Cognitive Gymnastics

Hey everyone!

This week is the fun and fascinating cognitive dissonance! First off is a video.

 

This video features some awesome old fashioned animation but also some reasons for behavior as explained by the Jackson 5. They explain that the reason for their behavior is the "boogie", and this reason for their behavior is consistent with their attitudes, those being, as far as I can tell, that they really want to and like to boogie (mostly I just wanted to share this video).

Their reasoning is good as it is in line with the idea that is held by many social scientists who believe that people are motivated to have cognitive consistency, or a state where all of one's beliefs, attitudes, and actions are in conjunction with each other (Abelson et al., 1968). Unfortunately, people often do not act in ways that are consistent with what they think, which will cause cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). Cognitive dissonance theory, proposed by Festinger, (1957) states that individuals are motivated to reduce dissonance that results from their actions if those actions are not consistent with their attitudes/beliefs. People can reduce dissonance in a number of ways, such as changing their behavior or attitude (Festinger, 1957).

The original study where cognitive dissonance was induced experimentally was conducted by Festinger and Carlsmith (1959). In short, Festinger and Carlsmith's (1959) study resulted in participants changing their attitude about a boring task by saying that they enjoyed it when they didn't have a good reason for saying it. Other participants also said that they enjoyed a clearly boring task, but their attitude did not change because they attributed their behavior to the fact that they were being paid a good amount of money to say that they enjoyed the boring task.

Examples of this theory are everywhere because they are often involved in small things though out the day where you justify not doing certain activities or behaviors even though not doing them is inconsistent with your beliefs. A good example is health. Many people think that they are pretty healthy and I am one of those. However, exercising really is not fun but it is good for you and I often plan to run in the morning but then when it comes time to go running I say to myself, “Oh! Sleep is more important so I'll do that.” or “I got a lot of exercise at work yesterday so I don't need to run today.” In any case, because I desire and think of myself as a healthy person (and therefore as someone who regularly does and engages in healthy activities), I have to justify my unwillingness to go running with reasons that are in many cases made up and determined after I have decided to not go running (because I need a reason!). If I did not make up this reason then I would be experiencing cognitive dissonance which I would not like.

Furthermore, examples of dissonance are not only present in my health goal inadequacies which have little consequence but also in more significant daily decisions (as well as big one time decisions). When I was in high school I frequently disliked attending church services. However, my parents expressed their displeasure at me not regularly wanting to go to church and making it clear that it was important to them that I go. Now, I really did not like catholic church but I still went; this is due to insufficient justification. According to Festinger (1957) insufficient justification is one condition that will result in cognitive dissonance because it is where individuals choose to preform an action that does not have a large reward (which was the case for me in high school regarding my church attendance). Because I was experiencing cognitive dissonance I made up reasons for attending church often such as, I can learn something from the sermons, or I get to hear songs that I like, or there are always really good breakfast tacos afterward. Whatever excuse I was making that week, it served as a reason for attending church even though I did not like the institution and participating in mass was inconsistent with this behavior. My parents and I eventually came to an agreement/understanding about my religious choices but before that I sure had to do some cognitive work to convince myself to keep going.

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Festinger, L. (1957) A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 203-210.

Janis, I. L. (1968). Attitude change via role playing. In R. Abelson, E. Aronson, W. McGuire, T. Newcomb, M. Rosenberg, & P. Tennen-baum (Eds.), Theories of cognitive consistency: A sourcebook (pp. 810–818). Chicago: Rand McNally.

Switching Routes

Hey everyone!

First off just to get everyone in a good mood here is a song that I like!

The reason I chose this particular song is that I seriously have never met a person who is not a fan of it. Similarity has consistently been shown to make people more likable so I figured I could not go wrong with this choice (Montoya, Horton, & Kirchner, 2008).

