Lecture 7

Question 1

Describe attitudes.

Answer 1

An evaluation of an object (like a specific person, a category of people, a type of food, political cause) along a positive or negative dimension.

• Includes three components (ABCs)
• Affective*
  Behavioural
  Cognitive

Question 2

What are the ABCs of attitudes?

Answer 2

• Affect : I like it
• Behavioural : I ate Hawaiian pizza 10 times last month
• Cognition : I think that the sweetness of the pineapple provides a perfect balance to the favours flavours

Question 3

How can we measure attitudes? (Two ways)

Answer 3

1) We can just ask people about their attitudes (self-report)
- Likert scale : numerical scale comprising a set of possible answer with labeled anchors on either end (ex: 1= strongly agree, 7= strongly disagree)

2) Researchers may be interested in the accessibility of an attitude — How readily it comes to mind
- Response latency : the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus, such as an attitude question

Question 4

Are attitudes predictors of behaviour?

Answer 4

• We tend to assume that attitudes are good predictors of behaviour
• Research shows that attitudes are often POOR predictors of behaviours
  *Attitudes toward cheating vs cheating behaviour
  * Attitudes toward religion vs worship attendance

Question 5

Why are attitudes often poor predictors of behaviour?

Answer 5

Attitudes may conflict with other influences on behaviour.
- Social norms, other conflicting attitudes, situational factors, etc.

Introspection may cause a rift between your expressed attitude and subsequent behaviour.
- Particularly true when the basis of an attitude is affective (emotional)
- in this case, cognitive analysis of your reasons for the attitude may yield misleading cognitive reasons

General attitudes may not match specific targets.
- Attitudes are more accurate predictors of behaviour when specific attitudes toward a specific behaviour are measured.

Question 6

How can behaviours be good predictors of attitudes?

Answer 6

• Attitudes may change in order to be consistent with behaviours.

Question 7

What are the cognitive consistency theories?

Answer 7

Theories that maintain that the impact of behaviour on attitudes reflects our tendency to justify or rationalize our behaviour and to minimize any inconsistencies between our attitudes and actions.

Question 8

Explain the cognitive dissonance theory.

Answer 8

• Postulates that inconsistencies among a person’s thoughts, sentiments, and actions cause an aversive emotional state (dissonance) that leads to efforts to restore consistency.

Question 9

How can you reduce cognitive dissonance?

Answer 9

They can be reduced by changing thoughts, feelings or behaviour in order to make them consistent.
Ex: if dissonance is caused by smoking because it is bad for your health and you want to be healthy, the solution is to quit smoking.

They can be reduced by adding thoughts, feelings or behaviours to reduce apparent inconsistenciesé
Ex: such thoughts as —> “I know smoking is bad for me, but it helps me relax”.

Question 10

What is spreading the alternatives?

Answer 10

• Decision dissonance typically is resolved by emphasizing the positives and minimizing the negatives of the selected choice.
• Also resolved by emphasizing the negatives of the unselected choice and minimizing the positives.

Question 11

What is the effort justification?

Answer 11

The tendency to reduce dissonance by justifying the time, effort, or money devoted to something that turned out to be unpleasant or disappointing.
- Greater effort expanded leads to more dissonance and more attempts to rationalize behaviour

Question 12

How does cognitive dissonance provide an explanation for hazing rituals in many social groups?

Answer 12

• People have suffered humiliation, degrading and hurtful rituals to get in the social group. Therefore, they rationalize that the efforts put in must mean that they can’t give up now or stop participating because they went through that much to just get in.

Question 13

What is the IKEA Effect?

Answer 13

• We tend to value things more if we made them ourselves,
  Ex: people ascribed more value to their own assembled ikea boxes, folded origami and built sets of lego.

Question 14

What is induced/forced compliance?

Answer 14

• Subtly compelling people to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with their beliefs, attitudes or values will elicit dissonance and therefore force a change in their original views,

Question 15

What were the findings of the “forbidden toy” study by Aronson and CAlrsmith?

Answer 15

Children were given a set of toys and asked to rate each one. Then they were told that they could play with any of the toys except for one. Then they were told that playing with the forbidden toy would make an adult very annoyed OR very very angry. They were asked to rate it again after that.

Findings:
- Children who were told the adults would be very annoyed found the toy less desirable, while children who were told the adult would be very very angry found the toy more desirable.

Why:
- Mild threats of punishment are a weak reason for resisting something that is desired, so attitudes change to rationalize behaviour.
- Severe threats are a good reason to resist a behaviour, but may result in the behaviour seeming even more appealing.

Question 16

When does does inconsistency produce dissonance?

Answer 16

When there is a free choice
- Choosing to engage in a behaviour that is inconsistent with beliefs will cause dissonance
- Forced behaviour does not cause dissonance, since the reason for the behaviour is clear. There is no need to rationalize behaviours we did not choose.

When there is insufficient justification
- Dissonance may occur when the reason for a behaviour is weak or unclear
- With sufficient justification, the behaviour doesn’t need to be rationalized.

When there are negative consequences
- Freely chosen inconsistent behaviours may not cause dissonance if there was no negative consequence of the behaviour
- If nothing happened as a result, there is nothing to rationalize

When there is foreseeability
- Dissonance may not occur if the negative consequence was not something that could be foreseen
- Ex: giving food to someone that is allergic without knowing they are allergic. It’s not your fault therefore you have no behaviour to rationalize.

Question 17

What does cognitive dissonance come from?

Answer 17

• Challenges or threats to a person’s sense of self as rational, moral and competent.

Question 18

What can reduce dissonance?

Answer 18

• self-affirmation
• Boosting our self-esteem and identity by focusing on important aspects of the self

Question 19

What are the cultural difference of dissonance?

Answer 19

The reason why there is dissonance.

For westerners, there might be dissonance because of a threat to how they perceive themselves, while for easterners, there is dissonance when there is a threat to how they think people see them.

Question 20

What is the self-perception theory?

Answer 20

People come to know their own attitudes by looking at their behaviour and the context in which it occurred, and inferring what their attitudes must be
- An unpleasant mental state is not needed as an explanation for the results of the cognitive dissonance theories.
- People didn’t change their attitudes, they inferred their attitudes from their behaviour in the situation

Question 21

Name the effect:
- Occurs when an extrinsic reward ends up reducing the intrinsic motivation to perform an action.
- Ex: kids already have the natural tendency to help people. The reward of toys reduces the motivation to help.

Answer 21

Over-justification effect

Question 22

In which situations are extrinsic rewards useful?

Answer 22

When intrinsic motivation is lacking. Rewards and praise for achievement can boost intrinsic motivation.