Lecture 6 Flashcards
does behavior influence attitudes?
- ABC model
- Janis & King: saying vs hearing a persuasive message
- learning, weak attitudes, norms
multiple paths from behavior to attitude
- acquire information
- self-perception
- reactance
- overjustification
- self-persuasion
- dissonance reduction
self-perception theory (Bem, 1972)
- people often do not know attitude and infer it from behavior
- weak version: ‘to the extent that internal cues are weak, ambiguous, or uninterpretable, the individual is functionally in the same position as an outside observer’
- ignores biological psychology and subjective experience
Reactance (Brehm, 1966)
- restricting freedom of choice can motivate restoring freedom and change attitudes of forbidden options
- study about effect of censorship (police on campus study)
- censorhip increased (desire to hear message/agreement with message)
overjustification
- behaviorism: people respond to reward and punishment
- some activities are inherently rewarding, what if we get rewarded for them?
- meta-analysis: rewards reduced free-choice intrinsic motivation
- external reward justifies behavior, person infers weak intrinsic motivation
self-persuasion
Janis & King (1954): saying vs hearing persuasive message
- counter-attitudinal advocacy resulted in attitude change opposite to initial attitude
Janis & Mann (1965): role-playing and smoking
- smokers played role of lung cancer patient, reduced self-reported smoking from 24 to 14 cigarettes a day
dissonance reduction
cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957)
- having beliefs relevant to each other, but inconsistent, creates discomfort
- dissonance motivates psychological work to reduce inconsistency
dissonance reduction
typically support belief most resistant to change
- add consonant beliefs, remove dissonant beliefs, increase/decrease importance of consonant/dissonant beliefs
types of dissonance reduction
free-choice paradigm (Brehm, 1956)
- after difficult decisions, people change their attitudes toward option they rejected
induced compliance (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959)
- participants do boring task, then lie about it for $1 or $20 ($1 condition: more positive attitude toward boring task)
effort justification (Aronson & Mills, 1959)
- participants undergo embarrasing initiation ritual to join group, group is boring, participants with more embarassing ritual evaluated group more positively
reflections of cognitive dissonance theory
multiple explanations, no winner
- self-conspiracy theory, self-affirmation theory, ‘new look’/responsibility model, action-based models
behavior attitude process and advertising
acquire information -> free samples, testers, tasters, etc.
Cialdini’s principle of commitment/consistency
mental rule: we have a desire to appear consistent with what we have already done
- commitment has more influence when it is: active, public, effortful, own choice
self-persuasion techniques
- people tend to live up to what they have written down
- testimonial contests
- ‘explain why you like brand X’ and win a prize
foot-in-the-door technique
- ask small request, get yes response
- ask bigger request, get yes response
- telemarketing, donations
- continued questions procedure nearly doubles compliance compared to control group
- works with robots
low-ball procedure
- like FITD, but some target behavior
- present consumer good offer, consumer agrees
- change offer (less good), consumer is committed and agrees
well supported behavior-attitude paths
- acquiring information
- overjustification
- self-persuasion
less well supported behavior-attitude paths
- reactance
- self-perception
- dissonance reduction
counterattitudinal-essay task
participants write a short essay consisting of several arguments in favor of a position they themselves do not hold
- writing a counterattitudinal essay produced a more favorable attitude toward the essay topic than writing a neutral essay
- the amount of choice that participants experienced when writing the essay did not affect their attitude to the essay topic
