HPS121 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Cognitive Dissonance, Social Exchange Theory, Normative Social Influence
HPS121 WEEK 11- Social thinking and behaviour
Attributions – judgements about the causes of our own and other people’s behaviour
and outcomes.
Personal attribution (internal) – infers that people’s characteristics cause their
behaviour. E.g. Bill insulted Linda because she’s rude.
Situational attribution (external) – infers that aspects of the situation cause a
behaviour. E.g. Bill was provoked into insulting Linda.
Three types of information determine the attribution we make and decide
whether it’s personal or situational:
Consistency – is the person consistent with their opinion
Distinctiveness – does the person like/dislike a particular subject or do they
like/dislike everything in general.
Consensus – does other people agree with the person’s opinion
Attributional biases –
Fundamental bias – we underestimate the impact of the situation and overestimate
the role of personal factors when explaining other people’s behaviour. E.g. expecting
TV stars to have the same personality in real life as they do in their movies.
Self-serving bias – the tendency to make personal attributions for successes and
situational attributions for failures. I.e. taking credit for successes and none for
failures. The strength of this bias depends on many factors, like the person’s mental
state. Depressed people tend to take very little credit for their successes and blame
themselves for their failures.
Culture influences our attribution; western cultures typically attribute other people’s
behaviours to personal factors, due to emphasis on individualism.
Forming
Primacy effect – refers to our tendency to attach more importance to the initial
information that we learn about a person.
•New information about a person can change our opinion, however, two
things affect it. First, we tend to be most alert to the information we receive first.
Second, initial information may shape how we perceive subsequent information.
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•When perceiving people or objects, our ‘perceptual set’ which is a
readiness to perceive the world in a certain way, powerfully shapes how we interpret a
stimulus. E.g. being told that someone is aloof and meeting them in person and they
don’t interact with you much, will reinforce the information that they are indeed aloof.
i.e. how someone describes something/someone affects our perception of that
object/person.
and maintaining impressions –
Stereotype – a generalised belief about a group or category of people. Stereotypes
can bias our impressions.
Self-fulfilling prophecy – occurs when people’s invalid expectations lead them to
act towards others in a way that brings about the expected behaviours, thereby
confirming their original impression. i.e. seeing what we want to see to confirm our
initial impressions. E.g. seeing the aloof person again and smiling less and standing
away from him leading him to think you are not nice and thus cause him to behave
towards you in an aloof manner.
Attitudes and attitude change –
Attitude – a positive or negative evaluate reaction toward a stimulus, such as a
person, action, object or concept.
Attitudes influence behaviour more strongly when situational factors that
contradict our attitudes are weak. E.g. conformity pressures may lead us to act in ways
that are at odds with our personal beliefs.
Theory of planned behaviour – our intention to engage in a behaviour is
strongest when we have a positive attitude toward that behaviour, when subjective
norms (our perceptions of what people think we should do) support our attitudes and
when we believe that the behaviour is under our control.
Attitudes have a greater influence on behaviour when we are aware of them and
when they are strongly held.
General attitudes best predict general classes of behaviours, and specific attitudes
best predict specific behaviour.
Theory of cognitive dissonance – according to this theory, people strive to
maintain consistency in their cognitions. When two or more cognitions contradict each
other (e.g. I’m a truthful person but I just told that student those boring tasks were
interesting for $20), the person experiences an uncomfortable state of tension, called
‘cognitive dissonance,’ and becomes motivated to reduce this dissonance
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(disagreement). The theory predicts that in order to reduce this dissonance, people will
change one of their cognitions or add new ones. E.g. the person who lied for money
could add a new cognition of ‘who wouldn’t lie for $20’ to justify their behaviour.
Counter attitudinal behaviour – behaviour that’s inconsistent with our attitude. It
produces dissonance if we perceive that our actions were freely chosen rather than
forced.
Dissonance doesn’t always change behaviour. People can justify their behaviour by
finding external justification, by noting that others have done it too, or making other
excuses.
Self-perception theory – we make inferences about our own attitudes based on
how we behave. i.e. doing something that contradicts our attitude to that thing then
thinking that deep down we probably don’t mind it.
A similarity between the cognitive dissonance and self-perception theory is that
our behaviours can influence our attitude. A dissimilarity is that according to the
cognitive dissonance theory we experience heightened physiological arousal (i.e.
tension) when we engage in counter attitudinal behaviour.
Persuasion – persuaders try to influence our beliefs and attitudes so that we
behave as they want us too. There are three aspects of the persuasion process:
Communicator credibility – how believable we perceive the communicator to be.
Credibility has two major components; trustworthiness and expertise. The most
effective persuader is the one who appears to be an expert and be presenting in a
truthful and unbiased manner.
The message – research indicates that the ‘two-sided refutational approach’ is
most effective in convincing an audience. A two-sided viewpoint message will
convince the audience that the message isn’t biased.
The audience – there are two basic routes to persuading the audience:
× Central route to persuasion – occurs when people carefully think about the
message and are influenced because they found it to be compelling.
× Peripheral route to persuasion – occurs when people don’t scrutinise the message
but are influenced mostly by other factors such as the speaker’s attractiveness or a
message’s emotional appeal.
Social norms, conformity and obedience –
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Document Summary
Attributions judgements about the causes of our own and other people"s behaviour and outcomes. Personal attribution (internal) infers that people"s characteristics cause their behaviour. Situational attribution (external) infers that aspects of the situation cause a behaviour. Three types of information determine the attribution we make and decide whether it"s personal or situational: Consistency is the person consistent with their opinion. Distinctiveness does the person like/dislike a particular subject or do they like/dislike everything in general. Consensus does other people agree with the person"s opinion. Fundamental bias we underestimate the impact of the situation and overestimate the role of personal factors when explaining other people"s behaviour. Tv stars to have the same personality in real life as they do in their movies. Self-serving bias the tendency to make personal attributions for successes and situational attributions for failures. I. e. taking credit for successes and none for failures. The strength of this bias depends on many factors, like the person"s mental state.
