Dissonance gets a little furry

It’s about that time again: to get my dog groomed. Rosie’s fur isn’t that bad, but Romeo’s full husky coat, forget about it, it is like a fur-ball blizzard in my house. As I watch the fur tumbleweeds pass across my living room floor I think to myself, “Is he already shedding his coat again?” I look at him, and he looks at me, I pet him, and as I pull my hand away so does some more fur. Even though I know he is shedding again and I absolutely hate the fur around the house and on my clothes, I didn’t call the groomer’s to set him up an appointment. I feel really bad about it, and I have almost an anxious feeling in my gut because I know it needs to be done, yet I have not called. This is something in class we learned known as the cognitive dissonance theory. According to Leon Festinger (1957) we like to maintain consistency between our behaviors and our attitude, and in order to reduce any inconsistencies we have, we follow through with one of five techniques, 1) we begin to make ourselves believe we had no choice but to follow through with this behavior. 2) we take away the importance of the behavior, 3) we add more cognitions, 4) we change your views of our behavior, and usually the easiest 5) we change our attitudes of the behavior (McKimmie et al., 2003). Of course for my case, I followed through with changing my attitude of the behavior. Although he is obviously shedding, as there is hair on the floor and on my clothes, but I don’t think his shedding is THAT bad right now to pay to get him groomed. I can just brush him myself at a later time. 

Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory is something we will battle unknowingly many times throughout our lives, and it has been redesigned into Joel Cooper and Russell Fazio’s (1984) four necessary conditions for the reduction and arousal of dissonance. According to the new model, after the behavior has been completed (not getting my dog groomed), the first step to reduce dissonance is the production of a negative consequence. In my case, this would be that there is still dog hair in my house and on my clothes. The next step is the feeling of personal responsibility of these negative consequences by partaking in the behavior. For me, this would be the guilt I hold for letting him continue to shed, especially since it might make him uncomfortable. The third step steps into the realm of physiological arousal, which for me, is that bad feeling I have in my gut and the stress I have for not having him groomed. The fourth and final step is the attribution that is made towards that arousal because of the behavior. For my example, my last step is realizing that I feel this guilt and stress because of my behavior of not having my dog groomed. Cooper and Fazio’s model really puts it into perspective how we process our dissonance, and how the reduction of this dissonance is necessary to maintain consistency. I'm sure at this point, my dog and my floors are hoping this dissonance thing goes away soon, and that I just change my behavior instead.

Until Next blog, 

Your social psychista

Word count: 527

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

McKimmie, B. M., Terry, D. J., Hogg, M. A., Manstead, A. S. R., Spears, R., & Doosje, B. (2003) I’m a hypocrite, but so is everyone else: Group support and the reduction of cognitive dissonance. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 7, 214-224.

Cooper, J., & Fazio, R. H. (1984). A new look at dissonance theory. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.) Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 17, pp. 229-267). New York: Academic Press.

Attitudes!

Today’s class discussion was all about attitudes, which is a long lasting reaction that can be either positive or negative, towards people, objects or ideas (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983) According to Cacioppo and colleagues in 1997, an attitude cannot by defined as solely positive or solely negative because the strength of these directions can vary, allowing us to have four possible attitude reactions: 1) Positive attitudes, 2) Negative attitudes, 3) Indifference or apathy, or 4) Dual attitudes or those attitudes which are strong but have multiple sides. Even just after we had class today, I was listening to the radio on my drive home, and the same ad I hear every day multiple times came on about that “raspberry ketone” weight loss supplement. My immediate first though was “Oh no not again with this crazy wives tail commercial about some miracle pill that magically increases you body’s ability to burn fat” but after giving the commercial a full listen, I began to change my first reaction from “no way I would ever believe this works” to “well if Dr. Oz said it works, and there are statistics showing that it does what it says it is supposed to, maybe it isn’t totally bogus and does have some effects on weight loss”. Without realizing it all of these times I have heard that ad, I have been developing and maintaining an  dual attitude reaction towards the pills since I was showing strong emotion and opinion towards the pills, but neither completely negative or completely positive. As I continued my drive home, I had not been influenced to by the weight loss pill commercial, but I was influenced to make a quick stop at home to change and then go to the gym to try achieve weight loss and get in better shape. Although it is safe to say hearing about weight loss on the radio had an influence on my desire to go work out, my attitudes about the weight loss pills and general weight loss are not the only reason why I decided to go to the gym.

