Chp 4: Behavior and Attitudes – Flashcards

*"Moral hypocrisy": appearing moral while avoiding the costs of being so

*Our attitudes do predict our behavior when these other influences on what we say and do are minimal, when the attitude is specific to the behavior, and when the attitude is potent

*A computer-driven assessment of implicit attitudes *The test uses reaction times to measure people's automatic associations between attitude objects and evaluative words *Easier pairings (and faster responses) are taken to indicate stronger unconscious associations *Implicit biases are pervasive *People differ in implicit bias *People are often unaware of their implicit biases *One area deep int he brain (the amygdala, a center for threat perception) is active as we automatically evaluate social stimuli *The IAT is not reliable enough for use in assessing and comparing individuals

*The effects of an attitude become more apparent when we look at a person's aggregate or average behavior than when we consider isolated facts

*Knowing people's intended behaviors and their perceived self-efficacy and control *Inducing new intentions induces new behavior *To change habits through persuasion, we must alter people's attitudes toward specific practices

*When we minimize other influences upon our attitude statements and on our behavior *When the attitude is specifically relevant to the observed behavior

*Our attitudes become potent if we think about them *Self-conscious people usually are in touch with their attitudes *The attitudes that best predict behavior are accessible (easily brought to mind) as well as stable *When attitudes are forged by experiences, not just by hearsay, they are more accessible, more enduring, and more likely to guide actions

*A set of norms that defines how people in a given social position aught to behave *Behavior is a product of both the individual person and the situaton

*People often adapt what they say to please their listeners *When there is no compelling external explanation for one's words (ex. bribed)

*The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request

*A tactic for getting people to agree to something *People who agree to an initial request will often still comply when the requester ups the ante *People who receive only the costly request are less likely to comply with it

*A trifling evil act can whittle down one's moral sensitivity, making it easier to perform a worse act *We tend not only to hurt those we dislike but also to dislike those we hurt *Our character is reflected in what we do when we think no one is looking

*We see making a good impression as a way to gain social and material rewards, to feel better about ourselves, even to become more secure in our social identities *No one wants to look foolishly inconsistent. To avoid seeming so, we express attitudes that match our actions

*Our attitudes change because we are motivated to maintain consistency among our cognitions

*Tension that arises when one is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions *Dissonance (lack of harmony) may occur when we realize that we have, with little justification, acted contrary to our attitudes or made a decision favoring one alternative despite reasons favoring another

*The tendency to seek information and media that agree with one's views and to avoid dissonant information

*Reduction of dissonance (discomfort) by internally justifying one's behavior when external justification is "insufficient"

*The theory that when we are unsure of our attitudes, we infer them so much as would someone observing us- by looking at our behavior and the circumstances under which it occurs *We infer our emotions by observing our bodies and behaviors

*The tendency of facial expressions to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger or happiness *Ex: Botox messes with embodied cognition *To sense how other people are feeling, let your own face mirror their expressions

*When external inducements are insufficient to justify our behavior, we reduce dissonance internally by justifying the behavior

*People explain their behavior by noting the conditions under which it occurs *Unnecessary reward can have a hidden cost *Rewarding people for doing what they already enjoy may lead them to attribute their action to the reward

*The result of bribing people to do what they already like doing; they may then see their actions as externally controlled rather than intrinsically appealing *An unanticipated reward does not diminish intrinsic interest, because people can still attribute their actions to their own motivation *When rightly administered, rewards may also boost creativity *Rewards that seek to control people and lead them to believe it was the reward that caused their effort diminish the intrinsic appeal of an enjoyable task

*People often experience a self-image threat after engaging in an undesirable behavior *They can compensate by affirming another aspect of the self *Threaten people's self-concept in one domain, and they will compensate either by refocusing or by doing goof deeds in some other domain *Self-integrity and self-worth