Self-Justification Flashcards
What is perception? How does our brain use this in our memory?
Brain’s interoperation of raw sensory data
Brain fills in the gaps in our memory by organizing sensory data into meaningful concepts
- Guides how we react
Why do we tend to not be introspective?
Because we tend to make excuses for our behaviours that go against our motives (self-justification and heuristics)
We’re motivated by what two things?
Perceiving we’re accurate
Belonging (being accepted by others)
Cognitive dissonance theory?
What happens if there’s inconsistent between cognitions?
Disequilibrium motivates a person to restore consistency
Produces unpleasant state (dissonance)
What are the two necessary conditions to produce dissonance?
Arousal - Feel discomfort of dissonance
Attribution - Attribute cause of this to yourself (own behavs/attitudes)
What are the 3 ways to deal with dissonance?
Change attitude/behav
Remove dissonant cognition
Add consonant cognitions
What kind of attitudes are hard to change? Why?
Attitudes about our central values and self-concept
They establish our identity and gain social approval
How can you use self-deception and confirmation bias /belief perseverance to change or downplay the inconsistency and bad feelings of dissonance?
Self-deception: Downplaying correct but arousal inducing attitude elements
Confirmation bias: Pay more attention to beliefs that back you up
Belief perseverance: Downplay/Modify beliefs that show you’re wrong
What predictions do we tend to make about premises? Why?
We forget about silly arguments for our side and great ones for their side
Remember/Focus on great arguments for our side and silly arguments for their side
Gets rid of cognitive dissonance because we end up seeming more correct
Forced compliance study (Festibger and Carlsmith)
- Participants paid $1 (high dissonance) or $20 (low dissonance) to lie to another student about desirability of a boring experiment; attitude towards the experiment also assessed
$1 group rated overall enjoyment of the experiment more highly than control and $20
- Ended up tricking themselves into liking the experiment
External vs Internal Justification
External - Determined by the situation
Internal - Created within; change in attitude used in dissonance to justify behav
Justification of effort experiment:
- University women volunteered to join group discussing aspects of psychology of sex
- Told to go through a screening before joining
- Control: Admitted w/out knowledge/participation in initiation
- Mild initiation: Recited list of sexual words
- Severe initiation: Recited list of words that were obscene and sexual
- Listened to super boring discussion afterwards
Control and mild - Thought conversation was dull and boring
Severe - Convinced themselves that it was interesting and worthwhile
- If a lot of effort was put into something -> expectation that the result is great
Insufficient punishment
- Does a mild or severe threat produce stronger effects? Why?
Mild threat
Strong -> Sufficient justification
Mild -> Insufficient justification (leads person to close the gap between behav and its explanation)
What is approach-approach conflict?
How do people reduce post-decisional dissonance?
What is spreading of alternatives?
Choosing between desirable alternatives can produce dissonance
After choosing, ppl may enhance chosen alternative and/or downplay rejected alternative to reduce dissonance
Before making a choice between two alternatives, choice us hard and confident about either is low
- But after making their decision, confidence boosts up + the rating of their choice goes up + the rating of their unpicked choice goes down
People tend to do what if something is inevitable?
California study:
- Inevitable major earthquake; negative effect of death
- Ppl living in safer residences vs in unsafe residences?
People tend to make the best of something if they know something is bound to happen
- Avoid dissonance by deemphasizing negative
Safer - Prepared more
Unsafe - Denied that an earthquake like that will occur and avoid thinking about it bcuz if there will be one, it’s hard to justify why they’re living in an unsafe okace