Past, present, future...screw it all man

Today I’m going to break from precedent and discuss something that’s currently happening in my life rather than an event that happened in my not-so-distant past. But first, we’re going to need to talk a little bit about cognitive dissonance theory. According to cognitive dissonance theory, when our attitudes are not consistent with our behavior, it induces a state of physiological arousal that we are motivated to reduce (Festinger, 1957). Generally speaking, the easiest way to reduce this physiological tension is to change your attitudes so that they are once again consistent with your behavior. 

One situation in which cognitive dissonance regularly occurs is when an individual is faced with a choice between two equally attractive alternatives. This situation is commonly referred to as the free choice paradigm. In the free choice paradigm, the negative aspects of the option you choose and the positive aspects of the unchosen alternative create a state of cognitive dissonance in the individual faced with the difficult choice (Brehm, 1956). In order to reduce this state of tension, the individual accentuates the positive aspects of the chosen option and devalues the unchosen alternative. Essentially, as soon as you make a difficult choice you begin the process of convincing yourself that it was the right choice.

Recently, I have been faced with my own difficult choice and have experienced the effects of the free choice paradigm. As a result of a variety of factors (otherwise known as massive health issues) I have been forced to reevaluate my plans for after graduation.  My choice consisted of either trying to find a full-time office job or trying to get into a graduate school program unrelated to my hard-won psychology major. Although each option is equally valid in that they are equally unrealistic relative to my physical abilities, when I made the decision to pursue a new academic field I immediately began downplaying the merits of working full-time. I told myself “There was no way I could handle the stress involved in a full-time job anyway, and even if I could the job market is so terrible that no one would hire me.” I also began inflating the desirability of pursuing philosophy by saying things like “Philosophy is a disability-friendly endeavor” and “My abstract reasoning is one of the few things unaffected by my neurological problems, therefore I should pursue an area like philosophy that focuses on abstract thought.” My behavior (choosing to enter a graduate-level philosophy program) was inconsistent with my attitude that both options were equally desirable. Therefore, to reduce the state of discomfort related to dissonance, I changed my attitude to be consistent with my behavior. In this case, I changed my attitude so that I believed the philosophy program was the superior option.

(n = 458)

References

Brehm, J. W. (1956). Post-decision changes in desirability of alternatives. Journal of

Abnormal and Social Psychology, 52, 384–389.

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

University Press.

Gossip Gone Wrong

Although most of us like to believe our thoughts and attitudes are impervious to the unforeseen or unwanted influences of others, our thoughts are being bombarded by messages from others every day. How many of us didn’t realize that we “liked” something until it popped up on one of the (hyper-individualized) page suggestions on our Facebooks? An embarrassing number of us, most likely. Social media is not our only source of information, however. Much of the information we use to form our attitudes derives from our interpersonal communications.

Once upon a time, in a far away land called high school, there lived a bunch of teenagers who liked to gossip. One day, I overheard a bunch of girls talking about a specific boy from our school who they kept calling “Ben Baker the Baby-Maker*.” I finally couldn’t stand the curiosity anymore and had to ask them why they kept calling him that. One of the girls jumped at the chance to spread the tale. According to her, everyone knew that Ben had had sex with a girl in one of the school stairwells during class and got her pregnant. The girls couldn’t agree about whether the couple had been caught in the act by the principal, a cop, or not at all, however. My immediate reaction was that these were just silly girls and that the story was far too ridiculous to be true. I quickly put the story out of my mind.

About a year later, I met the “Baby-Maker” through a mutual friend of ours. He was by far one of the sweetest, most good-natured guys I had met at that (awful) school. My immediate thought was that such a nice guy didn’t deserve all the hardships associated with being a teenage parent. I had completely forgotten where I had originally heard the story and only remembered poor Ben as the “Baby-Maker.” It wasn’t until months later that I learned from Ben himself that the entire rumor had just been a prank one of his basketball buddies had played on him.

When I forgot about the gossip girls I originally learned the rumor from and instead focused on the story itself, I exhibited what is known in social psychology as the sleeper effect. According to the sleeper effect, a non-credible source becomes more persuasive over time (Hovland & Weiss, 1951). Despite being unconvinced when I first heard the “Baby-Maker” rumor, after enough time elapsed, my little group of gossip girls seemed much more believable. What is most interesting about the sleeper effect is that when it was first discovered the effect seemed entirely counterintuitive. Credible sources tend to become less persuasive over time therefore common sense would dictate that non-credible sources would become less persuasive as well. To explain this phenomenon, the Hovland research group developed the discounting cue hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, when people first learn information from a non-credible source they tend to discount it, but over time the information becomes separated from who said it in our minds (Kelman & Hovland, 1953). Similarly, as time passed I forgot where I learned the rumor originally and could only remember the information I learned from the rumor itself.

