Study Guide: Test 2
Social Psychology PSYC 3040
Fall Semester 2014
Chapter 6: The Need to Justify Our Actions
Terms
Cognitive dissonance
Self-affirmation
Post-decision dissonance
Internal vs. external justification
Impact bias
Post-decision dissonance
Lowballing
Counter attitudinal advocacy
Self-persuasion
Insufficient punishment
Hypocrisy induction
Ben Franklin Effect
Dehumanization
The need to resolve cognitive dissonance is powerful because we have a need to
maintain a stable, positive image of ourselves. Dissonance occurs when we encounter
information that threatens this image. Dissonance is motivating because it causes
discomfort.
In order to resolve dissonance, we can 1) change our behavior; 2) change a dissonant
cognition; 3) add new cognitions.
Is dissonance reduction largely conscious or unconscious?
Who feels the most dissonance after doing something cruel, foolish or incompetent, the
person with low or the person with high self-esteem?
The relationship between dissonance and self-esteem is tricky. The idea is that if you
have an elevated image of yourself, you will want to preserve it with good performance,
moral behavior, etc. Hence, raising a person’s self-esteem will result in a payoff of hard
work and good behavior. This may work under limited conditions. However,
psychology sold this bill of goods to education and created the self-esteem movement.
Thirty to forty years later, the data show that the “empty” self-esteem created did not
result in any performance or behavioral improvements. Instead, it resulted in
entitlement attitudes, irresponsibility, and an increase in measured narcissism
(probably due to use of other dissonance reduction mechanisms which distort reality).
Now, there is a backlash in psychology against the self-esteem movement and an
admission that self-esteem interventions should be firmly grounded in reality.
Does increasing the importance of a decision increase or decrease the dissonance?
1
Does increasing the permanence and irrevocability of a decision increase or decrease the
dissonance? Given this, does keeping your options open make you happier? Why or
why not?
Why or how does lowballing work?
Does the person who succumbs to temptation after a struggle later become more lenient
or stricter on the behavior? How about the person who resists temptation? Explain this
as resolution of cognitive dissonance.
How do we resolve the dissonance of having exerted great effort or spent a lot of money
on something that may turn out not to be all that wonderful?
In external justification, you have a reason for acting counter to your attitude or selfimage. Do you experience much dissonance? What happens if you don’t have an
external justification? (The external justification could be a rationalization – phony but
plausible reason.)
How does saying become believing?
When you are trying to get people to change their attitudes based on counterattitudinal
advocacy, should you offer a large or a small reward?
How can you use counterattitudinal advocacy to effect prejudice, use of marijuana, or
even to reduce the risk of development of eating disorders?
Behaviors that are punished by parents and/or society are those that we want the
individual to stop. Generally the reason that the individuals are engaging in those
behaviors is that the behaviors are intrinsically rewarding (fun). The first rule of
punishment is that if the pain of the punishment exceeds the fun of the behavior, then
we will succeed in stopping the behavior. However, this is one-time-only or for future
situations that we are able to monitor and enforce. How do we get the offender to agree
with us and decide not to engage in the behavior in the future?
Cognitive dissonance theory offers some insight. Not doing something (the offending
behavior) that you enjoy doing creates dissonance (for example, just doing the speed
limit when you like to drive fast). You then ask yourself why you are driving so slowly in
order to reduce the dissonance. If you are afraid of strong punishment – a heavy fine or
losing your driver’s license, you have an external justification for your behavior.
However, if the threat of punishment is light (Maybe you would only expect a warning
ticket or your spouse to complain.) and you slow down, you need to add some internal
justification. Then you may convince yourself that driving too fast is not all that much
fun and may be dangerous. The danger in this paradigm is that if the threat of
punishment is too light you may not slow down. In this case you may increase the value
of driving fast as you justify that you persisted in spite of these minor threats and
annoyances. (This might be a good one to stop and ponder.)
The principle is that large rewards and punishments are external justifications that
result in compliance, but not permanent attitude change.
What were the variables that needed to enhance one another in the Aronson study
where students changed their attitudes about unsafe sex and AIDs?
How does inducing hypocrisy reduce the need to retaliate?
How do you justify cruelty?
2
Chapter 7: Attitudes & Attitude Change
Terms
Attitude
Cognitively-based attitude
Affectively-based attitude
Classical conditioning
Operant conditioning
Behaviorally-based attitude
Implicit attitude
Explicit attitude
Persuasive communication
Yale Attitude Change Approach
Elaboration likelihood model
Central route to persuasion
Peripheral route to persuasion
Need for cognition
Attitude inoculation
Attitude accessibility
Theory of planned behavior
Subliminal messages
Where do we get our attitudes?
What is the difference between an implicit and an explicit attitude?
What does cognitive dissonance have to do with attitude change?
Do attitudes change in response to social influence?
What is the difference between the central and peripheral routes to persuasion?
According to the Yale Attitude Change Approach, what are the three factors in “who said
what to whom?”
What two characteristics make speakers more persuasive?
What characteristics of the nature of the communication make it more or less
persuasive?
What characteristics of the audience make it easier or harder to persuade?
What is one factor in being motivated to pay attention to a communication?
How are people with a high need for cognition more likely to form their attitudes?
What happens to the attitudes of people who base them on a careful analysis of the
arguments?
What are fear-arousing communications and do they generally lead to attitude change?
How do we use our emotions as a heuristic for attitude change?
Describe the theory of attitude inoculation.
What are most ads geared to in order for them to work?
What is a subliminal message? Does it work?
3