Attitudes, behaviour, and self awareness.

Question 1

What is the big question when it comes to attitudes and behaviour?

Answer 1

Do our attitudes affect our behaviour or do our behaviours affect our attitudes?

Question 2

What do studies show when it comes to what comes first? (Attitudes or behaviour)

Answer 2

Attitudes do affect behaviour, but not as much as you’d expect. It depends on how specific the attitude is.

Question 3

What is an example of specificity of attitudes affecting behaviour?

Answer 3

Whether women’s attitudes towards birth control affected their use.
“What is your attitude towards birth control?” r=.08
“What is your attitude towards using the birth control pill in the next two years?” r=0.57

Question 4

How does salience of attitudes play into the relationship?

Answer 4

Salient attitudes will affect behaviour.

Question 5

What are the two states of focus?

Answer 5

Externally focused and internally focused.

Question 6

What is internal focus?

Answer 6

Treating yourself as the object of attention, focused inward on yourself.

Question 7

What is external focus?

Answer 7

Focusing on external factors, something other than yourself is the center of attention.

Question 8

What can lead to a shift in focus?

Answer 8

Spontaneous shifts and situation cues.

Question 9

What process do you go through when you become internally focused?

Answer 9

You compare yourself to your desired state. If your current state is your desired state, then you exit self-focus. If your current state does not equal your desired state, then you have negative affect.

Question 10

What is done to reduce negative affect?

Answer 10

Do something to reduce the discrepancy between current and desired state
OR
Exit the situation that is promoting self-focus.

Question 11

What did Carver and Scheier (1979) hypothesize?

Answer 11

When people are internally focused and there is a discrepancy, they make a calculation as to whether you’re likely to reduce the discrepancy or not.

Question 12

If likelihood of reducing discrepancy is high, what will happen?

Answer 12

They will reduce the discrepancy.

Question 13

If likelihood of reducing discrepancy is low, what will happen?

Answer 13

You will exit the self-focus state.

Question 14

What is the salience hypothesis regarding attitudes and behaviour?

Answer 14

When people are more self-focused, their attitudes are more salient, and therefore should be used more as an ideal for how to behave.

Question 15

What is the most common way to manipulate self-awareness in a laboratory?

Answer 15

Most common: put people in front of a mirror.

Less common: make people believe they are being filmed or recorded.

Question 16

What is an implication of the ideas of self-awareness and self-concept salience?

Answer 16

If we’re self-aware, then we should act more morally.

Question 17

What moral salience experiment was done by Deiner et al., (1976, 1979)?

Answer 17

• Participants were given an test, and told they had 15 minutes to do it in
• They were on an honour system, they self-timed.
• Half had a mirror, half did not.
• The half that had a mirror (self aware) only had 7% work beyond the time limit.
• The half without the mirror (not self aware) had 70% of participants go beyond the time limit.

Question 18

How have the ideas of self-awareness and moral salience been applied in real life?

Answer 18

Mirrors in stores used to deter theft.

Question 19

Other than running from whatever caused self-focus, how else do people exit the self-focused state?

Answer 19

Focusing on something else or drinking alcohol.