*name altered to protect individual’s identity

(n = 524)

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References

Hovland, C. I., & Weiss, W. (1951). The influence of source credibility on

communication effectiveness. Public Opinion Quarterly, 15, 635–650.

Kelman, H. C., & Hovland, C. I. (1953). “Reinstatement” of the communicator in

delayed measurement of opinion change. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 48, 327–335.

The meek shall (not) inherit the earth

I recently completed a little project in which I chose to be a different person for a day. Specifically, I chose to be a more confident person for the day. After much consideration, I chose to alter my confidence because confidence is mainly an inner trait, under my control, which is noticed by other parties but is not dependent on others to be successfully enacted. For example, if I had chose to be more outgoing for the day rather than more confident, my ability to observe others’ reactions to the trait would mainly be limited to instances in which I was in direct, interpersonal contact with someone else. By choosing to be more confident, I could observe responses from individuals I was not necessarily in direct contact with throughout the day (e.g., watching to see if my confidence made it more likely for people to notice me in a crowd).

Although being a different person for the day sounds like a fun idea, actually implementing the change was quite difficult. As a low self-monitor, or person who is unlikely to change their behavior across different social situations (Snyder, 1987), I usually don’t censor the words or actions I take. However, because of my public self-consciousness, or tendency to focus on the image that I portray to others (Buss, 1980; Fenigstein et al., 1975), I often feel guilty and embarrassed for behaving in the manner I do. As such, I thought that appearing more confident for the day would be best accomplished by doing the things I normally do or would like to do without allowing myself to feel guilty or embarrassed. This approach was subtle, but the result was a much more genuine appearance of confidence on my part. I thought people would respond more naturally to me if I appeared to be naturally confident. I knew that trying to enact more overt change would be outside my nature, and would therefore make me seem awkward rather than confident to others.

In order to make myself appear more confident, I had to do something I almost never do. I woke up early, took a shower, styled and dried my hair and ---you guessed it--- actually put on make-up for a change. Once I had on my pretty face, I put on clothes that I love but usually feel embarrassed wearing (AKA a Bill Cosby-esque sweater and my super comfy shoes with toes on them) and practiced standing up straighter, looking ahead when I walk rather than at the ground, smiling and looking people in the eyes when I spoke, which would be my main methods of expressing confidence for the day. Improving my posture and bad habit of looking at the ground proved to be the most difficult part of the transformation. Changing my attitude was not as difficult as I had expected, however. By dolling myself up and wearing clothes that I was comfortable in rather than incredibly uncomfortable, trendy clothing, I managed to make myself feel more confident rather than just appear more confident.

The reactions to “the new me” were overwhelmingly positive. The barista at Starbucks who usually pays no particular attention to me asked my name and struck up a conversation with me. When I smiled at the strangers I passed, I would get warm, surprised smiles in return. I talked to close acquaintances I almost never get to see anymore and they responded with friendliness, expressed an interest in spending time with me and some even tried to flirt with me. The increased attention I received from men caught me very off guard. My confidence must have made me appear more open and approachable, which led acquaintances and strangers to behave in a friendlier manner towards me and led men who found me attractive to approach me when they otherwise would not. The anxiety I had felt before the day began had all but melted away by the time evening rolled around. I was feeling so good and so confident by then that I even had the balls to try to strike up a friendly conversation with my dad. The attempt fell rather flat because my dad doesn’t particularly understand the concept of idle chit-chit (he’s the type of person who doesn’t see the cup as half full or half empty, and instead says the cup is just twice as large as it needs to be). However, just putting in the effort made me feel good about myself. And that night, when I was too sick to work my shift, I was confident enough to ask for help without feeling bad about myself for being sick and weak, like I usually do.

The entire experience left me feeling a little confused the next day. Rather than wanting to act more confident again, once I reverted back to my old self I found myself unwilling to abandon my shy nature again. Dealing with people in more depth than I usually would had left me exhausted and cognitively drained. I found that although being more confident had a strong, positive effect on my interpersonal relations and could potentially lead to more career options for me in the future, my physical health seemed best served by my usual, shy self. Shyness seems to be less of a natural state for me, and more of a defense mechanism to conserve my cognitive resources. The fewer people I interact with throughout the day, the more cognitive resources I can save for use on my essential day-to-day functioning. Although being more confident had a positive effect on my emotional well being, the state was not physically sustainable on my part. I am now very interested in seeing if there are any observable changes in my attitudes or behavior as I progress through my treatment. Will I become less shy and more confident as the infection recedes, or will my personality remain constant?