 According to Ajzen’s 1991 theory of planned behavior, our attitudes paired with subjective norms and how much control we believe we have over a behavior influences our intentions, which then guide our behaviors. To better see the underlying reasons for my decision to go to the gym to work out, I first must understand my attitudes towards that behavior, which are positive because going to the gym is known to attribute to weight loss, and positive self-esteem. I also must understand the aspect of subjective norms about going to the gym, which for most males and females is mostly positive since it attributes to a healthy and fit lifestyle. Lastly, I must understand the control I have over the behavior which I feel is a large amount of control since I enjoy going to the gym, but do not need to go every single day to feel okay. The combination of these three areas determines my intention, or how likely I am to do participate in the behavior, which was highly likely since I made the end decision of going to the gym. In the end, we can easily state that Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior is a generally normative concept, and that people do use all of the information they have available to them to decide whether to act in a certain behavior or not.

Until Next Blog,

Your Social Psychista

Word Count: 574

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1983). The role of bodily responses in attitude measurement and change. In J. Cacioppo & R. Petty (Eds.) Social Psychophysiology: A sourcebook (pp. 51-101). New York: Guilford.

Cacioppo, J, T., Gardner, W, L., & Berntson, G. G. (1997). Beyond bipolar conceptualizations and measures: The case of attitudes and evaluation space. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 3-25.

Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179-211.

Participant Observer: Day of Compassion

It’s funny to me that as many times as we hear the “live like it was your last day” and “treat others as you would like to be treated” lecture, we maybe live only a few number of days in our lives like this. I decided that I wanted to complete the Day of Compassion, because I think I could use a little more in my life, or a lot of more. If you were to ask me any day before last week if compassion was one of my traits, I would tell you in a heartbeat yes, but writing this blog today, I can tell you that I actually found I dislike many of my usual daily actions because I don’t live life compassionate enough. Completing this assignment, I realized quickly through my day that compassion is not about being kind so you don’t hurt others feelings or being that person who never does wrong, it is about doing things focused towards the greater good of others in a manner which is understanding of how your actions will impact those around you and your environment. To be quite honest, I had to retrial my day of compassion, because I failed miserably at first. It is scary to realize how self-concerned I am on a regular basis, even with just the little things like getting angry at the dogs for playing to rough or being upset at that baby crying in the store. I decided on my retrial, I needed to work strongly on my empathy, which is the understanding of another person’s views and feeling compassionate towards that person because of this understanding (Davis et al., 2004).  I used Davis and colleagues idea of empathy to really live my day as if I was living it through the eyes of others around me. 

I began my day as usual, I woke up, ate breakfast, let the dogs out, made sure to give them a good head pat before walking out of the door, and I headed off to the shelter early that morning for my internship not only to get hours, but with the idea in mind that I would act in prosocial behaviors towards all of the dogs this morning. According to Brief and colleagues, prosocial behaviors are the action we engage in which are meant to benefit those around us. I completed the enrichment toy/activity as usual, but instead of just throwing the item in their run, I took the time to say hello to each dog individually, and when I could not get out of a run because the dogs were blocking the door, I did not get angry with the dogs, instead I tried to find a way to guide their attention toward the other side of the run. This experience was both positive for the dogs and for me. Then I went to school, and as I was riding my pirate bike to class, I noticed a girl who looked as if they were in a rush, and her backpack was slowing her down, so I pedaled back around towards her and asked if she wanted my bike to get a faster ride since we were going downhill. I told her I was not in a rush, and she seemed really grateful for my offer. I think this experience provides evidence which support the empathy-altruism hypothesis (Batson, 1991). The empathy-altruism hypothesis states that when we see someone in need, feelings of concern develop for them and we engage in actions which we believe will increase their well-being. The opposite side of this hypothesis occurs when we do not believe someone is in need, therefore, we worry about our own well-being. According to Batson, the outcome that occurred for my situation was of satisfaction because of the decrease in stress of the girl I assisted.

