BEHAVIOR AND ATTITUDES

 Assumption: Our private beliefs and feelings determine our public behavior, so if we wish to change behavior we
must first change hearts and minds
o Social psychologists agreed with this in the beginning: To know people’s attitudes is to predict their actions
 Extreme attitudes can produce extreme behavior (e.g., suicide bombers and genodicidal killers)
o Festinger: Evidence showed that changing people’s attitudes hardly affects their behavior
 Believed the attitude-behavior relation works the other way around
 We are very well trained and very good at finding reasons for what we do, but not very good at
doing what we find reasons for
 Attitudes provide an efficient way to size up the world
o When we have to respond quickly to something, the way we feel about it can guide how we react
 The study of attitudes is close to the heart of social psychology and was one of its first concerns
o ABCs of attitudes: Affect (feelings), Behavior tendency, Cognition (Thoughts)
 Concepts and definitions:
o Attitude – A favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction toward something or someone (often rooted in
one’s beliefs and exhibited in feelings and in one’s inclination to act/intended behavior)

HOW WELL DO ATTITUDES PREDICT OUR BEHAVIOR?

 Blow to the supposed power of attitudes: Wicker reviewed several dozen research studies covering a wide variety of
people, attitudes, and behaviors  People’s expressed attitudes hardly predicted their varying behaviors:
o Student attitudes toward cheating bore little relation to their likelihood of actually cheating
o Attitudes toward the church were only modestly linked with church attendance on any given Sunday
o Self-described racial attitudes provided little clue to behaviors in actual situations
 “Moral hypocrisy” – appearing moral while avoiding the costs of being so
o An example of the disjuncture between attitudes and actions
o Experiment:
 Presented people with an appealing task (participants could earn raffle tickets toward a $30 prize)
and a dull task with no rewards
 * Participants had to assign themselves to one of the tasks and a supposed second participant to
the other
 Only 1/20 believed that assigning the positive task to themselves was the more moral thing to
do, yet 80% did so
o Follow-up experiments:
 Participants were given coins they could flip privately if they wished
 Even if they chose to flip, 90% assigned themselves the positive task
o Another experiment:
 Batson put a sticker on each side of the coin, indicating what the flip outcome would signify
 Still, 24/28 people who made the toss assigned themselves the positive task
o When morality and greed were put on a collision course, greed won
 This is why attempts at changing behavior by changing attitudes often fail (People don’t walk the same line they
talk)
o Warnings about the dangers of smoke only minimally affect those who already smoke
o Increasing public awareness of the desensitizing and brutalizing effects of television violence has stimulated
many people to voice a desire for less violent programing—yet they still watch media murder as much
as ever
o Sex education programs have often influenced attitudes toward abstinence and condom use, without
affecting long-term abstinence and condom use behaviors
 The developing picture of what controls behavior emphasized external social influences, such as others’ behavior
and expectations, and played down internal factors, such as attitudes and personality
o Original thesis: Attitudes determine actions
 Countered during 1960s by the antithesis that attitudes determine virtually nothing
 Synthesis: What people say often differs from what they do
o Why? Convictions and feelings must sometimes make a difference
 Concepts and definitions:
o Moral hypocrisy – Appearing moral while avoiding the costs of being so

