1Copyright 2010 McGraw-Hill Companies

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Attitude

Favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction toward something or someone

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How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behavior?People’s expressed attitudes hardly predicted

their varying behaviorsMoral hypocrisy

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How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behavior?When Attitudes Predict Behavior

When social influences on what we say are minimal Implicit

Implicit association test (IAT) Explicit

When other influences on behavior are minimal

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How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behavior?When Attitudes Predict Behavior

When attitudes specific to the behavior are examined

When attitudes are potent Self-awareness Forge strong attitudes through experience

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When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? Role Playing

Role Set of norms that defines how people in a given

social position ought to behave Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford’s prison study

Abu-Ghraib controversy

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When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? When Saying Becomes Believing

When there is no compelling external explanation for one’s words, saying becomes believing

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When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon

Tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request Low-ball technique

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 Used by some car dealers

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When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? Evil and Moral Acts

Wartime Actions and attitudes feed on each other When evil behavior occurs we tend to justify it as

right Peacetime

Moral action, especially when chosen rather than coerced, affects moral thinking

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When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes? Interracial Behavior and Racial Attitudes

Racial behavior help shape our social consciousness By doing, not saying racial attitudes were changed

Legislating morality

Social MovementsPolitical and social movements may legislate

behavior designed to lead to attitude change on a mass scale

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Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?Self-Presentation: Impression Management

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

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Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance

Tension that arises when one is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions To reduce this tension, we adjust our thinking

Insufficient justification Reduction of dissonance by internally justifying

one’s behavior when external justification is “insufficient”

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Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance

Dissonance after decisions Deciding-becomes-believing effect Can breed overconfidence

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Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?Self-Perception Theory

When we are unsure of our attitudes, we infer them much as would someone observing us, by looking at our behavior and the circumstances under which it occurs Expressions and attitude Overjustification and intrinsic motivations

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Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?

Figure 4.7