David Myers
11e
Behavior and Attitudes
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
1
Chapter Four
 Attitude is a leaning toward or against some
attitudinal object
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
2
Attitude
 Favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction toward
something or someone
 How well do attitudes predict behavior?
 When does our behavior affect our attitude?
 Why does our behavior affect our attitudes?
 Changing ourselves through action.
 ABCs of attitudes: (know them!)
 Affect (feelings)
 Behavior…tendency
 Cognition (belief - thinking)
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
3
How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behavior?
 People’s expressed attitudes hardly predicted their
varying behaviors
 Student attitudes toward cheating bore little relation to
the likelihood of their cheating
 Attitudes toward the church were only modestly linked
with worship attendance on any given Sunday
 Self-described racial attitudes provided little clue to
behaviors in actual situations
 Ps told to assign a task (pos or neg) to themselves or
partner…engaged in “moral hypocrisy”.

“appearing moral while avoiding the costs of being so”
 How so? (Batson et al., ‘97)
 Other examples?
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
4
How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behavior?
 When Attitudes Predict Behavior
 When social influences on what we say are minimal

Implicit
 Implicit association test (IAT) (Greenwald, ’02)

Caution! - reliability and validity may be questionable
(Arkes & Tetlock, ‘04)
Implicit biases are pervasive
 People differ in implicit bias
 People are often unaware of their implicit biases
Explicit


©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
5
How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behavior?
 When Attitudes Predict Behavior
 When other influences on behavior are minimal


- many situational influences!
 Think of some that influence your class attendance
So look at averaging and aggregating them all.
 How well do religious attitudes predict religious behaviors?
 When attitudes specific to the behavior are examined


E.g. costs and benefits for jogging
Theory of planned behavior (Ajzen & Fishbein)
 - Behavioral intentions
 When attitudes are potent

Self-awareness
 use a mirror for each student during the exam?
 Would this reduce cheating? (Diener & Wallbom, ‘76)
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
6
When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?
Behavior -> attitudes
 We search for and find reasons for explaining
behaviors when the reason is not readily apparent
 Role Playing
 Role

Set of norms that defines how people in a given social position
ought to behave
 Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford’s prison study

Abu Ghraib controversy
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
7
When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?
 When Saying Becomes Believing
 When there is no compelling external explanation for
one’s words, saying becomes believing

Remember self-perception theory?
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
8
When Does Our Behavior Affect
Our Attitudes?
 Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon
 Tendency for people who have first agreed to a small
request to comply later with a larger request


Perceived ‘free will’ also necessary.
Low-ball technique
 Tactic for getting people to agree to something. People who
agree to an initial request will often still comply when the
requester ups the ante
 Used by some car dealers
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
9
When Does Our Behavior Affect
Our Attitudes? Beh-> attitudes
 Evil and Moral Acts
 Wartime


Actions and attitudes feed on each other
When evil behavior occurs we tend to justify it as right

Boca Haram in Nigeria? Wilayat Gharb Afriqiya
 Peacetime

Moral action, especially when chosen rather than coerced,
affects moral thinking
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
10
When Does Our Behavior Affect
Our Attitudes?
 Interracial Behavior and Racial Attitudes
 Racial behaviors help shape our social consciousness

By doing, not saying racial attitudes were changed
 Legislating morality (supreme court and Coleman report)
 Why was forced bussing such a failure? (S. Cook)
 No “perceived choice or equal status”
 Social Movements
 Political and social movements may legislate behavior
designed to lead to attitude change on a mass scale
-should we pledge allegiance to the flag? Sing the national
anthem?
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
11
Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our
Attitudes?
 Self-Presentation: Impression Management

Strategic objective -
 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
 Cognitive Dissonance (reduce discomfort)

beliefs don’t fit…a need for consistency and logic
 Self-perception theory


(when uncertain, we look to our behavior and make selfattributions)
Billy Graham
revival
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
12
Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?
 Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance (L Festinger)
 Tension that arises when one is simultaneously aware of
two inconsistent cognitions


To reduce this tension, we adjust our thinking
 Is smoking dangerous?
 A revision of attitudes after no weapons were found (2003)?
Engage in “selective exposure” what is that?
 Is it more or less likely to happen in the world of the internet?
 Insufficient justification


Reduction of dissonance by internally justifying one’s
behavior when external justification is “insufficient”
- which was more interesting? The $1 or $20 dollar payment?
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
13
Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?
 Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance
 Dissonance after decisions


Deciding-becomes-believing effect (J. Brehm)
 -”choice influences preference”
 Value of what we chose is enhanced after we buy it.
 Do children and monkeys do it too?
Can breed overconfidence
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
14
Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?
- a simpler theory - Self-Perception Theory (D. Bem, ‘72)
 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



Expressions and attitude
Over- justification (Festinger & Carlsmith) and
Intrinsic motivations (Deci & Ryan)
 Can being paid for work undermine intrinsic motivation?
 Do we undermine intrinsic interest in education by giving
grades? And testing?
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
15
Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our
Attitudes?
 Comparing the Theories
 Self-Perception Theory (explains attitude formation)
 Dissonance Theory (explains attitude change)
 Dissonance as Arousal
 “self-affirming” reduces threats to our integrity
 Self-Perceiving when Not Self-Contradicting
 Changing Ourselves Through Action
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
16