But anyway, this week I am talking about routes to persuasion! The two routes are the peripheral route to persuasion and the central route to persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

Which of these two routes people will use depends on both their ability and their motivation (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). The peripheral route is distinguished by individuals relying on heuristics, rules of thumb, or generally superficial information to arrive at a decision (Chaiken, 1987; Chen & Chaiken, 1999) whereas the central route uses rationality and logic to arrive at a decision and individuals are therefore influenced by the content and strength of arguments when using this route (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

I know I personally would rather be able to say that I always use the central route as I think of myself as someone who is generally thoughtful and has good reasons for the way I act or for what I believe. However, this unfortunately is not always true as I am definitely not always motivated and therefore sometimes use the peripheral route when making a decision.

A good example of me using these two routes was when I was recently hearing about the Southwestern presidential candidates. Originally, I did not care very much who won as, on the surface, I had little investment in the next president of Southwestern as I would be graduating soon (a sentiment I heard echoed by other senior students). I was content to simply side with my friend's evaluations and trust their decisions without much research. However, upon hearing some good arguments from different individuals, including a few professors, I was quickly persuaded to care about who was elected as president as the quality of the president would affect Southwestern's direction as an institution and would also affect how valuable my degree would be in the long term. Upon hearing this, I realized that decision did matter and I became much more involved in learning about the candidates. I read about their accomplishments and qualifications online and listened much more attentively to when others were making an argument for a candidate. Furthermore, I engaged much more actively in discussion with my peers regarding the candidates. My critical outlook on the arguments that were being presented (pro or con) were indicative of my switch to the central route. Therefore, because I became motivated to care about the decision because of my realization that the decision would affect me, I transitioned to a central route when evaluating information related to the candidates. 

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Chaiken, S. (1987). The heuristic model of persuasion. In M. P. Zanna, J. M. Olsen, & C. P. Herman (Eds.), Social influence: The Ontario symposium (Vol. 5, pp. 3-39). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Chen, S., & Chaiken, S. (1999). The heuristic-systematic model in its broader context. In S. Chaiken & Y. Trope (Eds.), Dual-process theories in social psychology (pp. 73-96). New York: Guilford.

Montoya, R. M., Horton, R. S., & Kirchner, J. (2008). Is actual similarity necessary for attraction? A meta-analysis of actual and perceived similarity. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 25, 889-922.

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T., (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Trying something different

Hey everyone!

For the Participant Observer Blog I decided to be a different person for a day! I actually ended up drawing from a several experiences over a few days in order to maximize the types of and number of situations I could try acting differently.

For this experience I decided to generally be more friendly! This trait manifested itself in a number of ways such as me generally being more talkative, using friendly body language, and looking for opportunities to help others. I choose this not because I think I'm unfriendly but because I am generally pretty shy unless I know a person pretty well and I think I could benefit from being more outgoing.

Before I launch into my behaviors and experience, I'd like to introduce some concepts relevant to this social experiment. First off is the self-concept which was proposed by Hazel Markus (1977) and refers an individual's beliefs about themselves. Essentially the self-concept is made up of self-schemas (referred to simply as schemas) which are these beliefs that determine how one interprets information relevant to themselves (Markus, 1977). Traits that matter a lot to the identity of the individual, such as shyness for myself, are referred to as schematic and traits or characteristics that the individual considers irrelevant about themselves are referred to as aschematic (Markus, Hamill, & Sentis, 1987).

With this in mind, it was important for me to change a schematic trait in order to produce an effect that would be the most meaningful to me. In other words, I wanted to try to change a characteristic that mattered a lot to my personal identity in order to get a better idea of what it would be like to have a different trait and behave differently.

My experience over the few days had a ton of relevant examples but I can only talk about a few in depth. One situation where I was really able to try to behave differently was at my restaurant job where I work once a week as a server. Usually at work I tend to hang back and get my work done and only really talk to one or two people for extended periods of time during my shift. For this shift however, I struck up conversations with many other servers and throughout the shift tried to be helpful in small but noticeable ways (like taking drinks or food out). Towards the end of the night I talked at length with a few coworkers, more than I ever had before, and found that I really enjoyed it. Because a lot of this behavior (especially being so talkative) was so different from how I normally acted, I found it very difficult to keep it up just because it was always on my mind that I needed to engaging others in conversations when I had the opportunity. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy talking to others and had fun conversing with them, it was just so at odds with my normal behavior that it was really draining to keep it up for so long. My coworkers really enjoyed me talking more however and definitely joked with me a lot more than usual during the shift. One of them even commented that she noticed that I was in a really good mood that night.

