Behavior & Attitudes

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Chapter 4 : Behaviour & Attitudes

ATTITUDE
• A favorable or unfavorable evaluation
reaction toward something or someone.
• Beliefs and feelings related to a person or Behaviour
an event.
• Often rooted in beliefs and exhibited in
feelings and inclinations to act.
• Eg. A person who believes a particular
ethnic group is lazy and aggressive may Affect Cognition
feel dislike for such people and therefore
intend to act in a discriminatory manner.
HOW WELL DO OUR ATTITUDES
PREDICT OUR BEHAVIOUR?
• People’s expressed attitudes hardly predicted their varying behaviours.
• Student attitudes towed cheating bore little relation to the likelihood of
their actually cheating.
• Attitudes toward the church were only modestly linked with worship
attendance on any given Sunday.
• Self-described racial attitudes provided little clue to behaviours in actual

situations.
• Our attitudes do predict our behaviour when
• When social influences on what we say are minimal
• When other influences on behaviour are minimal
• When attitudes specific to the behavior are examined
• When attitudes are potent
• When social influences on what we say are minimal
• Implicit (Unconscious)
• Implicit association test (IAT)
• Implicit biases are pervasive : 80% show implicit negatively toward elderly
• People differ in implicit bias
• People are often unaware of their implicit biases.
• People carry knowledge (stereotypes) and feelings (attitudes) of

which they are unaware, and often contrast with their conscious
expressions.
• When other influences on behaviour are minimal
• 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.
• Average behaviour over time.

• When attitudes specific to the behavior are examined
• Specific, relevant attitudes do predict intended and actual behaviour.

• Attitudes toward condoms strongly predict condom use
• Attitudes toward recycling predict intention to recycle, which predicts actual
recycling.
Attitude
I’m for physical fitness
Behaviour Intention
Norms
I’m going to start next Behaviour
My friends seem to be jogging
week
Perceived control
The Theory of Planned Behaviour
I could easily do this
• When attitudes are potent
• Brining Attitudes to Mind

• Our attitudes become potent if we think about them
• Self-aware
• Forging Strong Attitudes Through experience
• Forged by experience, more accessible, more enduring, more likely to guide actions.
WHEN DOES OUR BEHAVIOUR
AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?
• Role Playing
• Saying Becomes Believing
• The Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon
• Evil and Moral Acts
• Social Movements
• Role playing
• Role
• Set of norms that defines how people in a given social position ought to behave.
• When enacting new social roles, we may at first feel phony.
• Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford’s prison study

• Saying Becomes Believing
• People often adapt what they say to please their listeners.
• People tend to adjust their messages to their listeners, and, having done so, to
believe the altered message.
• Personality description
• The Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon
• If you want people to do a big favor for you, you ask them first to do a small
favor.
• Lowball technique
• A tactic for getting people to agree to something.
• People who agree to an initial request will often still comply when the requested
ups the ante. People who receive only the costly request are less likely to comply
with it.
• Evil and Moral Acts
• We tend not only to hurt those we dislike but also to dislike those we hurt.
• We tend to justify it as right.
• Cruel acts lead to even crueler acts and attitudes
• Choose to behave in moral action affects moral thinking

• Not by deterrent
• Social Movements
• Political and social movements may legislate behaviour designed to lead to
attitude change on a mass scale.
• Brainwashing
WHY DOES OUR BEHAVIOUR
• Self-Presentation: Impression Management
• Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance
• Self-Perception
• Self- presentation theory assumes that for strategic reasons we express
attitudes that make us appear consistent.
• Cognitive dissonance theory (Self-justification) assumes that to reduce
discomfort, we justify our actions to ourselves.
• Self-perception theory assumes that our actions are self-revealing (when
uncertain about our feelings or beliefs, we look to our behaviour, 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, even to become more secure in our
social identities.
• To avoid seeming foolish, we express attitudes that match our actions. To
appear consistent, we may pretend those attitudes.
• Cognitive Dissonance
• Tension that arises when one is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent
cognitions.
• Dissonance may occur when we realise that we have, with little justification,
acted contrary to our attitudes or made a decision favoring one alternative
despite reasons favoring another,
• Selective Exposure
• The tendency to seek information and media that agree with one’s views and to
avoid dissonant information.
• Self-Justification: Cognitive
Dissonance
• Insufficient justification
• Reduction of dissonance by
internally justifying one’s
behaviour when external
justification is “insufficient”.
• When our actions are not fully

explained by external rewards
or coercion, we will experience
dissonance which we can
reduce by believing in what we
have done.
• Big decisions can produce big dissonance when one later ponders the negative
aspects of what is chosen and the positive aspects of what was not chosen.
• To reduce dissonance, upgrade the chosen alternative and downgrade the

unchosen option.
• Self-Perception theory
• When we are unsure of our
attitudes, we infer them
much as would someone
observing us-by looking at
our behaviour and the
circumstances under which
it occurs.
• Expression and attitude
• Facial feedback effect
• The tendency of facial expressions to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear,
anger, or happiness.
• Happy expressions may recall more happy memories and find the happy mood
lingering.
• Botox smoothens emotional wrinkles. Paralyzing the frowning muscles with Botox slows
activity in people’s emotion-related brain circuits and slows their reading of sadness-
or anger- related sentences. Unable to mimic others’ expression.
• Vertical motion (nodding heads )vs horizontal motion (shaking head)
• Overjustification & Intrinsic
Motivation
• 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 THEORIES
Our actions might only seem to affect our attitudes
• Self-presentation theory
• 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.
• Evidences confirm that people do adjust their attitude statements our of
concern for what other people will think. But it also shows that some genuine
attitude change occurs.
• Our actions trigger genuine attitude change (1/2)
• Dissonance theory
• Explains this attitude change by assuming that we feel tension after acting
contrary to our attitudes or making difficult decisions. To reduce that arousal, we
internally justify our behavior.
• The less external justification we have for our undesirable actions, the more we
feel responsible for them, and thus the more dissonance arises and thhe more
attitudes change.
• Our actions trigger genuine attitude change (2/2)
• Self-Perception theory
• When our attitudes are weak. We simply observe our behaviour and it is
circumstances, then infer our attitudes.
• Overjustification effect
KEY LEARNING POINTS

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What are the different theories that explain how our behaviour affects our attitudes?

What factors influence how well our attitudes predict our behaviour?

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter 4 : Behaviour & Attitudes

• Self-described racial attitudes provided little clue to behaviours in actual

• People carry knowledge (stereotypes) and feelings (attitudes) of

• Average behaviour over time.

• Specific, relevant attitudes do predict intended and actual behaviour.

• Brining Attitudes to Mind

• Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford’s prison study

• Choose to behave in moral action affects moral thinking

• We see making a good impression as a way to gain social and material

• When our actions are not fully

• To reduce dissonance, upgrade the chosen alternative and downgrade the

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