When Attitudes Predict Behavior

 The reason why our behavior and our expressed attitudes differ is that both are subject to other influences
o As many as 40 factors could complicate the relationship
 Our attitudes do predict our behavior when:
o These other factors that influence what we say and do are minimal
o When the attitude is specific to the behavior
o When the attitude is potent
 When Social Influences On What We Say Are Minimal
o Social psychologists never get a direct reading on attitudes
 Rather, we measure expressed attitudes
 Expressions are subject to outside influences (We say what we think others want to hear)
 o U.S legislators, sensing their country’s post 9/11 fear, anger, and patriotic fever,
fervently voted in favor of President Bush’s planned war against Iraq while
privately having reservations
 Strong social influence—fear of criticism—had distorted their true
sentiments
o Clever means for minimizing social influences on people’s attitude reports:
 Some complement traditional self-report measures of explicit (conscious) attitudes with
measures of implicit (unconscious) attitudes
 Measuring facial muscle responses to various statements – microsmile/microfrown 
attitude about a given statement
 Implicit Association Test (IAT)
 Use reaction times to measure how quickly people associate concepts
o White people  Take longer to associate positive words with Black than with White
faces
 Implicit associations have correlated a modest 0.24 with explicit self-reported attitudes
 Studies using this method have revealed:
o Explicit (self-report) and implicit attitudes both help predict people’s behaviors and
judgments
o Explicit and implicit attitudes, together, may predict behavior better than either
alone
o For attitudes formed early in life (racial and gender attitudes), implicit and explicit attitudes frequently
diverge
 Implicit attitudes often being the better predictor of behavior
 Implicit racial attitudes have successfully predict interracial roommate relationships
o For other attitudes, such as those related to consumer behavior and support for political candidates, explicit
self-reports are the better predictor
o Recent neuroscience studies have identified brain centers that produce our automatic, implicit reactions
 Amygdala
 An area deep in the brain, a center for threat perception
 Active as we automatically evaluate social stimuli
 White people who show a strong unconscious racial bias on the IAT also exhibit high
amygdala activation when viewing unfamiliar Black faces
 Other frontal lobe areas are involved in detecting and regulating implicit attitudes
o Caution: Despite much excitement over these recent studies of implicit attitudes hiding in the mind’s
basement, the IAT has detractors:
 Unlike an aptitude test, the IAT is not reliable enough for use in assessing and comparing
individuals
 A score that suggests some relative bias doesn’t distinguish a positive bias for one group (or
greater familiarity with one group) from a negative bias against another
 Critics also wonder whether compassion and guilt rather than latent hostility might slow one’s speed
in associating Blacks with positive words
o Regardless, existence of distinct explicit and implicit attitudes confirms one of 21st psychology’s biggest
lessons: dual processing
 Capacity for both controlled (conscious, deliberate, explicit) and automatic (effortless, habitual,
implicit) thinking
 When Other Influences On Behavior Are Minimal
o It’s not only our inner attitudes that guide us, but also the situation we face
 Social influences can be enormous enough to induce people to violate their deepest convictions
o When we aggregate (average) many occasions, we neutralize those complicating factors
 Knowing the individual, we can predict their approximate behavior averages
o People’s general attitude toward religion will poorly predict whether they will go to worship services
during the coming week (because attendance is also influenced by weather, the worship leader, how one is
feeling and so forth0
 But religious attitudes often predict quite well the total quantity of religious behaviors over
time
o The findings define a principle of aggregation: The effects of an attitude become more apparent when we
look at a person’s aggregate or average behavior than when we consider isolated acts
 When Attitudes Specific To The Behavior Are Examined
o When the measured attitude is a general one—attitude towards Asians—and the behavior is very
specific—whether or not to help an Asian in a particular situation—we should not expect a close
correspondence between words and actions
 26/27 research studies  Attitudes did not predict behavior
o But attitudes did predict behavior in all 26 studies they could find in which the measured attitude was
directly pertinent to the situation
 Attitudes toward the general concept of “health fitness” poorly predicts specific exercise and dietary
practices
 An individual’s attitudes about the costs and benefits of jogging are a fairly strong predictor of
whether he or she jogs regularly
o “Theory of Planned Behavior”
  Better yet for predicting behavior is knowing people’s intended behaviors, and their perceived self-
efficacy and control
 4 dozen experimental tests confirm that inducing new intentions induces new behavior
 Even simply asking people about their intentions to engage in a behavior increases its
likelihood
o Ask people if they intend to floss their teeth in the next 2 weeks or to vote in an
upcoming election, they will become more likely to do so
o Specific, relevant attitudes do predict intended and actual behavior
 Attitudes toward condoms strongly predict condom use
 Attitudes toward recycling (but not general attitudes toward environmental issues) predict
participation in recycling
 To change habits through persuasion, we had best alter people’s attitudes toward specific
practices
o Two conditions under which attitudes will predict behavior:
 Minimize other influences upon our attitude statements and on our behavior
 When the attitude is specifically relevant to the observed behavior
 Third condition: An attitude predicts behavior better when the attitude is potent
 When Attitudes Are Potent
o Much of our behavior is automatic
 Such mindlessness is adaptive: Frees our mind to work on other things ; for habitual behaviors,
conscious intentions are hardly activated
o Bringing Attitudes To Mind
 If we were prompted to think about our attitudes before acting, would we be truer to ourselves?
 Two weeks after students indicate their attitudes towards affirmative-action employment
policies, they were invited to act as jurors in a sex-discrimination court case
 Participants’ attitudes predicted verdicts only for those who were first induced to
remember their attitudes—by giving them “a few minutes to organize your thoughts and
views on the affirmative-action base”
o Our attitudes become potent when we think about them
o Self-conscious people are usually in touch with their attitudes
 Suggesting another way to induce people to focus on their inner convictions: Make them self-
aware, perhaps by having them act in front of a mirror
 Making people self-aware promotes consistency between words and deeds
o Nearly all college students say that cheating is morally wrong, but will they actually act in accordance with
this attitude?
 Students were told to work on an anagram-solving task (which they were told, was to predict IQ)
and told them to stop when a bell sounded
 Left alone, 71% cheated by working past the ball
 Among students made self-aware—by working in front of a mirror while hearing their tape-
recorded voices—only 7% cheated
 Would eye-level mirrors in stores make people more self-conscious of their attitudes about stealing?
o Applying this to Batson’s studies on moral hypocrisy:
 In a later experiment, they found that mirrors did bring behavior into line with espoused moral
attitudes
 When people flipped a coin while facing a mirror, the coin flip became scrupulously fair
 Exactly half of the self-conscious participants assigned the other person to the positive task
o Forging Strong Attitudes Through Experience
 The attitudes that best predict behavior are accessible (easily brought to mind) as well as stable
 When attitudes are forged by experience, not just by hearsay, they are more accessible, more
enduring, and more likely to guide actions
 University students all expressed negative attitudes about their school’s response to
housing shortage
o Given opportunities to act—to sign a petition, solicit signatures, join a committee,
or write a letter—only those whose attitudes grew from direct experience acted
 Concepts and definitions:
o Principle of aggregation – The effects of an attitude become more apparent when we look at a person’s
aggregate or average behavior than when we consider isolate acts
o Theory of planned behavior – Knowing the intended behavior of a person, coupled with his perceived
self-efficacy and control, there is a better chance of predicting actual behavior
 One’s attitudes, perceived social norms, and feelings of control together determine one’s
intentions, which guide behavior
 Attitudes + subjective norms + perceived control  Behavior intentions  Behavior
The Inside Story: Mahzarin R. Banaji on Discovering Experimental Social Psychology
 Through IAT research, we know that people carry knowledge (stereotypes) and feelings (attitudes) of which they are
unaware, and which often contrast with their conscious expressions
o Subcortical brain activity can be an independent marker of implicit attitudes
o People differ in their implicit attitudes
o Such attitudes and stereotypes predict real-life behavior
o Implicit attitudes, even old ones, can be modified by experience
Research Close-Up: You’ve Not Got Mail: Prejudiced Attitudes Predict Discriminatory Behavior
 Strongly held attitudes predict specific actions, especially when the actions are unconstrained by social pressures
o Research: Assess the race-relevant attitudes of university students and then, to correlate their expressed
attitudes with their natural behavior in a situation offering anonymity (unconstrained by social pressures)
 Strategy:
o Embed 11 attitude statements about Arab Americans in a set of questionnaires administered to nearly 1,000
introductory psychology students
 Among the many questions was one asking if they would be willing to participate later in an
“unsolicited e-mail study”
o Two weeks later, each person received an e-mail addressed to an individual with an Arabic name or to a
European name
 Half received an e-mail stating that the intended recipient had received a prestigious scholarship
that required acceptance within 48 hours
 The other half were told the bad news: Didn’t receive the scholarship but were welcome to respond
and be put on the waiting list
o Would you have returned the e-mail to the sender, noting the error so that it could be re-sent?
 26% of women, but only 16% of men did so
o Did it matter who the recipient was?
 It did!
 Participants who generally expressed stronger feelings of prejudice toward Arab Americans
than toward African Americans, Asian Americans, or Hispanic Americans, were less likely to
reconvey the good news of the scholarship award to intended recipients with Arabic names
o This discriminatory behavior was most striking among those students who had
earlier expressed higher-than-average prejudice toward Arab Americans
 Students with highly prejudicial attitudes also were more than willing than those who
were low in prejudice to reconvey bad news to Arabs
 Results:
o Conveying good news:
 Low in prejudice
 Conveyed good news more to Arab Americans (but only slightly) than to Europeans
 High in prejudice
 Conveyed good news less to Arab Americans than to Europeans
o Conveying bad news;
 Low in prejudice
 Conveyed bad news less to Arab Americans than to Europeans
 High in prejudice
 Conveyed bad news more to Arab Americans than to Europeans
 Conclusion: In the months after 9/11, prejudicial attitudes did indeed predict subtle but relevant discriminatory
behavior

