Serenity

* All the following abstractions are excerpted from <Social Psychology>, David G. Myers, 12th edition

Chapter 04 — Behavior and Attitudes. 

— How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behavior?

• How do our inner attitudes (evaluative reactions toward some object or person, often rooted in beliefs) relate to our external behavior? Although popular wisdom stresses the impact of attitudes on behavior, in fact, attitudes are often poor predictors of behaviors. Moreover, changing people's attitudes typically fails to produce much change in their behavior. These findings inspired social psychologists to find out why we so often fail to play the game we talk.

• The answer: Our expressions of attitudes and our behaviors are each subject to many influences. Our attitudes will predict our behavior (1) if these "other influence" are minimized, (2) if the attitude corresponds very closely to the predicted behavior (as in voting studies), and (3) if the attitude is potent (because something reminds us of it, or because we acquired it by direct experience). Under these conditions, what we think and feel predicts what we do.

— When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?

• The attitude-action relation also works in the reverse direction: We are likely not only to think ourselves into action but also to act ourselves into a way of thinking. When we act, we amplify the idea underlying what we have done, especially when we feel responsible for it. Many streams of evidence converge on this principle. The actions prescribed by social roles mold the attitudes of the role players.

• Similarly, what we say or write can strongly influence attitudes that we subsequently hold.

• Research on the foot-in-the-door phenomenon reveals that committing a small act makes people more willing to do a larger one later.

• Actions also affect our moral attitudes: That which we have done, even if it is evil, we tend to justify as right.

• Similarly, our racial and political behaviors help shape our social consciousness: We not only stand up for what we believe, we also believe in what we have stood up for.

• Political and social movements may legislate behavior designed to lead to attitude change on a mass scale.

— Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?

Three competing theories explain why our actions affect our attitude reports.

• Self-presentation theory assumes that people, especially those who self-monitor their behavior hoping to create good impressions, will adapt their attitude reports to appear consistent with their actions. The available evidence confirms that people do adjust their attitude statements out of concern for what other people will think. But it also shows that some genuine attitude change occurs.

Two of these theories propose that our actions trigger genuine attitude change.

• Dissonance theory explains this attitude change by assuming that we feel tension after acting contrary to our attitudes or making difficult decisions. To reduce that arousal, we internally justify our behavior. Dissonance theory further proposes that the less external justification we have for our undesirable actions, the more we feel responsible for them, and thus the more dissonance arises and the more attitudes change.

• Self-perception theory assumes that when our attitudes are weak, we simply observe our behavior and its circumstances, then infer our attitudes. One interesting implication of self-perception theory is the "overjustification effect": Rewarding people to do what they like doing anyway can turn their pleasure into drudgery (if the reward leads them to attribute their behavior to the reward).

• Evidence supports predictions from both theories, suggesting that each describes what happens under certain conditions.