Lecture 5: Behavioural Influences

Question 1

What is the theory of Self-Perception?

Answer 1

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

Question 2

When does Self-perception to inform an attitude happen?

Answer 2

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)

Question 3

Salancik & Conway (1975) and Self-perception & religion

Answer 3

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)

Question 4

Chaiken and Baldwin (1981) and Self-perception

Answer 4

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

Question 5

Holland et al., (2002) and Self-perception

Answer 5

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

Question 6

How far can we stretch these self-perception effects?

Albaraccin & Wyer (2000)

Answer 6

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

Question 7

Vicarious Self-Perception

Goldstein & Cialdini (2007)

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Ge, Brigden (Bea.Bridger) & Haubl (2015): Consumer self-perception

Answer 8

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.

Question 9

Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger, 1957)

Answer 9

• 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

Question 10

What can we do if we experience dissonance?

Answer 10

1. Add consonant element - e.g. If I didn’t smoke then ill eat fatty foods, which is probably worse.
2. 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
3. Changing one of the dissonant elements - e.g. in the smoking example you get rid of the cigarettes

Question 11

How can this dissonance impact our attitudes?

Answer 11

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!!

Question 12

Brehm (1956): post decisional dissonance

Answer 12

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

Question 13

What is the spreading of alternatives?

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Egan, Santos & Bloom (2007): post decisional dissonance

Answer 14

• Spreading of dissonance has been found among children as young as 4 years old and even among capuchin monkeys

Question 15

Harmon-Jones et al., (2009, 2011) Post-decisional Dissonance

Answer 15

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

Question 16

What is effort justification?

Answer 16

Effort justification is an idea and paradigm in social psychology stemming from Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance
Effort justification is a person’s tendency to attribute the value of an outcome they put effort into achieving as greater than the objective value of the outcome.

Question 17

Aronson and Mills (1959) - effort justification in Cogntitive Dissonance

Answer 17

• Uni students were told that they were going to become a member of a discussion group about sex (Remember this was the 1950s -CA!!)

They had to complete an initiation before they could join the group:
1. MILD - read aloud a whole series of words related to sex that were mild
2. SEVERE - read aloud a whole series of words related to sex that were strong
3. No initiation control group where they just joined the group

They are then told that initiation took longer and the group discussion has already taken place. However they can listen to the discussion. The discussion was really boring about animal sex. They then measured attitudes.

Results:
* You see a stepwise increase depening upon the level of their initiation (low attitudes towards group in control and mild/ high favourable attitudes when initiation was severe)
○ If you’ve gone through a lot you prefer the group

Question 18

Axsom & Cooper (1985): effort justification in Cognitive Dissonance

Answer 18

They looked at effort justification in the context of weightloss:
- overweight subjects attempted to lose weight through 1 of 2 forms of “effort therapy”

One of the therapies called for a high degree of effort while the degree of effort in the second therapy was low.
A no-treatment control group was included.

FOUND: Initial 3-week period, high-effort subjects lost slightly more weight than low-effort subjects or controls.
A 6-month follow-up revealed that the effects of effort on weight loss had increased and were highly significant.
Reliable differences remained even 1 year after the initial experimental sessions.

Question 19

Norton et al., (2012): The ‘Ikea effect’?

Answer 19

Norton et al., (2012) tested the question of “Do people prefer products theyve built themselves?”

They had people assemble themselves a product OR be given that product that was built by someone else.

Results:
* Ps preferred products that they assembled themselves.
* More effort went into it so you convince yourself that you like the product more.
* They also found that if the product isnt completed or disassembled then the effect disapears.

Question 20

What is Counter attitudinal advocacy?

Answer 20

This is when people say things that they truely do not believe in

(e.g. Geoff making someone say Justin Bieber is the best artist ever for £20).

Question 21

Festinger & Carlsmith (1959): This study describes the effect of counter attitudinal advocacy really well…

Answer 21

Ps completed a boring task that lasted for an hour. Ps are then asked to describe their experience of the experiment positively to the next participant (who was a confederate).
* BUT, participants were either given £1 to tell the lie or £20 to tell the lie to the next participant
* After being paid and telling the lie, Ps had to rate the extent to which they enjoyed the tasks and would participant in a similar experiment (attitude).

Results:
Being paid only $1 is not sufficient incentive for lying and so those who were paid $1 experienced dissonance
They could only overcome that dissonance by coming to believe that the tasks really were interesting and enjoyable
Being paid $20 provides a reason for the task, and there is, therefore, no dissonance.

