Attitude

Attitude can also mean the position of the body or way of carrying oneself. Attitude is a key concept in social psychology. In academic psychology parlance, attitudes are positive or negative views of an "attitude object": a person, behaviour, or event. Research has shown that people can also be "ambivalent" towards a target, meaning that they simultaneously possess a positive and a negative attitude towards it. There is also a great deal of new research emerging on "implicit" attitudes, which are essentially attitudes that people are not consciously aware of, but that can be revealed through sophisticated experiments using people's response times to stimuli (how quickly they can make judgements about them). Implicit and "explicit" attitudes (i.e. the ones people report when they consciously ask themselves how much they like a thing) both seem to affect people's behaviour, although in different ways. They tend not to be strongly associated with each other, although in some cases they are. The exact relationship between them is not currently well understood. Unlike personality, attitudes are expected to change as a function of experience, and there are numerous theories of attitude formation and attitude change, including: 1.Dissonance-reduction theory, associated with Leon Festinger 2.Self-perception theory, associated with Daryl Bem 3.Persuasion

Cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is a condition first proposed by the psychologist Leon Festinger in 1956, relating to his hypothesis of cognitive consistency. Cognitive dissonance is a state of opposition between cognitions. For the purpose of cognitive consistency theory, cognitions are defined as being an attitude, emotion, belief or value, although more recent theories, such as ecological cognition suggest that they can also be a goal, plan, or an interest. In brief, the theory of cognitive dissonance holds that contradicting cognitions serve as a driving force that compels the human mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, so as to minimize the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions. The main criticism of the cognitive consistency hypothesis is that it is impossible to verify or falsify by experiment. Even so, experiments have attempted to quantify this hypothetical drive. Opponents of this hypothesis contend that relations between cognitions can be irrelevant or not present, and cite the apparent ability of many human beings to reconcile mutually exclusive or contradictory beliefs with no apparent stress. In economics this term is also called buyer's remorse. This post-purchase behavior is more likely to happen when the purchase is a more expensive one. The consumer may experience some regrets or questioning as to whether the purchase was a good one. This is the fifth step in the decision making process. Marketers can help eliminate this by properly selling the product and doing a follow-up to help reinforce the buyer's "good" decision.

Conflicting cognitions: cognitive dissonance

Once two competing cognitions are held simultaneously, the individual can be said to be in a state of "cognitive dissonance". For example: The individual purchases a given brand of washing machine, having been advised by a trusted co-worker that said machine is the best. Subsequent to this purchase, the buyer is exposed to another cognition, but one which informs her that there is a higher quality, less expensive washing machine on the market. Moreover, the new source is even more trustworthy than the well-meaning co-worker, e.g. "Consumer Reports" or "Good Housekeeping". Instantly, this conflicting cognition creates an imbalance between itself and the original cognition. This conflicted state of mind will, necessarily, seek to attain psychological consonance, i.e. a balance between competing cognitions. Two kinds of dissonance Theorists have identified two different kinds of cognitive dissonance that are relevant to decision making: pre-decisional dissonance and post-decisional dissonance. Pre-decisional dissonance might be analogous to what Freud called "compensation." When a test showed that subjects had latent sexist attitudes, they later awarded a female a larger reward than a male in what they were told was a different study. Researchers hypothesized that the larger reward reduced dissonance by attempting to show that they were not sexist in the later decision. An alternate explanation, suggested by critics of the cognitive consistency hypothesis, is that the subjects may simply have been trying to influence the attitudes of the testers. The more well-known form of dissonance, however, is post-decisional dissonance. Many studies have shown that people with compulsive disorders like gambling will subjectively reinforce decisions or commitments they have already made. In one simple experiment, experimenters found that

