Behavior and Attitudes

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Behavior and Attitudes
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Attitude Survey

• 1SD 2D 3Neither 4A 5SA
• Engaging in exercise 3 times a wk promotes good
  health
• Eating a variety of foods each day, including
  five or more servings of fresh fruits and
  vegetables, contributes to wellness.
• It is essential that all citizens exercise their
  right to vote if government is to effectively
  reflect the will of the people.

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Attitude Survey

• 1SD 2D 3Neither 4A 5SA
• Homelessness is a serious social problem that
  needs attention.

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Behavior Survey

• Yes or No
• I take time to engage in regular exercise at
  least 3 times per wk.
• I regularly eat at least five servings of fresh
  fruits and vegetables each day.
• I voted in the last election for which I was
  eligible.
• Within the last year I have done something to
  address the problem of homelessness. (e.g., made
  a charitable contribution, talked with a homeless
  person, wrote my congressperson regarding the
  problem).

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Attitudes

• A favorable or unfavorable reaction toward
  something or someone.
• Attitudes consist of three dimensions ABCs of
  attitudes

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Attitudes

• Breckler (1984) - Demonstrates the use of
  different techniques of researching attitudes
  with research on snakes.
• Affect (heart rate, mood checklist)
• Behavior (Avg. dist. From vivid snake pictures,
  extent of contact with live snakes)
• Cognition (Snakes control rodent population,
  attack anything that moves...agreement, thought
  listing)

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Attitudes

• Why are attitudes important?
• They strongly influence social thought (e.g.,
  Lord et al. 1979)
• They are assumed to strongly influence behaviors

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How are Attitudes Formed?

• 1) Operant Conditioning
• Perform behavior, it gets reinforced
• Positive attitudes toward behavior should form
• Goldstar, funny.

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How are Attitudes Formed?

• 2) Classical Conditioning
• Unconditioned Stim --gt Uncond. Response
• Smile of Parents --gt Happy child
• Conditioned Stim-gt Conditioned Response
• Plate of veggies w/smile --gt happy w/veg
• Eventually wont need smile

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How are Attitudes Formed?

• 3) Balance Theory (Heider, 1958)
• We have a need for balance in our attitudes
• We frequently change our attitudes to create
  balance among them.

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YOU
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How are Attitudes Formed?

• 4) Social Comparison Theory (Festinger, 1954)
• People have a need to evaluate themselves and
  their attitudes.
• This evaluation can take place through 2 sources
  
• 1) Objective Comparisons - (i.e., thermostat)
• 2) Social Comparison
• Similar others

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Attitudes

• Fazio (1989) an attitude is an association in
  memory between an attitude object and an
  evaluation.
• Wilson Hodges (1992) people may construct
  evaluations on the spot from information that is
  temporarily available.

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Do Attitudes Predict Behavior?

• What do you think?

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Do Attitudes Predict Behavior?

• LaPierre (1934)
• Research on feelings toward Asians
• Anti-Asian sentiment at the time
• Goes to 251 rest/hotels
• Month later...Calls
• Attitude 92 said they would not serve
• Behavior Almost everyone served
• Problems?

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Do Attitudes Predict Behavior?

•       1990 - 90 of Americans say pollution
  moderate/serious threat...Only 50 recycle
•       1996 - Americans rate nutrition as very
  important...Consuming more cal/fat than just 3
  years back
• Surveys about values - Honesty rises to top...yet
  91 admit lying frequently

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Do attitudes ever predict behavior?When Do
Attitudes Predict Behavior?
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When Do Attitudes Predict Behavior?

• 1) Direct Experience
• Regan and Fazio (1977) Cornell dorms

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When Do Attitudes Predict Behavior?

• 2) Individual Differences
• Self-monitoring

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When Do Attitudes Predict Behavior?

• 3) Minimal social influence
• Bogus Pipeline (Sigall Page, 1971)

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When Do Attitudes Predict Behavior?

• 4) When external factors do not influence
  behavior.
• The principle of Aggregation
• Power of situation
• aggregate
• Baseball analogy (Any one at bat)

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When Do Attitudes Predict Behavior?

• 5) Examining Attitudes Specific to Behavior.
• D.V. Class attendance on Friday
• Are academics important to you?
• Versus
• Is it essential to attend class daily to do well?

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When Do Attitudes Predict Behavior?

• 6) Attitudes predict behavior when the attitude
  is potent or available.
• Deiner and Wallbom (1976) Cheating study

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• Fazio et al (1982) Repeated expression
• Fazio Williams (1986) more accessible attitudes
  are more highly correlated with behavior.

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Do Behaviors Create Attitudes?

• Behavior seems to create attitudes.
• Self presentation
• Role Playing - Zimbardo Study
• Write essay
• Bem McConnell (1970) control over university
  curriculum.

