SUMMARY TILL NOW
 Lecture #1: we do not know ourselves as well as we
think we do.
 Lecture #2: our judgment about our social
environment and the beliefs we develop, serve us
well but sometimes lead us astray
 Lecture #3: Does attitude predict action?
Examples: Prejudice - discrimination? Love
chocolate – fat? Have a faith – go to church?
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc.
Chapter 4: Behavior and
Attitudes
Is there any relationship or
correlation between
what you think and
what you do (or between what
you do and what you think!)?
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc.
Behavior and Attitudes
 This lecture is all about the relationship between
attitudes and behaviour, i.e. does one go with the
other?
 Do we DO what we BELIEVE in or not?
 Do we practice what we preach?
 Is our behaviour controlled by our attitudes?
On today’s lecture
1. How well Do Attitudes Predict Behavior?
2. When Does Behaviour Affect Attitudes?
3. Why Does Behavior Affect Attitudes?
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc.
Attitude
 Def: Beliefs and feelings related to a person or an event
 Attitudes are often rooted in one’s beliefs and exhibited in one’s
feelings and intended behaviour
 Study of attitudes central to social psychology- one of its
first concerns
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Attitude
Ethic group X= lazy (belief); feel dislike for ethnic group; acts in a discriminatory manner
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1. How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict
Our Behaviour?
 A blow to supposed power of attitudes came when social
psychologist Allan Wicker (1969) reviewed research
studies (cheating, church, racial atts)
 Found that people’s expressed attitudes hardly predicted
their varying behaviors
 People don’t walk the talk. Are we all moral hypocrites??
 Why should this be so?? What might the reasons be?
There are many (40) factors which influence this
relationship.
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1. How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict
Our Behaviour?
 As a general rule: Attitudes predict behaviour when:



attitudes are strong,
when attitude is situation specific, and
when other influences are minimal
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1. How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict
Our Behavior?
 1.1 When do Attitudes Predict Behavior?
 1.1.1 When social influences on what we say are
minimal

Social influences (pressure) are always there e.g. popularity;
say what others think (acceptance).
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1. How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict
Our Behavior?
1.1When do Attitudes Predict Behavior?
 1.1.2 When other (social!) influences on our
behaviour are minimal



Social influences are enormous as we will see chapters 5 –
8!!!!! Genes, culture, gender, conformity, obedience,
persuasion, groups. People can be induced to do anything.
Research shows people’s general attitude toward religion
poorly predicts whether they’ll go to worship during coming
week- because attendance is influenced by weather, how one
is feeling and so forth)
The effects of attitude more apparent when we look at one’s
average behaviour (Principle of aggregation )
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1. How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict
Our Behavior?
 1.1 When do Attitudes Predict Behavior?
 1.1.3 When attitudes are specific to behavior
 Better than predicting behaviour, says Ajzen & Fishbein’s
“Theory of planned behaviour” is knowing someone’s
specific intended behaviour, self-efficacy belief and
control- then behaviour can be predicted from attitude
 More than 700 studies with over 276 000 participants
confirm that specific relevant attitudes (intended
behaviour) predict actual behaviour
 So: Minimizing other influences and specific attitudes =
NB
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The Theory of Planned Behavior (Martin
Fishbein)
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc.
1. How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict
Our Behavior?
 1.1.4 When our attitudes are potent (101)


If we think about our attitudes before behaving, will they
become more determining? Yes: our attitudes do indeed
become more potent IF we think about them. This makes us
self-aware, be in touch with ourselves
Self-conscious people (mirror!) are in touch with
their attitudes. Bring attitudes to mind deliberately.
 Experience makes attitudes even more accessible, even more
enduring and even more likely to guide actions.
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1. How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict
Our Behavior?
Thus: Attitudes only predict our behaviour under very
specific circumstances:
 Minimal social and other influences
 Attitudes towards specific behaviour
 Potent attitudes (self-consciousness, experience)
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On today’s lecture
1. How well Do Attitudes Predict Behavior?
2. When Does Behaviour Affect Attitudes?
3. Why Does Behavior Affect Attitudes?
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc.
2. When Does Our Behaviour Affect Our
Attitudes?
We may stand up for what we believe in, but its’s also
true that we come to believe in what we stand up for.
 2.1 Role Playing (127)
 Role

Def.: A set of norms that defines how people in a given social
situation ought to behave
 Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison study (1971): The unreal
(role) can become real. (page 103)
 Role playing studies reveal that what is an artificial role can
subtly morph into what is real
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2. When Does Our Behaviour Affect Our
Attitudes?
 2.2 When Saying Becomes Believing (105)
 People tend to adjust their message to the listener’s
position. Try to please. Rather convey positive messages
even if they contradict peoples’ own views. And then
they come to believe what they said! Assuming they
weren’t coerced or bribed.
 See experiment bottom page 105 (Higgins & McCann,
1984).
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2. When Does Our Behaviour Affect Our
Attitudes?
 2.3 Evil and Moral Acts
 The ‘attitudes-follow-behavior’ principle works with
immoral behaviour

