PSYC 023 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: When Prophecy Fails, Moe Williams, Operationalization
Document Summary
Lots of research on using attitudes to predict behaviours (we are bad at this) Introduced the idea that we can use behaviour to predict (i. e. change) attitudes. Doomsday cult field study (festinger et al. ) The world was supposed to end on a specific day but then it didn"t. Quit the cult and feel like an idiot. Stay in the cult and find a way to feel good about it. They decided to listen to the cult leader who said he had a message from god . The message allowed them to feel good about being in the cult, even though the doomsday didn"t happen. When dissonance happens we try to distort the most distortable thing i am an idiot . Behaviour is at odds with attitudes or self-concept. Dissonance arises as a result of psychological inconsistency. Creating a motivation to do anything we can to get rid of it.