bettors at a horse track believed bets were more likely to succeed immediately after being placed. According to the hypothesis, the possibility of being wrong is dissonance-arousing, so people will change their perceptions to make their decisions seem better. This ignores the fundamental principle in decision making, that a decision is to be made if it will produce a better outcome than the alternatives. It also ignores the known potential of afterthought to produce novel thinking that dispels impulse behaviour. This is the basis of the foot-in-the-door technique in sales, and possibly confirmation bias. Post-decisional dissonance may be increased by the importance of the issue, the length of time the subject takes to make or avoid the decision, and the extent to which the decision could be reversed. Further propositions by Festinger Festinger proposed that cognitive dissonance is a "negative drive state", a similar psychological tension to hunger and thirst and that people will seek to resolve this tension. Reduction of cognitive dissonance, Festinger believed, is good because one feels better, and because one can come closer to consonance by eliminating contradictions. On the other hand some of the ways of reduction of cognitive dissonance involve a distortion of the truth, which may cause wrong decisions. The harder way of changing favourable cognitions may in the longer run be better. When confronted with two belief cognitions that contradict each other, Festinger suggests the dissonance can be resolved by finding and adding a third piece of information relevant to the two beliefs. For example, if Sam believes that elected officials are trustworthy, but also believes that elected

officials have broken his trust, then the cognitive dissonance can be resolved by discovering that all elected officials lie. This enables Sam to (it is to be hoped) still hold that elected officials are still largely trustworthy, but that they also all lie.

Self-perception theory and Daryl Bem

Daryl Bem
Daryl J. Bem is a noted social psychologist at Cornell University, USA, and the originator of the self-perception theory of attitude change. Bem received a BA from Reed College in physics in 1960. He later dropped out of graduate study in physics at MIT to pursue social psychology, for which he earned a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1964. He has also carried out research on Psi phenomena (a technical term for "ESP"), group decision making, handwriting analysis, sexual orientation, and personality theory and assessment. Bem is perhaps best known for his theory of "self-perception" as the most oft-cited competitor to Leon Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory. According to the self-perception account, people infer their attitudes from their own behavior much as an outside behavior might, so a person asked to give a pro-Fidel Castro speech would subsequently view themselves as being more in favor of Castro. He is also known in parapsychology for his defense of the ganzfeld experiment as empirical evidence of a mild, but significant "psi", more commonly known as psychic, phenomenon.

Self-perception theory is an account of attitude change developed by psychologist Daryl Bem. It asserts that we only have that knowledge of our own behavior and its causation that another person can have, and that we therefore develop our attitudes by observing our own behavior and concluding what attitudes must have caused them. Self-perception theory differs from cognitive dissonance theory in that it does not hold that people experience a "negative drive state" called "dissonance" which they seek to relieve. Instead, people simply infer their attitudes from their own behavior in the same way that an outside observer might. In this way it combines dissonance theory with attribution theory. Bem ran his own version of Festinger and Carlsmith's famous cognitive dissonance experiment. Subjects listened to a tape of a man enthusiastically describing a tedious peg-turning task. Some subjects were told that the man had been paid $20 for his testimonial and another group was told that he was paid $1. Those in the latter condition thought that the man must have enjoyed the task more than those in the $20 condition. Bem argued that the subjects did not judge the man's attitude in terms of cognitive dissonance phenomena, and that therefore any attitude change the man might have had in that situation was the result of the subject's own self-perception. Also, cognitive dissonance theory cannot explain attitude change that occurs when there is no upsetting dissonance state, such as that which occurred to subjects in studies of the overjustification effect. Whether cognitive dissonance or self-perception is a more useful theory is a topic of considerable controversy and a large body of literature, with no clear winner. There are some circumstances where either theory is preferred, but it is traditional to use the terminology of cognitive dissonance theory by default.

Persuasion
Persuasion is the process of convincing someone to believe or act on something. Dissuasion is the process of convincing someone to not believe or act on something. The word "persuasion" is usually used in distinction to coercion, which involves the use of violence or other kinds of force, or the threat of such force in order to get someone to act against his will.

