ACTIONS AFFECT ATTITUDES AND SELF-PRESENTATION AND SELF PERCEPTION

 What actions affect attitudes? Also explain self-presentation and self-perception

ATTITUDE - INTRODUCTION

An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for something. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event— this is often referred to as the attitude object. People can also be conflicted or ambivalent toward an object, meaning that they simultaneously possess both positive and negative attitudes toward the item in question.

Attitudes are judgments. They develop on the ABC model (affect, behavior, and cognition). The affective response is an emotional response that expresses an individual's degree of preference for an entity. The behavioral intention is a verbal indication or typical behavioral tendency of an individual. The cognitive response is a cognitive evaluation of the entity that constitutes an individual's beliefs about the object. Most attitudes are the result of either direct experience or observational learning from the environment.

 

ATTITUDE CHANGE

Attitudes can be changed through persuasion and we should understand attitude change as a response to communication. Experimental research into the factors that can affect the persuasiveness of a message include:

Target Characteristics:       These are characteristics that refer to the person who receives and processes a message. One such trait is intelligence - it seems that more intelligent people are less easily persuaded by one-sided messages. Another variable that has been studied in this category is self-esteem. Although it is sometimes thought that those higher in self-esteem are less easily persuaded, there is some evidence that the relationship between self-esteem and persuasibility is actually curvilinear, with people of moderate self-esteem being more easily persuaded than both those of high and low self-esteem levels (Rhodes & Woods, 1992). The mind frame and mood of the target also plays a role in this process.

Source Characteristics:       The major source characteristics are expertise, trustworthiness and interpersonal attraction or attractiveness. The credibility of a perceived message has been found to be a key variable here; if one reads a report about health and believes it came from a professional medical journal, one may be more easily persuaded than if one believes it is from a popular newspaper. Some psychologists have debated whether this is a long-lasting effect and Hovland and Weiss (1951) found the effect of telling people that a message came from a credible source disappeared after several weeks (the so-called "sleeper effect"). Whether there is a sleeper effect is controversial. Perceived wisdom is that if people are informed of the source of a message before hearing it, there is less likelihood of a sleeper effect than if they are told a message and then told its source.

Message Characteristics:    The nature of the message plays a role in persuasion. Sometimes presenting both sides of a story is useful to help change attitudes.

Cognitive Routes:                A message can appeal to an individual's cognitive evaluation to help change an attitude. In the central route to persuasion the individual is presented with the data and motivated to evaluate the data and arrive at an attitude changing conclusion. In the peripheral route to attitude change, the individual is encouraged to not look at the content but at the source. This is commonly seen in modern advertisements that feature celebrities. In some cases, physician, doctors or experts are used. In other cases film stars are used for their attractiveness.

AFFECTS OF ACTIONS ON ATTITUDES:

Three theories explain why our actions affect our attitude reports.  Self-presentation theory assumes that people, especially those who self-monitor their behavior hoping to create a good impression, will adapt their attitude reports to appear consistent with their actions.  The available evidence confirms that people do adjust their attitude statements out of concern for what other people will think but also shows that some genuine attitude change occurs.

Two theories propose that our actions trigger genuine attitude change.  Dissonance theory explains this attitude change by assuming that we feel tension after acting contrary to our attitudes or making of difficult decision.  To reduce this arousal, we internally justify our behavior.  Dissonance theory further proposes that the less external justification we have for an undesirable action, the more we feel responsible for it, and thus the more dissonance arises and attitudes change. Self-perception theory assumes that when our attitudes are weak, we simply observe our behavior and its circumstances and infer our attitudes.  One interesting implication of serf-perception theory is the “over justification effect”: Rewarding people to do what they like doing anyway can turn their pleasure into drudgery (if the reward leads them to attribute their behavior to the reward).  Evidence supports predictions from both theories, suggesting that each describes what happens under certain conditions. We have seen that several streams of evidence merge to form a river: the effect of actions in attitudes.  Do these observations contain any clues to whey action affects attitude?  Social psychology’s defectiveness suspects three possible sources. Self-presentation theory assumes that for strategic reasons we express attitudes that make us appear consistent.  Cognitive dissonance theory assumes that to reduce discomfort, we justify our actions to ourselves.  Self-perception theory assumes that our actions are self-revealing (when uncertain about our feelings or beliefs, we look to our behavior, much as anyone else would).

SELF PERCEPTION

Self-perception theory is an account of attitude change developed by psychologist Daryl Bem. It asserts that people develop their attitudes by observing their behaviour and concluding what attitudes must have caused them. The theory is counterintuitive in nature, as the conventional wisdom is that attitudes come prior to behaviors. Furthermore, the theory suggests that a person induces attitudes without accessing internal cognition and mood states. The person reasons their own overt behaviors rationally in the same way they attempt to explain others’ behaviors.

SELF PRESENTATION

Self-presentation emphasizes dramaturgical concepts developed by Erving Goffman and strategies of impression management. Effective interpersonal communicators are able to manage communication apprehension and develop qualities of high emotional intelligence while being "on-stage." While much of the work in dramatism has been done in the field of sociology, the theory has its roots in the literary and rhetorical theory and criticism of Kenneth Burke