Description
People decide on their own attitudes and feelings from watching themselves behave in various situations. This is particularly true when internal cues are so weak or confusing they effectively put the person in the same position as an external observer.

Self-Perception Theory provides an alternative explanation for cognitive dissonance effects. For example Festinger and Carlsmith's experiment where people were paid $1 or $20 to lie. Cognitive dissonance says that people felt bad about lying for $1 because they could not justify the act. Self-perception takes an 'observer's view, concluding that those who were paid $1 must have really enjoyed it (because $1 does not justify the act) whilst those who were paid $20 were just doing it for the money.

Note that this indicates how changing people's attitudes happens only when two factors are present:

They are aroused, feeling the discomfort of dissonance.
They attribute the cause of this to their own behaviors and attitudes.
Research
Zanna and Cooper gave people a placebo pill and asked them to perform a counter-attitudinal activity. Control people who were told the pill was a placebo did as expected, becoming more supportive of the attitude (because they had enacted it). Others, who were told that the pill would make them tense, did not change their attitude, as they could attribute their dissonance to the effects of the pill.

Example
If you hear a lot of rock music and do not particularly dislike it, you will probably conclude that you do like it.

So what?
Using it
If you want someone to believe or feel something about themselves, first get them to do it. This works best when they have no particular view about the area in question. If they already have a strong view, you will need to call the view into doubt, for example by giving disconfirming examples.

Defending
When people ask you to do things about which you have no clear view, ask yourself what they could gain by your believing something about yourself in this matter.

*bites carrot*


wassup doc

also, need to add this...............Attribution Theory

Description
We all have a need to explain the world, both to ourselves and to other people, attributing cause to the events around us. This gives us a greater sense of control. When explaining behavior, it can affect the standing of people within a group (especially ourselves).

When another person has erred, we will often use internal attribution, saying it is due to internal personality factors. When we have erred, we will more likely use external attribution, attributing causes to situational factors rather than blaming ourselves. And vice versa. We will attribute our successes internally and the successes of our rivals to external ‘luck’.

When a football team wins, supporters say ‘we won’. But when the team loses, the supporters say ‘they lost’.

Our attributions are also significantly driven by our emotional and motivational drives. Blaming other people and avoiding personal recrimination are very real self-serving attributions. We will also make attributions to defend what we perceive as attacks. We will point to injustice in an unfair world.

We will even tend to blame victims (of us and of others) for their fate as we seek to distance ourselves from thoughts of suffering the same plight.

We will also tend to ascribe less variability to other people than ourselves, seeing ourselves as more multifaceted and less predictable than others. This may well because we can see more of what is inside ourselves (and spend more time doing this).

In practice, we often tend to go through a two-step process, starting with an automatic internal attribution, followed by a slower consideration of whether an external attribution is more appropriate. As with Automatic Believing, if we are hurrying or are distracted, we may not get to this second step. This makes internal attribution more likely than external attribution.

Research
Roesch and Amirkham (1997) found that more experienced athletes made less self-serving external attributions, leading them to find and address real causes and hence were better able to improve their performance.

So What?
Using it
Beware of losing trust by blaming others (i.e. making internal attributions about them). Also beware of making excuses (external attributions) that lead you to repeat mistakes and leads to Cognitive Dissonance in others when they are making internal attributions about you.

Defending
Watch out for people making untrue attributions.




...just some info. for the masses, to explain certain human behavior that occur in folks daily lives and here on vj

Very interesting. Thanks for the info, brother Dean.


Much to ponder on.

I aim to please brother stevie..and sometimes educate....

Forgive my layman's thoughts but, isn't maturity about accepting one's responsibilities? And if maturity is on a continuum, could these issues be a sign of arrested development?

What are you talking about? Those are layman's thoughts?

I am a layman. I know laymen. You, sir, are no layman!

to some extent..maturity is about being responsible..but there are other variables in the definition....and yes, arrested development usually leads to issues in maturity and acceptance of repsonsibility and poor decision making at times....with lack of judgment....

I can imagine it might be some coping mechanism...for an ego that is already bruised, or unable to confront conflicting ideas about oneself...so we make reality fit our perception of things, rather than the other way around.