Lecture 10 influence of behavior on attitudes

Question 1

does behavior influence attitudes?

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

multiple behavior paths that influence attitude

Answer 2

• acquire information
• self-perception
• reactance
• overjustification
• self-persuasion
• dissonance reduction

Question 3

acquire information

Answer 3

the only way to know if you like or dislike something is to get information about it.
barely studied, but very plausible.

Question 4

self-perception strong perception

Answer 4

people often don’t know their own attitudes and therefore interpret their attitude from their behavior

Question 5

self-perception weak version

Answer 5

goes to the extent that internal cues are weak, ambigious or uninterpretable. interpreter is functionally in the same position as an outside observer

Question 6

critique on self-perception

Answer 6

ignores biological psychology and subjective experience. internal cues usually aren’t ambigious or weak.

Question 7

reactance

Answer 7

restricting freedom of choice can motivate restoring freedom and change attitudes of forbidden options.
people push back when they are pushed around.

Question 8

overjustification

Answer 8

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

Question 9

self-persuasion

Answer 9

• Janis & King saying versus hearing
• Janis role play study with smokers
• counter attitudinal advocacy results in attitude change opposite to initial attitude.

Question 10

dissonance reduction

Answer 10

dissonance motivates psychological work to reduce inconsistency

Question 11

what can people do to reduce cognitive dissonance

Answer 11

• add consonant belief
• remove dissonant belief
• increase/decrease importance of consonant/dissonant beliefs.

Question 12

tests of dissonance reduction

Answer 12

• free choice paradigm
• induced compliance
• effort justification

Question 13

free choice paradigm

Answer 13

people asked to make decisions, found that after people make difficult decisions they change their attitude towards the option they reject.

Question 14

induced compliance

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

effort justification

Answer 15

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

Question 16

reflections on cognitive dissonance theory

Answer 16

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.

Question 17

relevant paths in marketing

Answer 17

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

Question 18

consistency ?

Answer 18

best explained with Cialdini’s principle of commitment/consistency
- mental rule = we have a desire to appear consistent with what we’ve already done.

Question 19

when does commitment have the most influence

Answer 19

when it is
- active: writing things down
- public
- effortful: initiation rituals
- own choice

for example BOB campaign = publice active commitment

Question 20

continued questions procedure

Answer 20

similair to foot-in-the door technique.
seems to double the compliance compared to control group