WHEN DOES OUR BEHAVIOR AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES

 We are likely not only to think ourselves into a way of acting but also to act ourselves into a way of thinking
 Idea: Behavior determines attitudes
o The act produces the idea
 Sarah, hypnotized to take off her shoes, makes up a reason why she does so without mentioning
hypnosis
 George rationalizes his head turning, without knowing that an electrode implanted in his brain is
responsible for the head turning
 In split-brain experiments, flashing a picture of a nude woman to the right hemisphere (left field of
vision) leads Carol to form a sheepish smile and begins chuckling  When asked why, she makes
up an unrelated reason she apparently believes
 Another split-brain patient, has the word “smile” flashed to his nonverbal right hemisphere does so
and verbalizes an unrelated reason as to why he does
o These illustrate self-persuasion

Role Playing
 Role
o Theater: Refers to actions expected of those who occupy a particular social position
o Social roles: When enacting them, we at first may feel phony, but our unease seldom last
 College men volunteered to spend time in a simulated prison constructed in Stanford’s psychology department by
Zimbardo
o Question: Is prison brutality a product of evil prisoners and malicious guards? Or do the institutional roles of
guard and prisoner embitter and harden even compassionate people? Do the people make the place violent?
Or does the place make the people violent?
o Flip of a coin  Assign roles
 Guards  Uniforms, billy clubs, whistles, and instructed them to enforce rules
 Prisoners  Locked in cells, wore humiliating hospital-gown-like outfits
 o First jovial day of playing their roles, guards and prisoners, and even the experimenters, got caught up in
the situation
 Guards  Disparage the prisoners, devised cruel and degrading routines
 Prisoners  Broke down, rebelled, or become apathetic
o There was a growing confusion between reality and illusion, between role-playing and self-identity
o Two-week simulation was called off after 6 days
 Point:
o Not that we are powerless to resist imposed roles
 In simulations, other people become sadistic while others do not
o It’s that behavior is a product both of the situation and the person
 Prison study attracted volunteers who were prone to aggressiveness
o Deeper lesson: How what is unreal (an artificial role) can subtly evolve into what is real
 Just imagine what playing the role of a slave for years would do to a person
 Master’s role may even be more affected, because the master’s role is chosen
 Concepts and definitions:
o Role – A set of norms that defines how people in a given social position ought to behave

