Lecture 10 influence of behavior on attitudes Flashcards
does behavior influence attitudes?
plausible because of three reasons
- ABC-model: one of the foundations for attitudes is behavior.
- Janis & King: when people say a persuasive message, it has a larger influence on attitude than hearing it.
- sometimes you update your attitude after doing something.
multiple behavior paths that influence attitude
- acquire information
- self-perception
- reactance
- overjustification
- self-persuasion
- dissonance reduction
acquire information
the only way to know if you like or dislike something is to get information about it.
barely studied, but very plausible.
self-perception strong perception
people often don’t know their own attitudes and therefore interpret their attitude from their behavior
self-perception weak version
goes to the extent that internal cues are weak, ambigious or uninterpretable. interpreter is functionally in the same position as an outside observer
critique on self-perception
ignores biological psychology and subjective experience. internal cues usually aren’t ambigious or weak.
reactance
restricting freedom of choice can motivate restoring freedom and change attitudes of forbidden options.
people push back when they are pushed around.
overjustification
some activities are inherently rewarding, and being rewarded for them reduces intrinsic motivation.
people will attribute behavior to the reward and therefore assume they don’t do it out of free will
self-persuasion
- Janis & King saying versus hearing
- Janis role play study with smokers
- counter attitudinal advocacy results in attitude change opposite to initial attitude.
dissonance reduction
dissonance motivates psychological work to reduce inconsistency
what can people do to reduce cognitive dissonance
- add consonant belief
- remove dissonant belief
- increase/decrease importance of consonant/dissonant beliefs.
tests of dissonance reduction
- free choice paradigm
- induced compliance
- effort justification
free choice paradigm
people asked to make decisions, found that after people make difficult decisions they change their attitude towards the option they reject.
induced compliance
participants do boring task but are asked to lie about it.
telling a little lie for 20 dollars is easy to justify, but for1 dollar justifying is harder, so people convince themselves the task wasn’t boring.
effort justification
participants undergo an embarassing initiation ritual to join a boring group.
- people who had to undergo a more embarassing ritual where more positive about the group
reflections on cognitive dissonance theory
multiple explanations have been proposed, but there is no clear winner. so we don’t know what dissonance reduction models people are likely to turn to.
relevant paths in marketing
most common behavior attiude process is acquiring information.
- offering free samples is a good way to give people more information
- in low involvement the do is before the feel and think. So doing something is a good way to get information.
for self-persuasion and dissonance reduction consistency is very important
consistency ?
best explained with Cialdini’s principle of commitment/consistency
- mental rule = we have a desire to appear consistent with what we’ve already done.
when does commitment have the most influence
when it is
- active: writing things down
- public
- effortful: initiation rituals
- own choice
for example BOB campaign = publice active commitment
continued questions procedure
similair to foot-in-the door technique.
seems to double the compliance compared to control group