Question 22

The impact of Festinger and Carlsmiths (1959) findings around Counter-attitudinal advocacy

Answer 22

This was a time when BEHAVIOURISM dominated psychology. Therefore, along the behaviorist explanations, the higher reward should result in the highest agreement. But, such finding was not found in this study.
* More incentive does not necessarily cause more favourable attitudes

Question 23

What mechanisms underlie induced compliance?

Induced compliance = counter-attitudinal advocacy

Answer 23

• Physiological arousal
• Misattribution of arousal

Question 24

Croyle and Cooper (1983): Physiological arousal in induced compliance

Induced compliance = counter-attitudinal advocacy

Answer 24

They had Ps write an essay advocating a ban on alcohol consumption on campus (getting them to write a counter-attitudinal essay as this would be something students do not agree with)
* some Ps were led to believe that they freely chose this essay Vs. they got given the essay to write (choice made salient or not)
* SCR after essay was written was gathered

Results:
* Ps SCR was higher among individuals who wrote the counter-attitudinal essay and freely believed that they wrote the essay
○ e.g. they made me write this = no attitude change or dissonance
○ e.g. they didn’t make me write this = dissonance is increased which increased physiological arousal
The results are interpreted as support for viewing dissonance as an arousal process. The results are also interpreted as indicating that the subjects misattributed their arousal to the physiological recording device.

Question 25

Zanna & Cooper (1983) and misattribution of arousal in induced compliance

Induced compliance = counter-attitudinal advocacy

Answer 25

Ps were given a pill (sugar pill) and were told that this pill will make them relaxed, aroused or have no effect. Ps then wrote a counter-attitudinal essay where their choice in writing was made salient or not (led to think they chose to write the essay Vs told to wrote the essay).

Results
Arousal condition:
* Those who believed they chose to write the counter-attitduinal essay BUT they are told that the pill increases arousal misattributed the arousal to the pill so they don’t need to change their attitude. Doesn’t produce attitude change

Relaxed condition:
* Those who believed they chose to write the counter-attitduinal essay BUT they are told that the pill decreases arousal cannot misattribute the arousal to the pill because they’re told the pill will make them relaxed (hyper arousal) which leads to greater attitude change

The overall results were as expected. For people in the control group, those in the high choice condition had a bigger attitude change (agree with the ban on alcohol) than the low-choice people. They had nothing to attribute their action on the essay to.

Question 26

What about Hypocrisy in line with dissonance?

Answer 26

Stone et al., (1994) argued that HYPOCRISY elicits dissonance.

Hypocrisy: publicly endorse one behaviour but do the opposite

Question 27

Stone et al., (1994) study on hypocrisy eliciting dissonance

Answer 27

Ps were told that they were trying to get students to think more about safe sex. So they asked Ps to do something to promote safe sex:
- Some are told to do this via video (publicly)
- Some are told that their essay will be read by other students

After, some of the Ps were asked to think about a time when they didn’t engage in safe sex (reminded of a past failure)

IV1: Have they made a public commitment? YES or NO
IV2: were they reminded of a past failure
DV1: number of condoms taken from a “fishbowl”
DV2: 3 months later, proportion of times using condom

They predicited that there would be more preventative behaviour in hypocrisy condition.

Results:
DV 1:
* People in the hypocrisy condition were twice as likely to reach into the bowl for condoms - consistent with this idea that dissonance was experienced, reduced by taking this type of action

DV 2:
* They found that the hypocricy individuals were more liekly to report using condoms over the past three months - BUT could be other explanations.

BUT, those in the hypocrisy condition did report being more likely to engage in safe sex.

Question 28

Son Hing et al., (2002)

Answer 28

Researchers found that the amount of discomfort from hypocrisy is associated with the amount of behaviour change

Question 29

What if you are comfortable with hypocrisy?

Answer 29

Individuals low in SE, if they engage in something that causes hypocrisy, they may not be as bothered by this compared to individual with high SE.

Also, individuals high in mindfullness may be more comfortable with the ambivalence. Such individuals tend not to evaluate their thoughts and are more comfortable with mixed views

Question 30

Peterson, Haynes & Olsen (2008): Hypocrisy study

Answer 30

These researchers assessed whether self esteem moderates the effects of hypocrisy
* All Ps are smokers

IV1: hypocrisy condition or control condition
IV2: High SE, low SE

Findings:
* When looking at the intentions to quit smoking, they found an
○ Effect of hypocrisy (hypocrisy more effective in individuals with high SE)
○ Effect of SE (high SE meant high intentions to quit smoking when in hypocrisy condition)
○ And an interaction between SE and hypocrisy