Chapter 6 Attitudes, Behavior, and Rationalization

Question 1

How do you define attitude and what are three components of attitude?

Answer 1

Attitude is an evaluation of an object along a positive-negative dimension.
1. Affect (emotion): how much someone likes or dislikes an object
2. Cognitions: thoughts that reinforce a person’s feelings, including associated memories and images
3. Specific behaviors: approach rewarding objects and avoid punishing objects

Question 2

How do researchers measure attitudes?

Answer 2

1. using self-report measures, e.g., Likert scale (1-7), downside: responses may miss important elements
2. measure response latency-how much time it takes a person to respond to an attitude question. people who respond quickly to a question have stronger attitudes toward the issue as compared with those who take longer to respond.
3. measure the centrality of the attitude to the person’s belief system, e.g., how your thoughts on abortion are correlated with your attitudes about stem cell research and sex education
4. implicit attitude measures: affective priming and implicit association test (IAT), include nonverbal behaviors
5. physiological indicators

Question 3

Box takeaway: Is the bad stronger than the good?

Answer 3

Amygdala is a central component of our attitudes.

Negative evaluations are stronger than positive evaluations.

Negative stimuli elicits faster and stronger physiological responses than do positive stimuli, e.g., frightening sounds vs. delicious tastes

Negative stimuli generated greater brain activity.

Question 4

Why attitudes cannot always predict behavior?

Answer 4

Because there are many other determinants of behavior, which may be conflicting. e.g., drinking vs. spoil others’ fun

Question 5

Should we introspect about the reasons for our attitudes?

Answer 5

It depends on the situation. If the search for reasons tends to yield to real reasons, yes. If when the true source of our attitude is hard to pin down or largely emotional, then no.

Question 6

What’s the mismatch between general attitudes and specific targets?

Answer 6

General attitudes only predict how a person behaves in general, not accounting for exceptions.
People’s attitudes toward different things are often expressions of attitudes about a prototypical example of a given category.

Question 7

What does the cognitive dissonance theory suggest?

Answer 7

Inconsistency between a person’s thoughts, sentiments, and actions creates a state of dissonance that leads to efforts to restore consistency.

Question 8

When does dissonance reduction take place?

Answer 8

Often after an irrevocable decision has been made, if the decision can’t be undone. But sometimes can occur before when people have developed a slight preference for one option over the others, people distort subsequent information to support their preference.

Question 9

What is the tendency to reduce dissonance by justifying the time, effort, or money devoted to something that turned out to be disappointing or unpleasant?

Answer 9

Effort justification

Question 10

What is the method of subtly compelling people to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with their beliefs, attitudes, or values in order to elicit dissonance and therefore change their original attitudes?

Answer 10

Induced or forced compliance.

Question 11

When do we typically experience dissonance?

Answer 11

Whenever we act in ways that are inconsistent with our core values and beliefs
(a) the behavior was freely chosen
(b) the behavior wasn’t sufficiently justified
(c) the behavior had negative consequences
(d) the negative consequences were foreseeable

Question 12

What is one way of elevating the dissonance?

Answer 12

Self-affirmation (taking stock of their other good qualities and core values)

Question 13

In which of the following situations would Japanese participants be most likely to experience cognitive dissonance?

Answer 13

Japanese participants experienced the most dissonance when they were given a choice to behave in a certain way and also completed the task in front of a poster of schematic faces (representing the presence of others).

Question 14

What does Bem’s self-perception theory suggest?

Answer 14

People don’t always come to know their own attitudes by introspecting about what they think; instead, they look outward at their behavior and the context in which it occurred and from there, infer what their attitudes must be.

Question 15

What does Bem suggest about us acting as outside observers?

Answer 15

When our prior attitudes are “weak, ambiguous, and uninterpretable”, then the individual is functionally in the same position as an outside observer.

Question 16

What is the key difference between the CDT and the self-perception theory?

Answer 16

Whether people experience arousal.
Dissonance reduction processes are more likely to be activated when people engage in behavior that is inconsistent with a clear-cut attitude, such as the attitude many people have toward the long-standing issue of gun control. Self-perception processes are more apt to come into play for vaguely held attitudes, such as the attitudes people have about relatively mundane things, such as selfie sticks.

Question 17

What is the tendency to devalue those activities we perform, even if they are pleasing, in order to get something else?

Answer 17

The overjustification effect (overlook the intrinsic factors because of the external rewards and come to the conclusion that we don’t enjoy the activity)

Question 18

What is the theory that suggests people are motivated to see the existing sociopolitical system as desirable, fair and legitimate?

Answer 18

System justification theory
“Protest is hard, justification is easy”

Question 19

What does the terror management theory specify?

Answer 19

People deal with the potential anxiety associated with the inevitability of death by striving for symbolic immortality through preserving culturally valued worldviews and by believing that they have lived up to their cultures’ standards.
人肉体会死，精神可能到其他极乐世界生存。后代可以延续我们的香火。想到死亡可能让人们更爱国，更对信仰虔诚，更想要提高自尊心。

Question 20

Which theory is linked to system justification theory?

Answer 20

System justification theory is linked to cognitive dissonance theory. A conflict between people’s beliefs that the world should be fair and their witnessing evidence of inequality in the system causes dissonance. To reduce this dissonance, people emphasize the fair and legitimate nature of the system.