Saying Becomes Believing

 People often adapt what they say to please their listeners
o Quicker to tell people good news than bad, and they adjust their message toward their listener’s position
o When induced to give spoken or written support for something they doubt, people will often feel bad about
their deceit
 Nevertheless, they begin to believe what they are saying—provided they weren’t bribed or coerced
into doing so
 When there is no compelling external explanation for one’s words, saying becomes believing
 Experiment:
o Students read a personality description of someone and then summarize it to someone else, who was
believed either to like or dislike that person
 Students wrote a more positive description when the participant liked the person
 Having said positive things, they also then liked the person more themselves
 Asked to recall what they had read, they remembered the description as more positive than it was
o Conclusion: People tend to adjust their messages to their listeners, and, having done so, to believe the
altered message

Focus On: Saying Becomes Believing

 Ray Hyman described how acting the role of a palm reader convinced him that palmistry had worked
o Hyman’s success rate was just the same even when he indicated statements opposite to what the lines
indicated

The Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon

 “Attitude follow behavior” principle
o Experiments suggest that if you want people to do a big favor for you, an effective strategy is to get them to
do a small favor first  Foot-in-the-door phenomenon
 Researchers posing as drive-safely volunteers asked Californians to permit the installation of a
huge, poorly lettered “Drive Carefully” signs in their front yards
 Only 17% consented
 Others were first approached with a small request: Would they display a 3-inch “Be a safe driver”
window signs?
 Nearly all readily agreed
 When approached 2 weeks later to allow the large ugly signs in their front yards, 76%
consented
 The foot-in-the-door phenomenon is also seen in altruistic behaviors
o 46% of Toronto suburbanites were willing to give to the Canadian Cancer Society when approached directly
 Others, asked a day ahead to wear a lapel pin publicizing the drive, were nearly twice as likely to
donate
o Ending blood-drive reminder calls with, “We’ll count on seeing you then, OK?” increased show-up rate from
62 to 81%
o In Internet chat rooms, help increased from 2 to 16% by including a smaller prior request (how to look at
someone’s profile  send an e-mail)
o Tripled the rate of French Internet users contributing to child land-mine victim organizations by first inviting
them to sign a petition against land mines
 Note that in these experiments, the initial compliances were voluntary
o When people commit themselves to public behaviors and perceive those acts to be their own doing, they
come to believe more strongly in what they have done
 “Patsy” – an easy mark for the pitches of peddlers, fundraisers, and operators of one sort or another
o Why are some salesmen so persuasive?
 Discovered how salesmen exploit “the weapons of influence”
o Variation of the foot-in-the-door phenomenon called the low-ball technique
 A tactic used supposedly by some car dealers
  Customer agrees to buy a car at bargain price and begins completing the sales forms, the
salesperson removes the price advantage by charging for options or by checking with a
boss who disallows the deal because “we’d be losing money”
 More low-balled customers now stick with the higher-priced purchase than would have
agreed to it at the outset
 Airlines and hotels use this tactic by attracting inquiries with great deals available only on a
few sets or rooms, then hoping the customers will agree to a higher-priced option
o The low-ball technique works:
 Invited psychology students to participate in a 7 AM experiment, only 24% showed up
 But if students first agreed to participate without knowing the time and only then were they
asked to participate at 7 AM, 53% came
 Marketing researchers and salespeople have found that the principle works even when we are aware of a profit
motive
o Harmless initial commitment—returning a postcard for more information and a “free gift,” agreeing to listen
to an investment possibility—often moves us toward a larger commitment
 Some have exploited this and as a result, many states now have laws that allow customers a few
days to think over their purchases and cancel
 To go around this, companies make the customers fill out the agreement
 Having written it themselves, people usually live up to their commitment
 Lesson: Before agreeing to a small request, think about what may follow
 Concepts and definitions:
o Foot-in-the-door phenomenon – The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to
comply later with a larger request
o Low-ball technique – A variation of the foot-in-the-door phenomenon and is a 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
 People who receive only the costly request are less likely to comply with it