A second example happened immediately that night after work was when I came back to campus and there was a party going on at a friend's apartment. These are definitely not my usual scene as they are filled with people who I vaguely know but I went to this one on a mission, to talk to (at length) at least one person who I don't know. During the party I talked to a few people who I don't know as well and surprised myself by talking to two people who I had never talked to before for a pretty long time. While talking to them I really tried to talk to them for awhile (whereas normally I would probably move onto someone who I know better after a short period of time). In this situation, I really enjoyed talking to some new people for a long period of time and was glad I made the effort to do so.

Another good example was on a later day when I was volunteering for a organization. I was tabling and selling t-shirts for the organization, which is an activity that I wouldn't ever want to do anyways but I did it regardless. I volunteered with another psych major who I didn't know that well but who I had met before and resolved that during volunteering I would talk a lot. During volunteering I talked to her a lot about her internship and job experience as well as my own. During this interaction (and during other interactions where I was trying to be more friendly) I really worked on and was cognizant of my body language. When talking to her, I tried to look at her often and nodded to let her know I was listening. I also smiled and leaned forward, again trying to show an engaged and interested attitude. Normally, in a situation like this, I would not inquire or so easily share so much about myself but I really wanted to try to have positive interactions with the other volunteer. Although something like this could easily be a fluke, I think that the other volunteer really enjoyed talking to me and I think my behavior influenced how she acted (e.g. I encouraged talking and showed my interest in her professional experiences). Again, this was difficult because I making an effort to be very friendly, definitely more so than usual and the experience was a little draining however, positive.

There were a lot of other small examples of friendliness such as me just asking how people were doing and getting smiles in return or making a joke with a HEB cashier but I think these three examples show more of how my behavior affected my day. In each of these three examples I had to ignore or inhibit my natural tendency, which is to be shy and reserved, for a significant period of time but instead make a conscious effort to be friendly, sociable, and interactive. I'm not normally really boring or anything, I just had to make the effort to step out of my comfort zone to see what would happen.

Before each time I was going to enter a situation (such as the three already described) I was pretty anxious as I knew I was going to have to act different from usual. During each event it was usually pretty fun although also fairly exhausting as I wasn't used to acting that way and had to work hard to act differently from usual. Afterward, I was generally pretty happy with how things went as my interactions were all positive and enjoyable (go figure). In sum, even though each experience was somewhat draining, it was definitely rewarding!

Overall, I did like the change in my behavior because I think it produced positive interactions and led to productive discussions. Because my natural inclination is usually more towards the quiet side it was fun to let some of my social inhibitions go and just be more sociable for a little while (and I could always tell myself that I needed to do this for a class which was alright encouragement).

Although, I have only discussed that I was affecting my internal view of myself, I was also clearly affecting my behavior which relates to self-presentation. Self-presentation is an active effort to change or affect behavior in order to influence what other people think of you (Schlenker, 2003). This theory was inspired by Goffman (1959) who said that individuals act out roles and behave as if in a play where we have a certain face that we desire to and make an active effort to maintain. Therefore, this process was largely influenced by my changing this face that I was putting on in social situations. Essentially, I was trying to change how I acted and therefore how other people saw me by behaving in a more friendly manner.

Even though changing my behavior was an active effort, it was clear that both self-concept and self-presentation are very self constructed and the possibility to change them exists. It is certainly not easy to change these things as they have been stable (and generally people are pretty happy with how they have been) for a good amount of time. For me, I had to actively consider how I would normally act, how I desired to act in the upcoming situation, and then (during the situation) act appropriately. However, it was possible to effectively change my behavior.

Going along with the fact that these are changeable attributes, even though they seem so central and innate, I would like to continue working on being more confident in my social interactions with people who I don't know. This was a pretty fun social experiment and overall I was pretty happy with how each experience turned out! Most importantly I'm glad I tried to affect my self-presentation heavily by choosing a trait that was more central to my self-concept, and by doing so, producing the greatest and most meaningful effect.

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Goffman, E. (1959) The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City: Doubleday.



