*An attitude based on people’s beliefs about the properties of an attitude object.*
Implicit attitudes are rooted in people’s childhood experiences, while explicit attitudes are formed in recent experiences (Rudman, Phelan & Heppen, 2007).
IAT: a test that measures the speed with which people can pair a target face (e.g. Black/White, old/young; Asian/White) with positive or negative stimuli (e.g. the words honest or evil) reflecting unconscious (implicit) prejudices.
People respond more quickly when white faces are paired with positive words and vice versa.
*A basic form of learning in which one stimulus, initially neutral, acquires the capacity to evoke reactions through repeated pairing with another stimulus.*
*A form of learning whereby a behavior followed by a positive response is more likely to be repeated.*
E.g. Insko (1965) showed that participants’ responses to an attitude survey were influenced by positive feedback on the responses they gave a week earlier.
Reinforcing one’s attitudes with positive feedback means that the attitudes are more likely to survive and be expressed on other occasions.
Several factors, including subjective norms, attitudes towards the behavior and perceived behavioral control, determine behavioral intentions concerning the behavior, and, in turn, intentions strongly determine whether the behavior is performed.
*The discomfort that is caused when two cognitions conflict, or when our behavior conflicts with our attitudes.*
Dissonance is most painful, and we are most motivated to reduce it, when one of the dissonant cognitions challenge our self-esteem (Aronson, 1969)
#### Three ways to reduce dissonance:
- Changing our behavior to make it consistent with the cognition/attitude.
- Attempting to justify our behavior through changing one of the dissonant cognition/attitude.
- Attempting to justify our behavior by adding new cognitions.
#### Less-leads-to-more effect
*Less reasons or rewards for an action often leads to greater attitude change.*
**Festinger and Carlsmith’s (1959) experiment: **
Performing a dull task for an hour: turning wooden knobs.
Effect of preconceptions on performance.
Manipulation: \$1, \$20 or no lie.
Results?
#### Insufficient Justification
*The less incentive one has for performing a counter-attitudinal behavior, the more dissonance is experienced.*
Needs to reduce the dissonance internally Vs Overjustification effect.
The effect of promising a reward for doing what one already likes to do
the person may now see the reward, rather than intrinsic interest, as the motivation for performing the task.
Children promised a reward for playing an interesting puzzle or toy
**Four conditions to produce dissonance:**
1. The person has to realize that the *inconsistency has negative consequences*– e.g. the smokers realize smoking causes ill health
2. The person has to *take responsibility* for the action – e.g. smokers are freely responsible for the decision to smoke
3. The person has to *experience physiological arousal*– e.g. smoking causes anxiety as it could cause ill health
4. The person has to *attribute the feeling of physiological arousal to the action itself* - e.g. smokers need to be able to link the feeling and the behaviour
#### Alternative strategies to resolve/reduce dissonance
- Change the behaviour to more consistent with our attitude.
E.g. smoking fathers quit smoking.
- Acquiring new information to support our behaviour.
E.g. finding evidence that smoking away from the children would do no harm.
- Deciding that the dissonance is not important.
Smoking in the presence of children is not important.
#### Indirect methods to reduce dissonance
**To restore positive self-evaluations:**
*Self-affirmation – restoring positive self-evaluations that are threatened by the dissonance.*
E.g. Smoking father does not focus on his smoking behavior; but a responsible father as he earns the living.
#### Dissonance can be a tool for beneficial changes in behavior
*Hypocrisy induction – The arousal of dissonance by having individuals make statements that run counter to their behaviors and then reminding them of the inconsistency between what they advocated and their behavior.*
The purpose is to lead individuals to more responsible behavior.
Aronson, Fried, & Stone (1991); Stone et al. (1994)
Asking college students to compose a speech describing the dangers of AIDS, advocating the use of condoms (safe sex)
Group 1: students merely composed the arguments
Group 2: after composing the arguments, the students were to recite them in front of a video camera and were told that the audience were high school students
