Attitudes

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Attitudes Behavior

• June 20th

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Todays Agenda

• Finish up Attitudes Behavior Chapter
• Cognitive Dissonance
• Forced compliance paradigm
• Self-perception theory
• What ever happened to CD?
• Review for test

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Forced Compliance

• Acting against your attitudes causes dissonance
• Festinger, L. and Carlsmith, J. M. (1959)
  Cognitive consequences of forced compliance,
  Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58,
  203-211
• Do an extremely boring task
• Before you go20 (130.) vs. 1 (6.50)
• How much did you enjoy the study?

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Dissonance and Reduction

• The study was no fun at all.
• I just told that pretty girl that the study was
  fun!
• Im not the kind of person who goes around
  lying.
• I suppose the study wasnt so bad after all.

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Application to Parenting

• Famous forbidden toy experiment
• Experimenter goes to preschool w/5 toys
• How much do you like each?
• 2nd favorite is forbidden
• Mild threat
• Severe threat

If you play with that toy, I will be very angry
and take all my toys and go home!
Elliot Aronson
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Mild threats induce change

• Mild threat is effective
• Toy is less desired if off-limits, more desired
  if forbidden
• Follow-up studies show this has (somewhat)
  lasting effects, not specific to toy

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Big Splash

• Early studies of dissonance made a big impact,
  raised Qs
• How important is it that people perceive freedom
  of choice?
• Is it important that the people believe theyre
  causing negative consequences?
• What if the person doesnt believe the lie?
• What if you dislike the person youre lying to?

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Boundary Conditions

• Boundary conditions
• Conditions outside of which you will not observe
  the relationship
• Said a different way
• Aspects of the situation that are necessary for
  observing some effect (such as an attitudinal
  shift due to inconsistency).
• After a surprising experimental effect is
  observed, people try to figure out when youll
  see the effect and when you wont.

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Free Will

• Linder, Cooper, Jones (1967)
• Write counter-attitudinal essay
• Why communists should never be allowed to speak
  on college campuses
• Forced or chose
• Some were told they could write opposite, but
  pressured to choose
• Others were told they had to do it
• .50 or 2.50

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Negative Consequences

• Cooper Worchel (1970)
• Festinger Carlsmith (1959) paradigm
• Confederate either dismisses or accepts the lie
• Attitude is only positive when lie accepted
• Nel, Helmreich, Aronson (1969)
• Coerced into writing pro-marijuana essay
• Paid .50 or 2.50
• Audience either made up their mind or not
• Attitude only shifts when essay will go to
  undecided group
• Negative consequences have to be foreseeable
• Duped individual has to be liked

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Attitude change isnt the only way out

• Attitude change is typical in experiments
• Not the only way out
• Self-affirmation-taking stock of ones good
  qualities and core values, which can help a
  person cope with threats to self-esteem (and
  eliminate feelings of dissonance)
• Sometimes it doesnt happen
• Collectivist cultures seem to show more
  dissonance when primed with other people or
  choosing on behalf of another

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Self-Perception Theory

• Self-perception theory was proposed as an
  alternative account for the findings of
  dissonance researchers.
• People come to know their own attitudes by
  looking at their behavior and the context in
  which it occurred and inferring what their
  attitudes must be

I have a more parsimonious explanation for every
single one of your dissonance findings.
Daryl Bem
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Evidence for SPT

• interpersonal simulations - experiments in which
  an observer-participant is given a detailed
  description of one condition of a dissonance
  experiment, is told how a participant behaved in
  that situation, and is asked to predict the
  attitude of that participant
• The observers judgments reliably predict actual
  results
• This demonstrates that inference can reproduce
  the results
• Allows for possibility that inference about own
  attitudes was mechanism of change in previous
  studies
• Forced compliance with recall of earlier attitude

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Does arousal cause attitude change?

• Ps given placebo pill
• Choice/No choice writing of counter-attitudinal
  essay
• Told pill would have no effect, make tense, or
  relax them.
• Notice people will interpret arousal (dissonance)
  differently
• Dissonance should have no effect if it can
  attributed to the pill
• Dissonance should have standard effect if the
  pill is not the cause
• Dissonance should have large effect if pill is
  supposed to relax them

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Fig. 8.7
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State of the Science

• Dissonance appears to be responsible for
  dissonance effects
• Boundary conditions apply,
• Real, stable attitudes
• challenge to view of self as moral and rational
• SP is at work when were not sure of our
  attitudes
• People are marvelously skilled at explaining why
  their behavior is rational

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Now lets talk about the test!