Markus, H. (1977). Self-schemata and processing information about the self. Journal of and Social Psychology, 35, 63-78.

Markus, H., Hamill, R., & Sentis, K. P. (1987). Thinking fat: Self-schemas for body weight and the processing of weight relevant information. Journal Of Applied Social Psychology, 17(1), 50-71.

Schlenker, B. R. (2003). Self-presentation. In M. R. Leary & J. P. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of self and identity (pp. 492-518). New York: Guilford.

Undesirable Associations

Hey everyone!

While the IATs were incredibly stressful and some of my results were not all entirely encouraging, I think it is definitely good to try use them educationally and realize some underlying assumptions you have. 

First off, here is a great video that many of you have probably seen, but after talking about race so much today I was thinking about culture and remembered this video from a few years ago!

Anyway, I took both the race (more than once to see if my results varied) and gender related to occupation IATs. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was developed by Greenwald, McGee, and Schwartz (1998) and they work by provided you with either a word or picture (depending on which you're taking) and you have to sort it into a correct category as quickly as you can. Specifically with the race IAT, you are shown either a picture of a person's face (their race is either white or African-American) or you are shown an adjective that is either positive or negative (e.g. nasty, joy, peace) and you must quickly press a key that correctly sorts the word or image with the left or right category. Because there are only two categories, half the time the white faces are paired with negative adjectives and the African-American faces are paired with positive adjectives and the other half of the time the pairings are switched. Therefore if both African-American and positive is on the right, if an African-American face or the word joy appears you press the key for the right category (and if a white or negative word appears you press the left category key) as quickly as you can attempting to minimize error. 

Because this task is completed on a computer, the IATs are able to determine millisecond differences in response time and measure ability to associate and sort words and faces accurately and quickly. Therefore, if one is able to more easily (as in more quickly) associate positive words with white faces or, said differently, they quickly associate negative words with African-Americans or take a longer time with positive associations towards African-Americans, they are considered to have a preference for whites (the strength of that preference depends on the difference between the time one can associate negative words and positive words with members of each race).

On the gender IAT I obtained the result of little to no preference towards ones gender and their association with occupational or domestic words. I actively make an effort to think of men and women equally in terms of their career aspirations and think that this result is consistent with my beliefs and behaviors towards groups on this matter. I know that I am very proud of both my mother and father for working for my entire life. Furthermore, I have worked with many women professionally recently through several internships and that may have affected why my results showed no preference (my results may have been different at the start of college which I would not have been thrilled about). I very much hope that this is my “true” attitude as I greatly respect and admire hard workers and wouldn't want to have an underlying association that men are harder workers than women or that I have a primary or initial domestic association towards women.

Additionally, I took the race IAT several times in order to see if my results varied. They did vary but my overall result was not encouraging. I showed a slight to moderate preference for European-Americans. Again, I try to not make associations based on any external characteristic such as race and was therefore unhappy with this association. I had taken the race IAT during high school and obtained a similar result then. While I was unhappy with finding that out a few years ago, I would have thought that I would have made progress in destabilizing that association, as since then, I have have met many African-Americans in many different contexts and have really enjoyed my interactions with many of them. Unfortunately, I apparently have some work to do in continuing to break down my initial snap associations regarding individuals of a different race than mine. Therefore, I don't think of my results as representing my “true” or at least not desired attitude towards African-Americans but probably does accurately reflect some of my quickly made implicit associations which I would like to continue to try to change.

I think it is personally important to continue having diversity and variety in my relationships. Furthermore, I think having diverse relationships is one of the best ways for me fight these implicit biases. Indeed many of the examples I can think of for African-American friends are/were definitely positive, but perhaps not as significant or long lasting as they could have for various reasons. This insight informs how I have thought about stereotypes recently, that being that its is not a one time process to eliminate my biases but is an attitude that has to be challenged by continuing to experience diversity in my life. Therefore, I think my retaking the IAT I acquired insight into how I can personally be effective in continuing to effectively challenge my stereotypes. In sum, although I frequently and actively combat these associations (and have had many positive relationships with African-Americans) I will have to continue to endure and challenge these associations as I want them to diminish or be eliminated.

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Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464-1480.