Evil and Moral Acts

 The attitude-follows-behavior principle works with immoral acts as well
o Evil sometimes results from gradually escalating commitments
 A trifling evil act can whittle down one’s moral sensitivity, making it easier to perform a worse act
 Telling a white lie  Tell an even bigger lie
 Paradoxical fact: We tend not only to hurt those we dislike, but also to dislike those who we hurt
o Harming an innocent victim—by uttering hurtful comments or delivering electric shocks—typically leads
aggressors to disparage their victims, thus helping them justify their cruel behavior
 Occurs especially when we are coaxed (wheedled/sweet-talked) into it, not just coerced
 When we agree to a deed voluntarily, we take more responsibility for it
 Phenomenon appears in wartime
o Prisoner-of-war camp guards would sometimes display good manners to captives in their first days on the
job, but not for so long
 Ordered to kill  Soldiers may initially act with revulsion but often they will denigrate their enemies
with dehumanizing nicknames
 Attitudes-follow-behavior also in peacetime
o Group that holds another in slavery will likely come to perceive the slaves as having traits that justify their
oppression
 Prison staff who participate in executions experience “moral disengagement” by coming to
believe (more strongly than do other prison staff) that their victims deserve their fate
 Actions and attitudes feed each other sometimes to the point of moral numbness
 The more one harms another and adjusts one’s attitudes, the easier harm-doing becomes
o Conscience is corroded
 “Killing begets killing” process
o Asked university students to kill some bugs
 Would killing initial bugs in a “practice” trial increased student willingness to kill more bugs later?
o Look at one small bug in a container, dump it into the coffee grinding machine and then press the on button
for 3 seconds
 Those who initially killed five bugs (or so they thought) went on to kill significantly more bugs
during an ensuing 20 second period
 Harmful acts shape the self, but so, thankfully, do moral acts
o Our character is reflected in what we do when we think no one is looking
 Gave children temptations when it seems no one is watching
 When children resist the temptation
o Introduced elementary school children to an enticing battery-controlled robot,
instructing them not to play with it while he was out of the room
o Half  Received severe threat; Half  Mild threat
 Both were sufficient to deter the children
 Several weeks later
o Different researcher, with no apparent relation to the earlier events, left each child
to play in the same room with the same toys
  Children who had been given the severe threat: ¾ now freely played with
the robot
 Mild threat: 2/3 of those still resisted playing with it
 The deterrent—despite being mild in nature—was strong enough
to elicit the desired behavior
o It was also mild enough to give the children a sense of
choice
o Having earlier chosen consciously not to play with the toy,
the mildly deterred children apparently internalized their
decisions
 Moral action, especially when chosen rather
than coerced, affects moral thinking
 Positive behavior fosters liking for the person
o Doing a favor for an experimenter or another participant, or tutoring a student, usually increases liking of
the person helped
o Lesson: If you wish to love someone, act as if you do

Interracial Behavior and Racial Attitudes

 If moral action feeds moral attitudes, will positive interracial behavior reduce racial prejudice—much as mandatory
seat belt use has produced more favorable seat belt attitudes?
o Basis for decision to desegregate schools
 Through legislating moral action, we can, under the right conditions, indirectly affect heartfelt
attitudes
 The idea runs counter to the presumption that “you can’t legislate morality”
o Yet attitude change has, as some psychologist predict, followed desegregation
 After desegregation, percentage of White Americans favoring integrates schools jumped and now
includes nearly everyone
 Interracial behavior was increasing  Less all0Whtie
 Increased percentage of White Americans who believed Blacks should be allowed to live in
any neighborhood
 More uniform national standards against discrimination were followed by decreasing differences in
racial attitudes among people of differing religions, classes, and geographic regions
 As Americans came to act more alike, they began to think more alike

Social Movements
 Society’s laws, and therefore its behavior, can have strong influence on racial attitudes
o A danger lies in the possibility of employing the same idea for political socialization on a mass scale
 1930s Germany: Participation in the Nazi rallies, displaying the Nazi flag, and especially the public
greeting “Heil Hitler” established a profound consistency between behavior and belief
 The German greeting was a powerful conditioning for those who had doubts about Hitler
o They tried to make themselves believe what they said
o The practice is not limited to totalitarian regimes
 Political rituals—daily salute to the flag by children, singing national anthems—use public conformity
to build a private belief in patriotism
 Many people assume that most potent social indoctrination comes through brainwashing
o Brainwashing – a term coined to describe what happened to American POWs during the 1950s Korean War
 Although the “thought control” program was not as irresistible as the term suggest, the results were
still disconcerting
 Hundreds of prisoners cooperated with their captors
 21 chose to remain after being granted permission to return to America
 Many of those who returned came home believing “although communism won’t work in
America, I think it’s a good thing for Asia”
o Schein interviewed many POWs during their journey home and reported that the captors’ method included a
gradual escalation of demands
 Started with trivial requests and gradually worked up to more significant ones
 After a prisoner had once been ‘trained’ to speak or write out trivia, statements on more
important issues were demanded
 They always expected active participation, be it just copying something or participating in
group discussions, writing self-criticism or uttering public confessions
 Once a prisoner had spoken or written a statement, he felt an inner need to make his
beliefs consistent with his acts
 That often drove prisoners to persuade themselves of what they had done wrong
o The “start-small-and-build” tactic was an effective application of the foot-in-the-
door technique, and it continues to be so today in the socialization of terrorists and
torturers

WHY DOES OUR BEHAVIOR AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?

 Three possible sources:
 o Self-presentation theory – assumes that for strategic reasons, we express attitudes that make us appear
consistent
o Cognitive dissonance theory - assumes that to reduce discomfort, we justify our actions to ourselves
o Self-perception theory – assumes that our actions are self-revealing
 When uncertain about our actions or beliefs, we look to our behavior, much as anyone else would

Self-Presentation: Impression Management

 We see making a good impression as a way to gain social and material rewards, to feel better about ourselves, and
even to become more secure in our social identities
 No one wants to look foolishly inconsistent
o To avoid seeming so, we express attitudes that match our actions
 To appear consistent, we may pretend those attitudes
 Even if that means displaying a little insincerity or hypocrisy, it can pay off in managing the
impression we are making
 People exhibit a much smaller attitude change when a fake lie detector inhibits them from trying to make a good
impression
o This supports why our feigning consistency explains why expressed attitudes shift toward consistency with
behavior
 But there is more to attitudes than self-presentation, for people express their changed attitudes even to someone
who has no knowledge of their earlier behavior
o Two other theories explain why some people internalize their self-presentations as genuine attitude
changes:
 Cognitive dissonance theory
 Self-perception theory

Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance

 Our attitudes change because we are motivated to maintain consistency among our cognitions
 The theory by Leon Festinger is that:
o We feel tension, or lack of harmony (“dissonance”) when two simultaneously accessible thoughts or beliefs
(“cognition”) are psychologically inconsistent
o To reduce this unpleasant arousal, we often adjust our thinking
 Dissonance theory pertains mostly to discrepancies between behavior and attitudes
o We are aware of both
 If we sense some inconsistency, perhaps some hypocrisy, we feel pressure for change
 This is why British and U.S. cigarette smokers have been much less likely than non-
smokers to believe that smoking is dangerous
 Cognitive dissonance theory offers an explanation for self-persuasion and offers several surprising predictions:
o Insufficient Justification
 For an hour, you are required to perform dull tasks such as turning wooden knobs again and again.
After you finish, the experimenter explains that the study concerns how expectations affect
performance. The next participant, waiting outside, must be led to expect an interesting
experiment.
 The seemingly upset experimenter, whom Festinger spent hours coaching until he became
convincing, explains that the assistant who usually creates this expectation couldn’t make
this session. He pleads if you could do it.
 It’s for science and you’re being paid, so you agree to tell the next participant (the
experimenter’s accomplice) what a delightful experience you have just had
o The accomplice claims to have heard that the experiment was boring
o You try to convince him that it was interesting
 Finally, someone else who is studying how people react to experiments has you complete a
questionnaire that asks how much you actually enjoyed your knob-turning experience
 Which condition would you more likely believe the lie and say that the experiment was interesting:
$1 or the lavish $20
 Contrary to the notion that big rewards produce big effects, those paid $1 (hardly
sufficient justification for a lie), would be most likely to adjust their attitudes to their
actions
o Having insufficient justification for their actions, they would experience more
discomfort (dissonance) and thus be more motivated to believe in what they had
done
o Those paid $20 had sufficient justification for what they had done and hence
should have experienced less dissonance
 Additionally, when the participants were called back by the experimenters, explain that they had
been duped, and asked for the $20 back, the participants willingly reached into their pockets
and gave back the money
 We see that when the social situation makes clear demands, people usually respond
accordingly
 In dozens of later experiments, this attitude-follows-behavior effect was strongest when people felt
some choice and when their actions had foreseeable consequences
 One experiment had people read disparaging lawyer jokes into a recorder
  The reading produced more negative attitudes toward layers when it was chosen rather
than a coerced activity
 Other experiments have engaged people to write essays for a measly $1.50 or so
o When the essay argues something that they don’t believe in, the underpaid writers
begin to feel somewhat greater sympathy with the policy
o Pretense becomes reality
 The insufficient justification principle works with punishments
 Children were more likely to internalize a request not to play with an attractive toy if they
were given a mild threat that insufficiently justified their compliance
o “Clean up your room, Joshua, or else expect a hard spanking”  Joshua won’t need
to internally justify cleaning his room
o The severe threat is justification enough
 Cognitive dissonance theory focuses not on the relative effectiveness of rewards and punishments
administered after the act, but on what induces a desired action
 Students who perceive their required community service as something they would have
chosen to do are more likely to anticipate future volunteering than those who feel coerced
 Principle: Attitudes follow behaviors for which we feel some responsibility
 Authoritarian management will be effective only when authority figure is present
 This is because people are unlikely to internalize forced behavior
 Dissonance theory insists encouragement and inducement should be enough to elicit the desired
action (so that attitudes may follow the behavior)
 But it suggests that managers, teachers, and parents should only use enough incentive to
elicit the desired behavior
o Dissonance After Decisions
 The emphasis on perceived choice and responsibility implies that decisions produce dissonance
 When faced with an important decision, we are sometimes torn between two equally
attractive alternatives
 After having committed yourself, you may have become painfully aware of the dissonant
cognitions—the desirable features of what you had rejected and the undesirable features
of what you had chosen
 After making decisions, we usually reduce dissonance by upgrading the chosen alternative and
downgrading the unchosen option
 Had women rate 8 products (e.g., a toaster, radio, hair dryer)
 Brehm showed women 2 objects they had rated closely and told them they could have
whichever they chose
 Later, when rerating the 8 objects, the women increased their evaluations of the item they
had chosen and decreased their evaluations of the rejected item
 It seems that after we have made our choices, the grass then does not seem to grow
greener on the other side of the fence
 With simple decisions, this deciding-becomes-believing effect can breed overconfidence (What I’ve
decided must be right)
 Racetrack bettors who had just put down their money felt more optimistic about their bets
than did those who were about to bet
o In the few moments that intervened between standing in line and walking away
from the betting window, nothing had changed—except the decisive action and the
person’s feelings about it
 There may sometimes be but a slight difference between the two options
 But once a decision has been made, this chosen option grows its own self-justifying legs of
support
 Often, the new legs are strong enough that when one leg is pulled away, the decision does
not collapse
o Additional reasons as to why a decision was made might never have existed had
the choice not been made in the first place
 It’s not just grown-ups who do this
 4-year-olds were asked to rate different stickers on a scale of smiley faces
 Researchers picked 3 stickers which the child had rated equally, and randomly identified 2
(A and B) from which the students could take home
 Next, they let the child choose one more—either the unchosen sticker or the third equally
rated sticker (C)
o The result was that they chose C
 The children reduced dissonance by downplaying the appeal of the
unchosen sticker (in the A and B) situation; thus, moving them to favor
Sticker C 63% of the time (rather than half the time as we might have
expected)
 They repeated the experiment with capuchin monkeys using alternative sweets instead of
stickers
o As with children, the monkeys revised their attitudes after making an initial
decision
 Concepts and definitions:
 o Cognitive dissonance – Tension that arises when one is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent
cognitions
 Dissonance may occur when we realize that we have, with little justification, acted contrary to our
attitudes or made a decision favoring one alternative despite reasons favoring another
 “I’m a smoker but smoking causes cancer”
o Insufficient justification – Reduction of dissonance by internally justifying one’s behavior when external
justification is insufficient
o Dissonant cognitions – Thoughts pertaining to the desirable features of what you had rejected and the
undesirable features of what you had chosen