As I continued my day, not much out of the ordinary occurred like it had this morning, but I continued to keep on my mind thoughts of compassion, and viewing my world from others eyes. Just talking on the phone to my mother, I told her I know that I forget to tell her how much I love and miss her, and how much I appreciate all they do for me, and even that small conversation made her day that much better, which in turn, made me happy. As the day fell to night, I noticed I felt so much better about myself and how my actions were impacting others, putting me into almost a euphoric state, and being in this euphoric state was in turn giving me the desire to continue to do good and help others. I was experiencing the good mood effect, and loving it! The good-mood effect is the idea that being in a good mood will increase the amount of behaviors you do which help others (Isen, 2008). Of course, the day came to an end, I realized that it wasn’t easy to be live, breath, and think compassion every day, it is actually hard work! But if I could implement even just half as much compassion into my daily life as I did that day, I would be satisfied, and I plan to try to reach this goal. Not only did I make a positive impact on others, but I made a positive impact on myself as well, and you can’t argue with that. Anyone that I disclosed this experiment too whom I had interacted with that day told me they just thought I was in a really good mood, which means my personality doesn’t stray too far from the actions I engaged in that day, but there was an apparent difference. I will definitely be recommending this activity to friends and family, as it really puts into perspective how compassion and empathy for others can really bring out the best in everyone.

Until next blog, 

Your Social Psychista 

Word Count: 979

Davis, M. H., Soduerlund, T., Cole, J., Gadol, E., Kute, M., & Wiehing. J. (2004). Cognitions associated with attempts to empathize: How do we imagine the perspective of another? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1625 -1635.

Brief, A. P., & Motowidlo, S. J. (1986). Prosocial organizational behaviors. The Academy of Management Review, 11, (4): 710–725.

Batson, C. D. (1991). The altruism question. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Isen, A. M. (2008). Positive affect and decision processese: Some recent theoretical developments with practical implications. In C.P. Haugtvedt, P. M. Herr, & F. R. Kardes (Eds), Handbook of consumer psychology (pp. 273-296). NY: Taylor & Francis.

Hit me with your best IAT

Taking tests such as the IAT (Implicit Association Test) always make me a little nervous. The IAT, which was developed by Anthony Greenwald and colleagues in 1998, is a test which determines your unconscious stereotypes to a specific group such as age, race, or weight by testing how fast your reflex selections are when separating words or images into groups quickly. In other words, the test recognizes how you relate to concepts to one another. I took two IAT’s: the weight IAT and the gender-science IAT. I will first begin discussing my results on the weight IAT. I chose this particular IAT because I knew that it was relatable to my self schema for weight, a concept developed by Markus and colleagues in 1987. Although I am aware that I do process relevant information in my everyday life that has to do with weight, I never would have thought this would make me bias towards people other than myself. My results stated that I was in the top range, and that I have a strong and involuntary preference for thin people over fat people. As surprised and as disappointed I was to see this result, I noticed that the number of people who ranked the same as me was the second highest group at 25% of participants. This statistic shocked me as well. It is almost terrifying to know that 25% of a given population may prefer a thin person over a heavier person, without even taking their personality into account. I wouldn’t say the IAT test was showing my true beliefs on this, because I believe I am a very open and welcoming person, and I don’t believe I would ever choose to be friends with someone due to their weight, but then again, I have never been presented with that choice either. The weight IAT was a particularly great experience and outcome for me, because although the outcome was not positive, the results make me want to shift my weight schemas towards a more positive light, so that I do not rationally judge others for their physical appearance. I think to do this, I am going to have to work on my judgment of myself a lot as well.

The second IAT I took was on gender-science, and I was sure my influences from Southwestern University’s liberal ways would place me towards women’s equality or even favoritism towards science, but my results differed from expected. I actually had little or no association of men and women towards liberal arts (history, English, philosophy) or science (biology, math, astronomy, etc.) I am actually quite happy with the results, because I interpret them to mean that I have no bias towards what subjects men or women study, as long as they are happy and successful within them. 18% of others who took this IAT scored the same as me, which shows that not many others feel the same as I do. I noticed a large portion leaned towards men pursuing work in science and women in liberal arts, which according to stereotypes is not surprising. I am a psychology/animal behavior major, so being a part of the science community has made me realize how many brilliant females we have at our school in this field. We not only have a large portion of female science based majors, but I believe we have a large portion of female science oriented teachers as well.  Personally, I do not think that either men or women are better at science of liberal arts, I just believe that whichever career path we pursue is influenced by our experiences and culture during youth, and that it follows us through adulthood. Even though my results did not show much prejudice, other results did, and I hope programs such as Southwestern continue to break gender stereotypes such as this. The IAT tests were very eye-opening, and I will be sure to recommend them to others around me. Without the proper understanding of stereotypes, and the backlash they can cause, they will continue to negatively impact society. Test such as the IAT could assist in changing this.

Until next blog,

Your social psychista

Word count - 693

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.

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, 50-71.