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Why do actions influence behavior?

• Which group do you think you would like a group
  better?
• 1) Get up at 5 AM, run, do push ups/sit ups etc.,
  clean up after meetings, serve everyone during
  meals/meetings, clean bathrooms/toilets.
• 2) Have to show up 15 minutes early for meetings
  and set up for the first week of membership...
• What would reinforcement theory predict?

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What about this scenario?

•  Participate in a boring experiment turning
  wooden knobs on a box for 45 minutes.
• I.V. - Paid 1 versus 20 to lie
• D.V. - How interesting was your experiment?
• Which one would you rate as more
  interesting/exciting?

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Theories to explain why behavior influences
attitudes

• 1) Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger, 1957)

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• Cognitions/behaviors can be
• 1) irrelevant - and not cause dissonance 2)
  Consonant - if one follows from the other /no
  dissonance
• 3) Dissonant cognition an behavior (or 2
  cognitions) are inconsistent/ dissonance

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

•    Motivated to maintain consistency among our
  cognitions, behaviors/attitudes
•    When we behave inconsistently we experience
  dissonance.
• Dissonance -gt What is it?

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• Dissonance is assumed to be aversive and people
  are motivated to reduce it.
• How? We cant change past behavior
• Biased information processing can reduce this
  state.
• modify one of the elements
• minimize the importance of the dissonant
  cognitions

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• Ex. Person is attractive goes on very few
  dates
• Believe he/she is not really attractive
• Reduce efforts to date
• Make one of the cognitions less important
• Generate new cognitions that make dissonant
  cognitions consistent

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• Video

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• Festinger Carlsmith (1959)
• Insufficient justification design.
• Boring task (turning pegs).
• I.V. given 1 or 20 to tell a waiting people
  that the task was interesting.
• D.V. Rated task on interestingness.
• Rated task most interesting in low incentive.

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• Aronson and Mills (1959)
• Women recruited to participate in sex talk
• Initiation...Make sure could cope
• I.V. - Initiation (control, mild, severe)
• Listen in on group (mating behavior of fruit
  flies)
• D.V. - How interesting do you rate group.
• Guess Results...

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• Aronson and Mills (1959)
• Results
• Control Boring
• Mild Boring
• Severe Very interesting/fascinating
• Why?

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• Brehm (1966)
• Rate appliances
• Get to choose between two equally favorable
  appliances.
• Later, asked to rate items again
• What happened?

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Theories to explain why behavior influences
attitudes

• 2) Self-Perception Theory (Bem, 1972)
• We look at our own behavior (as an outside
  observer would) and attribute our behavior to
  dispositions or attitudes.
• Do you like this band?
• Is a discussion upsetting you ?
• Do you like pancakes?

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Self-Perception Theory

• Ex. The experimenter offers Karen 100 dollars
  to smash her guitar and she does...
• Experimenter offers Paul 1 to smash his guitar
  and he does...
• Assuming same quality guitar...Who do you think
  liked their guitar better?
• How does Self-Perception Theory explain previous
  findings...Festingers experiment or Aronson and
  Mills experiment?

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Self-Perception Theory

• Bem argues that his theory is more parsimonious
  (Dont need to talk about internal mechanisms)
• Self-Perception theory especially intuitive for
  attitudes we dont feel strongly about.

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Self-Perception theory

• Strack et al (1988) Facial Feedback Hypothesis
• Teeth/lips
• Rated cartoons.
• Behaviors can dictate attitudes...Can our facial
  expressions dictate our emotions?

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Self-Perception theory

• Overjustification Effect
• Rewarding people for doing what they already like
  doing may cause them to attribute behavior to
  external reward rather than intrinsic interest.
• Money for grades

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Self-Perception theory

• Lepper, Greene, Nisbett (1973)
• Kids were given markers to play with
• I.V. were/not told they would receive a good
  player reward for playing with the markers
• D.V. did they play with the markers a few days
  later?

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Cognitive dissonance vs. Self-Perception

• Whos right?
• Is negative arousal necessary?
• Zanna Cooper (1974) misattribute unpleasant
  feeling to a pill
• Participant wrote a counter-attitudinal essay
  (e.g., for tuition increases at their university)

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• I.V. participants were/not given a pill that they
  thought caused negative arousal.
• D.V. tuition increase attitudes.
• What happened?

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Door in the face Cognitive dissonance vs.
Self-Perception

• They both are right.
• Dissonance can be responsible for attitude
  change.
• Cognitive dissonance tends to occur for important
  or strong attitudes.
• Cognitive dissonance can NOT explain the
  overjustification effect (no arousal) but
  Self-perception can.
• Self-Perception seems to occur for neutral
  attitude objects, weak attitudes, or ambiguous
  attitudes.

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Related thingies

• Foot in the door
• Door in the face