The main thing I learned from this experience is that whether you have a positive or negative self-concept, or the totality of beliefs one holds about oneself (Rogers, 1961), can have a huge effect on how others perceive you and how you perceive others perceiving you. On my day of confidence, my self-concept became slightly more positive, which in turn caused me to perceive others actions as more positive. I acted with more confidence after this, which caused others to view me more positively and then treat me with more friendliness. As such, I created a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy in which my perception of others perceiving me eventually led others to behave in a manner in line with my expectations (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). This phenomenon has led me to believe that the self-concept is essentially the maple syrup of social psychological concepts. Maple syrup is not a solid, so the molecules that form the liquid are capable of changing and rearranging in response to outside forces, no matter how slow-moving or gradual those changes may be. The self-concept can be modified, but it is a gradual process that must occur over time.

(n = 1,176)

References:

Buss, A. H. (1980). Self-consciousness and social anxiety. San Francisco: Freeman.

Fenigstein, A., Scheier, M. F., & Buss, A. H. (1975). Public and private self-

consciousness: Assessment and theory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43, 522–527.

Rogers, Carl R. (1961). On Becoming a Person: a Therapist’s View of

Psychotherapy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation

and pupils’ intellectual development. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Snyder, M. (1987). Public appearances/private realities: The psychology of self-

monitoring. New York: Freeman.

How do I know I'm pressing the right buttons??

In Mike Judge’s popular television series, King of the Hill, when the main character Hank is accused of being racist, he takes a test on the Internet to prove this assertion false. Hank tries to remember the correct keys to press as words and faces flash on the computer screen and his friends and family scream and encourage him. The results show that he has a “strong preference for Caucasian-Americans as opposed to African-Americans” and the town takes this as proof that he is a racist. Although this test, called the Implicit Associates Test, does exist in real life, Hank Hill depicts the exact wrong way both to take and interpret the test (the test should be taken in an environment with minimal distractions and a preference for one group over the other does not indicate that an individual is prejudiced.)

First developed by Greenwald and Bananji, the Implicit Associates Test (IAT) is designed to assess the automatic, unconscious preferences people form for certain groups as compared to others. Series of either negative or positive words or images representing different groups flash on the screen one at a time and the participant presses specific keys to indicate the group to which the word or image belongs. For example, you may be asked to press ‘e’ for positive words or images of African Americans and asked to press ‘i’ for negative words and images of Caucasian Americans. The test continues until you have completed sets for all possible combined categories of words and images (i.e., positive words with both Caucasian American and African American images, and negative words with both Caucasian American and African American images.)

There are a wide variety of Implicit Associates Tests other than those based on race or ethnicity that one can choose to complete. I personally chose to take the Disability and Religion IATs. Interestingly, I showed a moderate automatic preference for disabled persons compared to abled persons, and a moderate negative association towards Christianity. In contrast, I showed slight positive associations for Islam, Hinduism and Judaism, with the most positive association being associated with Islam. My preference for disabled people is consistent with my conscious beliefs in that I’m disabled and have a slight preference for people who can understand my plight, although this preference is more pronounced than I would have expected. However, I don’t believe this is necessarily a true attitude of mine because I think these results reflect more of a bias against able-bodied people on my part than a bias in favor of disabled people. I’ve become very bitter and hateful being surrounded by young, healthy people all the time (this is only half a joke.)

Whether my results for the Religion IAT are consistent with my conscious beliefs or not is much more difficult to assess as compared to the Disability IAT. Although I’m consciously aware of a slight negative bias I hold towards Christianity and religion as a whole, my conscious beliefs toward the other three, specific religions is relatively neutral.  Rather than representing my true attitudes, I think these results reflect the negative or positive experiences I have had with individuals of these religions in the past. I have had many negative experiences with Christians over the years, partly because they represent the bulk of my interactions with religious people. The few experiences I have had Muslims and Hindus, however, have been limited but overwhelmingly positive. Finally, I have had little to no direct experience with people of the Judaic faith, and therefore understand why my attitudes toward Judaism may fall closest to neutral.

Completing the Implicit Associates Tests made me realize that although I may consider myself less prejudiced than others, I am simply prejudiced against different groups than others. I favor groups similar to myself like most other people. I’m only different in the respect that as a disabled person and an Atheist, I relate to groups that are more commonly discriminated against by the majority of Americans.

(n = 662)