SPY - Our Attitudes Towards Others Lesson

 

Social Judgements and Attitudes

Social psychologists seek to understand the connections between people, using the scientific method to study how people think about, relate to, and influence one another. In this first section, you will learn about how people think about one another.

Attribution Theory

As humans, we constantly seek to understand the people around us, consciously or unconsciously asking ourselves what makes a person act a certain way. In the late 1950's, Psychologist Fritz Heider proposed a theory about how people explain each other's behavior: attribution theory. Attribution theory says that an observer either attributes an observed behavior to a stable, enduring trait (a dispositional attribution) or attributes the observed behavior to the situation (a situational attribution). In other words, if you see someone walk into class late, you would either decide that person is late because he is a lazy person (a dispositional attribution) or decide that person is late because some situation made him late, like traffic or a power outage (a situational attribution).

When observing strangers' behavior, we are more likely to decide that observed behavior is part of their personality (aka disposition). Overestimating the role of personality (and underestimating the role of the situation) in causing the behavior is known as the fundamental attribution error. I'm likely to assume you're a quiet person because I only see you when you're quiet in my first-period class, but you may be the loudest kid at soccer practice when it's afternoon and you're with your team. The situation matters, but humans have this flawed tendency to overestimate the role of personality in determining behavior.

Attribution theory is applied to our lives and affects the decisions we make. Is that girl in class being nice because she's a good person (dispositional attribution) or because she wants something from me (situational attribution)? Is the person running for class president going to be as responsible as they're claiming to be (dispositional) or is this all an act to get elected (situational)? Is that person homeless because she's lazy (dispositional) or because she's had some bad circumstances in her life (situational)? Our willingness to assume dispositional or situational attribution affects the choices we make regarding the people we judge. In the case of the homeless, we might try to help change someone's circumstances by working with a charity organization if we make a situational attribution, but we would probably just turn away if we make a dispositional attribution.

Cognitive Dissonance

Do you think your attitudes are likely to affect your actions? Yes, that probably makes sense to you. If you dislike chocolate, you're unlikely to purchase a Hershey's bar at the store. Your attitude toward chocolate affected your actions.

You may be surprised to find that your actions can also affect your attitudes. This tendency for actions to affect attitudes can be explained through cognitive dissonance theory, which says that people experience dissonance (uncomfortable tension) when their actions and attitudes don't match, and because they can't undo their actions, they have to change their attitude to relieve the tension. If you think it's wrong to talk badly about people, but one day you gossip about a friend, you might feel uncomfortable because your action doesn't match your attitude. Cognitive dissonance theory explains that you can't undo your action, so you change your attitude... you might decide it's okay to talk badly about friends under certain circumstances. And according to this theory, now it will be easier for you to talk badly about friends in the future because your attitude has changed.

Sometimes the role you play, as a student or employee or boyfriend or scientist, can also affect your attitudes. When you start your new role, you're careful to follow the social expectations, although you might feel like you're acting. When I started teaching, it felt odd to tell groups of people when to speak and when to write and when to read, but after a short while, my role started to feel normal to me.

One famous social psychology study performed by Stanford Professor Philip Zimbardo showed how playing a role can affect attitudes. In his experiment, Zimbardo randomly assigned college students to act as either prisoners or prison guards. The guards were given mirrored sunglasses, uniforms, and clubs, and they were asked to take charge of the prisoners. The prisoners were forced to wear nightgown-type outfits and kept in prison-cell-type rooms on the basement floor of a college building. Within a couple of days of playing these roles, the students assigned to be prison guards started to create cruel and degrading practices (forcing prisoners to wear bags over their heads to travel down the hall to the bathroom or forcing prisoners to sleep without blankets). Students assigned to play prisoners experienced emotional breakdowns or passively resigned themselves to the bad treatment. Zimbardo was forced to end the experiment after only six days because the students' behaviors were so out of control. Acting out the role led to a change in students' attitudes and led to more intense actions.

The foot-in-the-door phenomenon also explains how a person's small actions can slowly change their attitudes. The foot-in-the-door phenomenon is the human tendency to agree to a larger request after going through with a smaller one, and it works because of cognitive dissonance.

A small act makes it much easier to go through with the next, bigger step. Dozens of experiments show that this technique works, both for good and for bad. If someone gives in to a request to make an offensive comment to an innocent victim, the person is likely to harm the victim in more intense ways. When customers agree to test drive cars, they're more likely to purchase them. In one interesting experiment, researchers asked homeowners to place a large, unattractive Be a Safe Driver sign in their yards, and only 17 percent agreed. Researchers then asked a different group of homeowners to place a three-inch Be a Safe Driver sign on their mailboxes, and almost all agreed. Later, 76 percent of the homeowners with the three-inch signs agreed to place the large, ugly sign in their yards. Agreeing to the small sign didn't seem like a big deal, but it ultimately made these homeowners more likely to go through with a bigger request. It's even possible that your health teacher was right when he told you about the dangers of using "gateway drugs" - because a small action makes it a lot easier to go through with a larger action later.

Cognitive dissonance and foot-in-the-door phenomenon can change us. Telling small lies makes it easier to tell bigger lies later on. Cheating on small assignments causes you to change your attitude about cheating on bigger assignments. We can also be changed for the better through our actions. If you want to feel better about yourself, start saying kind things to yourself in the place of the negative thoughts you have. If you want to be a kinder person, make yourself say nice things to others or help others or volunteer for a nonprofit organization. These behaviors might feel weird at first, but you'll quickly change your attitudes so they become your new normal.

Complete the practice with attitudes activity below:

 

IMAGES CREATED BY GAVS OR OPENSOURCE