Lecture 5: Behavioural Influences Flashcards
What is the theory of Self-Perception?
Bem (1972): Individuals come to know their attitudes, emotions and other internal states partialy by inferring them from observations of their own overt behaviour and/or the circumstaces in which this behaviour occurs
When does Self-perception to inform an attitude happen?
Bem (1972): when external cues are weak, ambiguous or uninterpretable, the individual is functionally in the same position as an outsider.
(if our own impressions are weak, ambiguous or uninterpretable, then we end up like that observer - we infer our own view from our behaviour)
Salancik & Conway (1975) and Self-perception & religion
Pro-religious questionnaire - people had to indiciate if the statement was true to them.
* Statements were either high frequency or low frequency where different words were used before statements (always, frequently, sometimes, occasionally, rarely never)
* such statements make you infer that you do a lot of religious things or not
Results:
* They found that people in the pro-religious salience group (I occasionally/I agree etc), their attitudes towards religion were more positive compared to those in the anti-statement group.
Their findings were consistent with self-perception theory:
* They inferred their attitude, not their actual behaviour, by their perception of how frequently they engaged in the behaviour
* If you get people to think that they do things more or less often, you can influence their attitude e.g., pro religion - +ve attitudes towards religion
Results suggests ppl use behavioural info to derive their judgements when info is salient and relevant (consistent w/ self perception theory)
Chaiken and Baldwin (1981) and Self-perception
They replicated Salancik and Conways (1975) study but assessed what MODERATES the effect:
* they looked at attitude strength as a moderating variable
* did this using statements on pro/not pro-environmental behaviours that varied in frequency (always, sometimes, never etc.)
Results:
* There was a main effect of condition replicating Salancik and Conway: people who are led to infer that they engage in lots of pro-environmental behaviours describe themselves as having more environmentally friendly attitudes
* BUT this was moderated by the strength of the attitude (Interaction)
Showing self perception effects and when youre going to see self-perception effect
Holland et al., (2002) and Self-perception
Hamburger study!!
Looked at whether individuals with strong or weak attitudes on environmental behaviour predicited pro-environmental behaviour AND attitudes of the environment following the behaviour
Results:
1.attitude before the behaviour
* The correlation between the initial attitude and the final attitude was .4 for a weak attitude prior compared to .7 for a strong attitude prior. This makes sense, strong attitudes are more stable over time.
2.prediction of donation behaviour
* They found that people who had a weak attitude towards GP was harder to predict their donation behaviour. Those with a strong attitude towards GP was easier to predict their donation behaviour.
3.how did the donation behaviour, and the prior attitude infleunce the second attitude
* Among those people where their attitudes were weak, the donation behaviour strongly predicted their subsequent attitude (this is self-perception - these individuals partially inferred their attitudes from their behaviour).
* BUT when people had a strong behaviour initially, the donation behaviour did not predict their second attitude. The main driver of the second attitude was the prior behaviour
How far can we stretch these self-perception effects?
Albaraccin & Wyer (2000)
People didn’t perform a behaviour but they imagined that they performed a behaviour
Results:
* Was enough to influence their subsequent attitude
* They led Ps to believe that they either supported a policy or opposed a policy.
* When people were then asked about their attitude towards this policy, people who had imagined that they supported this policy reported attitudes that were more favorable towards policy compared to those who were led to believe that thy performed a behaviour opposing this policy
Vicarious Self-Perception
Goldstein & Cialdini (2007)
Can we infer our attitudes when we see someone else performing a behaviour?
YES
* When we believe the person freely chose to perform the behaviour
* When we percieve that we have a shared identity with the person performing the behvaiour
Ge, Brigden (Bea.Bridger) & Haubl (2015): Consumer self-perception
What if people have to actively search for a product?
* Ps were asked to choose between 2 granola bars, one was infront of them and the other caused them to have to get up and look for the bar. The more action led to higher preference towards that bar.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger, 1957)
- This is a Motivational theory
Festinger argued that two attitudes/a behaviour and an attitude can have different types of relations. They can be dissonant (opposite to eachother). They can be consonant. And they can be irrelevant:
- Dissonance - E.g. I smoke cigarettes, I know cigarette’s are bad for me
- Consonant - e.g. I don’t smoke cigarettes, I know cigarettes are bad for me
- Irrelevant - e.g. I like a black pen, last weekend I went to the pub
When we experience dissonance, the amount of dissonance we experience depends on how important the topic is and it depends on the proportion.
* Importance - E.g. Knowing that I smoke a pack a day, and I know smoking is bad, should elicit dissonance to the extent I care about my own health.
* Proportion - 90/10 disagreement Vs 50/50 disagreement. the 90/10 disagreement should elicit high dissonance
What can we do if we experience dissonance?
- Add consonant element - e.g. If I didn’t smoke then ill eat fatty foods, which is probably worse.
- Reduce importance - e.g. Geoff’s 14 yr old daughter isnt sure if she wants to go to the Bruce Springsteen concert with Geoff. Geoff can reduce importance by saying its not a big deal, Bruce Springsteen isnt that important to him anyway
- Changing one of the dissonant elements - e.g. in the smoking example you get rid of the cigarettes
How can this dissonance impact our attitudes?
Post Decisional Dissonance - this occurs when a decision is made between alternatives that are close in overall value, and the decision cannot be revoked or changed
- e.g. buying a car example!!
Brehm (1956): post decisional dissonance
Asked to rate a series of appliances:
* Gave people 2 products, i,e a kettle or a toaster (rated equally likeable OR rated one more than the other)
* In another condition, Ps had to pick a preference from two items rated equally
Results:
* found an increase in positive evaluation toward the chosen alternative and a decrease in attitudes toward the rejected alternative - this is known as “Spreading of alternatives”
* this spreading of alternatives is larger when it is a difficult choice
What is the spreading of alternatives?
Altering the aspects of the decision alternatives to reduce dissonance will lead to viewing the chosen alternative as more desirable and the rejected alternative as less desirable
Egan, Santos & Bloom (2007): post decisional dissonance
- Spreading of dissonance has been found among children as young as 4 years old and even among capuchin monkeys
Harmon-Jones et al., (2009, 2011) Post-decisional Dissonance
They tried to explain why the spreading effect takes place in post-decisional dissonance
They argued that:
* the spreading effect serves an action orientation - helps us move on rather than deliberate