Generally: we get desensitised when doing immoral acts and
our behaviour tends to escalate with gradually escalating
commitment e.g. a white lie can go further. Politics/ white
collar crime/corruption.
 Also: we tend to hurt those we dislike but also to dislike
those we hurt. By harming a victim we tend to
belittle/mock that person. Thereby we justify our
behaviour – especially if we are persuaded into it!
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2. When Does Our Behaviour Affect Our
Attitudes?
 Wartime


Actions and attitudes feed on each other sometimes to a point
of moral numbness
When evil behavior occurs we tend
to justify it as right
 Interracial Behaviour and Racial
Attitudes (107)



Can you legislate morality? In SA?
Has it worked?
Evidence in the USA: Attitude change
has occurred following desegregation
(see page 107 for further detail).
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2. When Does Our Behaviour Affect Our
Attitudes?
 2.4 Social Movements (107)
 Many Germans in 1930’s displaying Nazi flag, Saluting
Hitler – changed many peoples’ attitudes.

Political and social movements may legislate behaviour
designed to lead to attitude change on a mass scale
 Political rituals such as daily flag salutations & singing of
national anthems
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2. When Does Our Behaviour Affect Our
Attitudes?
 SUMMARY: Behaviour affects attitudes when
 Playing roles
 You believe what you say (politicians?)
 Evil and moral acts
 Social movements
 SO: WHY do attitudes follow our behaviour so readily?
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On today’s lecture
1. How well Do Attitudes Predict Behavior?
2. When Does Behaviour Affect Attitudes?
3. Why Does Behavior Affect Attitudes?
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc.
3. Why Does Our Behaviour Affect Our
Attitudes?
 Three theories that seek to explain the attitudes-follow-
behavior phenomenon



Self presentation theory
Cognitive dissonance theory
Self-perception theory
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3. Why Does Our Behaviour Affect Our
Attitudes?
 3.1 Self-Presentation: Impression Management
(109)
 For strategic reasons we express attitudes that make us
appear consistent
 Assumes that people, especially those who self-monitor
their behaviour and who hope to create good
impressions, will adapt their attitudes to appear
consistent with their actions. We care what people think
about us!
 Making impression= way of gaining social &material
rewards
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3. Why Does Our Behaviour Affect Our
Attitudes?
 3.2 Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance Theory
 Our attitudes change because we are motivated to
maintain consistency among our cognitions
 Leon Festinger’s (1957) Cognitive Dissonance theoryassumes that we feel tension when our cognitions are
inconsistent- to reduce discomfort we justify our actions
to ourselves
 The idea here: our attitudes change because we are
inherently motivated to maintain consistency between
cognitions
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3. Why Does Our Behaviour Affect Our
Attitudes?
 Tension (lack of harmony) that arises when we are
simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions We are motivated to reduce this tension – but how??




One way to do this: Selective exposure to agreeable
information to reduce dissonance.
Selective exposure= tendency to seek info & media that agree
with one’s views & avoid dissonant info
We seek affirmation- Expose yourself to info that agrees with
your views/attitudes/beliefs
We adjust our thinking as the behaviour has more than likely
occurred already!
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3. Why Does Our Behaviour Affect Our
Attitudes?
 Another way to reduce cognitive dissonance: through
insufficient justification – reduction of dissonance by
internally justifying one’s behaviour when external
justification is insufficient

So: Attitudes follow behaviours for which we feel responsible
And: if we DON’T feel responsible, attitudes will not change.
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3. Why Does Our Behaviour Affect Our
Attitudes?
 Another instance of reducing cognitive dissonance is
“Dissonance after decisions” (112)




When making serious/difficult/expensive decisions
Deciding-becomes-believing effect. Also called Postdecisional dissonance (buyer’s remorse). Dissonance is
reduced by upgrading the chosen alternative and
downgrading unchosen alternative.
However: People tend to increase the evaluation of the chosen
alternative. Also called the “deciding-becomes-believing
effect” (113).
Decisions once made grow their own self-justifying legs of
support
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3. Why Does Our Behaviour Affect Our
Attitudes?
 3.3 Self-Perception Theory Daryl Bem (1972) (114)
 When we are unsure of our attitudes, we infer them
much as someone else would who observes us. We look
at our behaviour (laughing/swearing/shouting) and the
circumstances under which it occurs. We explain our
behaviour by noting the conditions under which it takes
place.
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3. Why Does Our Behaviour
Affect Our Attitudes?
 Following from the previous slide is the idea that facial
expressions can change attitudes.
 Facial feedback effect (115): the tendency of facial
expressions to trigger correspondding feelings (e.g. anger; joy).
 Motions trigger emotions
 “Put a smile on your face!”
 “Sit up straight!”
 “Walk straight!”
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Three theories that explain why attitudes
follow behaviour
Figure 4.7
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Comparing the Theories
 Self study: 118-120.
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