Methods of persuasion
By appeal to reason: Logical argument Logic Scientific method Proof

By appeal to emotion: Advertising Faith Presentation and Imagination Propaganda Seduction Tradition

Aids to persuasion: Body language Sales techniques

Other techniques, which may or may not work: Deception Hypnosis Subliminal advertising Power (sociology)

Coercive techniques, some of which are highly controversial and/or not scientifically proven to be effective: Brainwashing Coercive persuasion Mind control Torture

Attribution theory
Attribution theory is a field of social psychology, which was born out of the theoritical models of Fritz Heider, Harold Kelley, Edward E. Jones, and Lee Ross. Attribution theory is concerned with the ways in which people explain (or attribute) the behavior of others. It explores how individuals "attribute" causes to events and how this cognitive perception affects their motivation. Think of "explanation" as a synonym and "why" as the question to be answered. The theory divides the way people attribute causes to events into two types. "External" or "situational" attribution assigns causality to an outside factor, such as the weather, whereas "internal" or "dispositional" attribution assigns causality to factors within the person, such as their own level of intelligence or other variables that make the individual responsible for the event.

People often make self serving attributions. So, if something good happens to themselves or someone they like, they tend to see it as having an internal, stable cause ("I aced the test because I'm so smart), and when bad things happen to themselves or people they like they are more likely to make external unstable attributions ("I did badly on the test because it was so hard, and I had a headache") Similarly, they will attribute good things happening to a person that they do not like to a situational factor (they got lucky) and something bad happening to a dispositional factor (they are stupid). This is also known as Fundamental Attribution Error.

An example of this, in politics, could be the collapse of the Soviet Union. US leaders attributed it to something dispositional about themselves (we were strong and steadfast, democracy persevered). Also, oftentimes, failing Third-World economies are attributed to corrupt leaders and other dispositional attributions rather than a situation attribution, such as the international system. There seem to be features that people look for when making attributions, such as universality ("does everyone do this, or just the person I'm watching?") and uniqueness ("do they do it this way every time, or was this just an aberration?"). There is evidence from people like John Bargh and Tory Higgins, and Srull and Wyer that when people see an act, they automatically make personality attributions, and start mentally cataloging that person by that label. Dan Gilbert has a theory of attribution which says that when you see people do something, you make an automatic fast attribution to their personality, and that if circumstances warrant, you can then slowly "discount" the attribution to a feature of the environment ("whoa, he's not a coward, even I would run away if a bear started gnawing on my arm like that"). Attributions for events can change a person's behaviour, and many theories such as cognitive dissonance rely on it. So, for example, in a classic dissonance paradigm, if a person believes that they did something counterattitudinal (say, a student writing an essay in favour of raising tuition prices), because they CHOSE to do it (i.e. they make an internal attribution), then they tend to change their mind and believe that they really do support higher tuition. If, however, they write that same counterattitudinal essay but they believe they were FORCED to write it (i.e. they make an external attribution for their behaviour), then they are unlikely to change their attitude. Similarly, if someone is paid for a job, they attribute the fact they

are doing the job to the fact they are making money for it, rather than to intrinsic factors, such as enjoyment, and subsequently they will actually think that they enjoy the task less, and will be less likely to spontaneously chose to do it again in the future. Studies have shown that adding an external reward to a task previously rewarded only internally makes people less intrinsically motivated to perform that task. However, in some circumstances, extrinsic factors can cause positive changes in behaviour. If an individual believes that they have earned the reward or punishment for intrinsic reasons, then that might effect a positive change in behaviour. It is when the reason for the reward is attributed to external factors that the behaviour change might not be in the desired direction.

References:
Festinger, Leon; co-authors Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter When Prophecy fails a Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World (1956) Bem, D. J. (1967). Self-perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena. Psychological Review, 74, 183200. Heider, Fritz. (1958). The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0471368334