Self-Observation: Self-Perception
 Self-perception is an even simpler theory than dissonance
 Self-perception theory assumes that we make similar inferences when we observe our own behavior
o When our attitudes are weak or ambiguous, we are in the position of someone observing us from the
outside
 Hearing myself talk informs me of my attitudes; seeing my actions provides clues to how strong my
beliefs are
 This is especially so when I can’t easily attribute my behavior to external constraints
 The acts we freely commit are self-serving
o William James proposed a similar explanation for emotion
 We infer our emotions by observing our bodies and our behaviors
 A stimulus such as a growling bear confronts a woman in the forest  She tenses  Her
heartbeat increases  Adrenaline flows  She runs away
o Observing all this, she then experiences fear
 If I am about to give a lecture at a college  Am awake before dawn and can’t fall back
asleep  I conclude I must be anxious
o People who observe themselves agreeing to a small request indeed come to perceive themselves as helpful
 This is why in the foot-in-the-door phenomenon, people agree to larger requests
 Behavior can modify self-concept
 Expressions and Attitude
o Experiments on facial expressions suggest a way for you to experience it
 College students induced to frown reported feeling angry
 When induced to make a smiling face, they felt happier and found cartoons more humorous
 Those induced to repeatedly practice happy (vs. sad/angry) expression recall more happy memories
and find the happy mood lingering
 Viewing one’s expression in a mirror magnifies the self-perception effect
o We’re feeling crabby, but then the phone rings/someone comes to the door and elicits from us a warm,
polite behavior
 If our feelings are not intense, this warm behavior may change our whole attitude (It’s tough to
smile and feel grouch)
o Even your gait can affect how you feel
 Get up from reading this chapter, taking short, shuffling steps with eyes downcast  Great way to
feel depressed
 To feel better  Walk taking long strides with your arms swinging and your eyes straight ahead
o Experiments:
 People find cartoons funnier when holding a pen with their teeth (using a smiling muscle) than while
holding it with their lips (using muscles incompatible with smiling)
o Would imitating others’ expressions help us know what we are feeling
 Yes
 Students were asked to observe someone receiving an electric shock
o Some were asked to make a pained expression whenever the shock came on
 Freud claimed the pained expression would be inwardly calming
 The opposite occurred
 Compared with students who did not act out the expressions,
these grimacing students perspired more, and had faster heart
rates when they saw the shock being delivered
 Acting out the person’s emotion enabled the observer to feel more
empathy
o To sense how other people are feeling, let your own face
mirror their expressions
o We naturally and unconsciously mimic others’ moment-to-moment reactions
 We synchronize our movements, postures, and tones of voice with theirs  Helps us tune in to what
they’re feeling  Makes for “emotional contagion” – explains why it’s fun to be around happy
people
o Our facial expressions can also influence our attitudes
 “Test headphone sets”  Vertical or horizontal head movements while listening to a radio editorial
 Those who were vertically moving their heads agreed with the editorial
o Because positive thoughts are more compatible with vertical nodding and
incompatible with horizontal motion
  Stereotypical actions feed stereotypical thinking
 Induced some people to move about in a portly manner of an obese person—wear life vests
and put weights on their wrist and ankles—and then to give their impressions of someone
described on paper
 Those whose movements simulated obesity, more than in the control condition, perceived
the target person as exhibiting traits (friendliness, sluggishness, unhealthiness) that people
often perceive in obese people
 People induced to move slowly, as elderly person might, ascribed more elderly stereotypic
traits to a target person
o Doing influenced thinking
o Postures also affect performance
 Arms-folded posture  Associated with determination and persistence
 Students solve impossible anagrams
o Those instructed to work with their arms folded persevered for an average of 55
seconds, nearly double the 30 seconds of those with their hands on their thighs
 Overjustification and Intrinsic Motivations
o People explain their behavior by noting the conditions under which it occurs
 Hearing someone proclaim the wisdom of a tuition increase after being paid $20 to do so 
Statement seems less sincere than when the person doing so was only paid $1/no pay
 Perhaps, we could make similar inferences when observing ourselves
 We observed our uncoerced actions and infer our attitude
o Contrary to the notion that rewards always increase motivation, it suggests that unnecessary rewards
can have a hidden cost
 Rewarding people for doing what they already enjoy may lead them to attribute their action to the
reward
 This undermines their self-perception that they do it because they like it
 This is called the overjustification effect
o Pay people for playing with puzzles and they will play with puzzles less than those
who play for no pay
o Promise children a reward for doing what they intrinsically enjoy and you will turn
their play into work
o The self-perception theory implies:
 An unanticipated reward does not diminish intrinsic interest, because people can still attribute
their actions to their own motivation
 If compliments for a good job make us feel competent and successful, this can actually
increase our intrinsic motivation
 When rightly administered, rewards can also boost creativity
o The overjustification effect occurs when someone offers an unnecessary reward beforehand in an obvious
effort to control behavior
 What matters is what a reward implies: Rewards and praise that inform people of their
achievements—that make them feel good at what they do—boost intrinsic motivation
 Rewards that seek to control people and lead them to believe it was the reward that caused
their effort diminish the intrinsic appeal of an enjoyable task
o How can we cultivate people’s enjoyment of an initially unappealing task?
 Use some incentives to coax the desired behavior
 After the person complies, suggest an intrinsic reason for doing so
 Concepts and definitions:
o Self-perception theory – The theory that when we are unsure of our attitudes, we infer them as much as
would someone observing us, by looking at our behavior and the circumstances under which it occurs
 I’m smoking again  I must like smoking
o Overjustification effect – The result of bribing people to do what they already like doing
 They may then see their actions as externally controlled rather than intrinsically appealing
Comparing the Theories
 Why actions only seem to affect our attitudes  Self-presentation theory
 Two explanations of why our actions genuinely affect our attitudes  Cognitive dissonance theory and self-
perception theory
o CD – Justify our behavior to reduce internal discomfort
o SP – We observe our behavior and make reasonable inferences about our attitudes, much as we observe
other people and infer their attitudes
 The two explanations seem to contradict each other
 It’s difficult to determine which is right
o In most instances, they make the same predictions and we can bend each theory
to accommodate most of the findings we have considered
o It all boils down to a matter of personal loyalties and preferences
 Both theories are products of human imagination—creative attempts to
simplify and explain what we’ve observed

