Attitudes and Behavior

I. What is an attitude?

A. Attitude: a favorable or unfavorable evaluative reactiontoward something or someone (developed, maintained, andchanged via the interactive relationship among one’sthoughts, feelings, and behaviors).

B. Three Components of an Attitude: 1) Cognitive: what a person believes about the source of the attitude. 2) Affective: how a person feels about the source of the attitude. 3) Behavioral: how a person acts towards the source of the attitude.

INITIAL ATTITUDE = I don’t like psychology. Cognitive component = I believe psychology is uninteresting.

Affective component = Being in this psychology class makes me angry.

Behavioral component = I stop attending my psychology class.

ATTITUDE MAINTAINED = I don’t like psychology.Behavioral consequence of maintained attitude = I do notbecome a psychology major.

Affective component = Being in this psychology class makes me angry.

Cognitive component = I believe psychology is uninteresting.

Behavioral component = I stop attending my psychology class.

ATTITUDE MAINTAINED = I don’t like psychology.Behavioral consequence of maintained attitude = I do notbecome a psychology major.

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Let’s say that attendance is required…Behavioral component = I always attend my psychology class.

Affective component = Being in this psychology class makes me laugh

and therefore happy.

Cognitive component = I believe psychology is interesting.

ATTITUDE CHANGED = I like psychology.Behavioral consequence of changed attitude = I become apsychology major.

Behavioral component = I always attend my psychology class.

Cognitive component = I find out that psychology is interesting.

Affective component = Being in this psychology class makes me happy.

ATTITUDE CHANGED = I like psychology.Behavioral consequence of changed attitude = I become apsychology major.

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C. Hypocrisy: publicly advocating some attitudes and thenacting in a way that is inconsistent with those attitudes.

II. When Attitudes Predict Behavior

A. Implicit versus Explicit Attitudes

1) Implicit Attitudes: unconscious associations betweenobjects and evaluative responses.

2) Explicit Attitudes: consciously accessible attitudes thatare controllable and easy to report.

B. Theory of Planned Behavior: one’s attitudes, perceivedsocial norms, and feelings of control, together determine one’sintentions and guide behavior.

C. General Attitudes versus Specific Attitudes

1) General Attitudes tend to be more stable than SpecificAttitudes and are better predictors of overall behaviorthan specific behaviors.

2) General attitudes tend to be more stable because…(a) once they’re formed, we don’t usually goback and constantly reevaluate our fundamentalbeliefs. If we were always doing that, then wewould never get anything done.(b) we tend to associate ourselves with peoplewho have similar general attitudes and engagein similar attitude reinforcing activities.

D. Primacy and Recency: we tend to like what we wereexposed to first and what we were exposed to most recently.

Prejudicial AttitudesPredict

Discriminatory Behavior

III. When Behavior Predicts Attitudes

A. Role Playing

1) Norms: standards for accepted and expected behavior indifferent situations. Norms prescribe “proper” behavior andcan vary among different cultures. Norms typically describewhat most others do; what is “normal”.

2) Role: a specific set of norms that define how peopleought to behave in a given social position.

3) The Stanford Prison Experiment

B. The Snowball Effect: a process that starts from an initialstate of small significance and builds upon itself, becominglarger and perhaps potentially dangerous or disastrous(a "spiral of decline"), though it might be beneficial instead.

C. The Benjamin Franklin Effect: doing a favor for someonecan increase liking of the person for whom the favor was done.

IV. Why Behavior Affects Attitudes

A. Self-Perception Theory: When we are unsure of ourattitudes, we infer them much as would someone observing us, by looking at our behavior and the circumstances under which it occurs.

B. James-Lange Theory: a person’s interpretation of astimulus evokes the autonomic changes directly. Thepsychological experience of emotion is the individual’sperception of those physiological changes.

C. Extrinsic Motivation: refers to things that are external tooneself, such as money or rewards.

D. Intrinsic Motivation: refers to things that are internal,such as pride of accomplishment.

E. Overjustification Effect: the result of bribing people to dowhat they already like doing; they may then see their actionsas externally controlled rather than intrinsically appealing.

V. Cognitive Dissonance Theory: a state oftension that exists when an individual holdscontradictory attitudes, or exhibits behavior thatis inconsistent with their attitudes.

A. There are four basic ways we try to reduce cognitivedissonance…

1) By changing our behavior to bring it in line with thedissonant cognition.2) By attempting to justify our behavior through changingone of the dissonant cognitions.3) By attempting to justify our behavior by adding newcognitions.4) Trivialize and/or ignore the entire dissonance arousingsituation.

B. Self-Affirmation Theory: when people experience a threatto their self-image after engaging in an undesirable behavior,they can compensate by affirming another aspect of the self.

C. When dealing with dissonance between you and

someone else, you can…

1) Change your attitude.2) Change the other person’s attitude.3) Derogate: Say the other person is a fool.

VI. The Four Paradigms of CognitiveDissonance…

A. The Free-Choice Paradigm

1) Post-decision Dissonance: dissonance aroused aftermaking a decision, typically reduced by enhancing theattractiveness of the chosen alternative and devaluatingthe rejected alternatives.

B. The Belief-Disconfirmation Paradigm

C. The Effort-Justification Paradigm

1) Justification of Effort: the tendency for individuals toincrease their liking for something they have worked hard toattain.

D. The Induced-Compliance Paradigm

1) Insufficient Justification: reduction of dissonance byinternally justifying one’s behavior when external justificationis “insufficient”.