Transcript Chapter One
Copyright 2010 McGraw-Hill Companies
1
Attitude
Favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction toward
something or someone
2
How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict
Our Behavior?
People’s expressed attitudes hardly predicted their
varying behaviors
Moral hypocrisy
3
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)
Explicit
When other influences on behavior are minimal
4
How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict
Our Behavior?
When Attitudes Predict Behavior
When attitudes specific to the behavior are examined
When attitudes are potent
Self-awareness
Forge strong attitudes through experience
5
When Does Our Behavior Affect
Our Attitudes?
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
6
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
7
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
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
8
When Does Our Behavior Affect
Our Attitudes?
Evil and Moral Acts
Wartime
Actions and attitudes feed on each other
When evil behavior occurs we tend to justify it as right
Peacetime
Moral action, especially when chosen rather than coerced,
affects moral thinking
9
When Does Our Behavior Affect
Our Attitudes?
Interracial Behavior and Racial Attitudes
Racial behavior help shape our social consciousness
By doing, not saying racial attitudes were changed
Legislating morality
Social Movements
Political and social movements may legislate behavior
designed to lead to attitude change on a mass scale
10
Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our
Attitudes?
Self-Presentation: Impression Management
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
11
Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our
Attitudes?
Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance
Tension that arises when one is simultaneously aware of
two inconsistent cognitions
To reduce this tension, we adjust our thinking
Insufficient justification
Reduction of dissonance by internally justifying one’s
behavior when external justification is “insufficient”
12
Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our
Attitudes?
Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance
Dissonance after decisions
Deciding-becomes-believing effect
Can breed overconfidence
13
Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our
Attitudes?
Self-Perception Theory
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
Overjustification and intrinsic motivations
14
Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our
Attitudes?
Figure 4.7
15