Dissonance As Arousal
 Strong support has emerged for the dissonance theory
 o Dissonance – an aroused state of uncomfortable tension
 To reduce tension, we supposedly change our attitudes
o Self-perception theory says nothing about tension being aroused when our actions and attitudes are not in
harmony
 It assumes merely that when our attitudes are weak to begin with, we will use our behavior and its
circumstances as a clue to those attitudes
 Conditions that supposedly produce dissonance have been proven to be uncomfortable arousing—providing that the
behavior has unwanted consequences for which the person feels responsible
o In the privacy of your own room, you say something you don’t believe  Minimal dissonance
o If someone hears and believes you, if it causes harm and negative effects are irrevocable  Greater
dissonance
o Feel responsible for the consequences—can’t easily excuse your act because you agreed to it and able to
foresee its consequences—then uncomfortable dissonance will be aroused
 Detectable in increased perspiration and hear rate
 Volunteering to say or do undesirable things  Why are they arousing?
o Self-affirmation theory  Such acts are embarrassing  They threaten our sense of personal competence
and goodness
 Justifying our actions and decisions is therefore self-affirming  Protects and supports our
integrity of self-worth
 In dissonance-generating actions—uncoerced counterattitudinal actions—their thinking left frontal
lobes buzz with extra arousal
 If people who have committed self-contradictory acts were offered to reaffirm their self-worth by doing good deeds,
their self-concepts were restored, people felt much less need to justify their acts
o People with high and secure self-esteem also engage in less self-justification
 Is arousal necessary for attitudes-follow-behavior effect?
o YES – When drinking alcohol reduces the dissonance-produced arousal, the attitudes-follow-behavior effect
disappears
 Students wrote essays favoring big tuition increase
 Students reduced their resulting dissonance by softening their antituition attitudes—unless
after writing the unpleasant essays they drank alcohol, supposedly as part of a beer- or
vodka-tasting experiment
 Concepts and definitions:
o Self-affirmation theory – A theory that people often experience a self-image threat, after engaging in
an undesirable behavior, and they can compensate by affirming another aspect of the self
 Threaten people’s self-concept in one domain and they will compensate either by refocusing or by
doing good deeds in another domain
Self-Perceiving When Not Self-Contradicting
 Dissonance procedures are uncomfortably arousing
o That makes for self-persuasion after acting contrary to one’s attitudes
o But dissonance theory cannot explain attitude changes that occur without dissonance
 When people argue a position that is in line with their opinion, although a step or two beyond it, procedures that
eliminate arousal do not eliminate attitude change
o Dissonance theory also does not explain the overjustification effect
 This is because being paid to do what you like should not arouse great tension
 What about situations where action does not contradict any attitude (inducing grimaces or smiles)
 Here, there should be no dissonance, but there is still an attitude change
 Dissonance theory successfully explains what happens when we act contrary to clearly defined attitudes: We
feel tension, so we adjust our attitudes to reduce it
o It explains attitude change
 In situations where our attitudes are not well-formed, self-perception theory explains attitude formation
o As we act and reflect, we develop more readily accessible attitudes to guide our future behavior