PSY 345 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Carl Hovland, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Semantic Network
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Attitude and Attitude Change
- The Self and Personality
o McGuire showed that someone who is “unusual” for a group (gender, race,
height, weight, etc.) it generally more aware of their particular feature that stands
out and vice versa
o Ex: a boy in a room with all girls is more aware of his maleness
o People’s self-concept can be manipulated if you ask them to recall instances of
one self-awareness over another
o Ex: you can get a person to think of himself or herself as “outgoing” or a “loner”
by asking them to specifically recall memories of one or the other. Having
participants focus on these aspects of their own self-awareness influences their
behavior so that they act in conjunction with these parts of their self-awareness
o Evidence points to the effect where a person tends to process information
pertaining to themselves more efficiently than other information
o Rogers, Kuiper, and Kirker conducted researcher where they showed participants
various adjectives and asked them self-awareness questions like “Does the word
describe you or not?” and more arbitrary questions like “How many syllables is in
this word?” Later, when the researchers gave participants a surprise recall test
about the words, participants were better able to recall words that were related to
them when asked about it. Also, true when person said it didn’t relate to them.
o If we try to relate something to our “self” whether we are against or for that
particular thing – we are better able to remember it
o Ex: people like the letters in their names better than other letters in the alphabet
o Ex: people named George are more likely to visit Georgia etc.
o Self-Perception Theory
▪ Proposed by Bem
▪ Argues that people learn about themselves by observing their own
behaviors and making inferences about these behaviors
▪ Same when learning about others, but learning about yourself
▪ Noted the Over Justification Effect
• Materially rewarding someone for performing an activity turns the
activity into work
• Suggests that people tend to make this rewarded activity into work
• “Dollars over desire” effect
• Deci showed that children (who enjoyed drawing in their free time)
did not increase or decrease their interest in drawing, but when
children who enjoyed drawing were told that they would be
rewarded every time they drew during their free time children
gradually lost interest in the activity
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o 3 motives that influence self-knowledge
▪ Desire to learn the truth about the self
▪ Self-enhancement or the preference for favorable information about the
self
▪ Consistency – people seek to confirm whatever they already believe about
themselves even if that information is sometimes not socially acceptable
• Cognitive Dissonance – a state of dilemma a person might
encounter when they believe an idea about themselves, but are
presented with information that contradicts that idea about
themselves
o Ex: I’m a good boyfriend/girlfriend but then act in opposite
of that creates an uncomfortable state of inconsistency
o Self-Deception
▪ Wishful thinking, by which a person manages to end up believing what he
or she wants to believe without the most rigorous justifications
▪ Deceiving yourself about behavior
▪ Break from reality (PTSD, DID, psychotic break, etc.)
o Stanley Milgram Experiments on obedience
▪ Learners and teachers
▪ Learners would learn what the teacher taught them
o What happens in a person’s mind leads them to deceive themselves?
▪ Self-serving bias: people assign more responsibility to external causes for
failures than for successes
o This can be good or bad depending on your definition of “good” and “bad”
▪ Ex: overestimation of what you can do (read 10 chapters before the test)
could cause you to lose sleep and fail the test
o Self-Esteem
▪ Overall affective assessment we form about our “self” (or how we fit into
society) that changes in different times and environments in our life
▪ Changes everyday
▪ Interesting finds
• A strong relationship between academic performance and self-
esteem, but specifically higher grades is related to higher self-
esteem and vice versa
• Attempts to boost self-esteem in students had the opposite effect
on their academic performance
• People with low self-esteem doesn’t appear to be significantly
more aggressive
▪ 2 major reasons there is fluctuation in self-esteem
• Motivation – continue to survive succeed, compete, etc.
• Feeling Good – dopamine and serotonin are associated with “good
feelings” and a stable release helps with this
▪ A representation of the self which only exists in relation to other people
which could help strengthen social relationships
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o Narcissism
▪ A condition characterized by persistent (delusional), sometimes delusional
ideas about the self-esteem
▪ Inflated idea of abilities, characteristics, appearance, etc.
▪ Not socially acceptable
▪ Benefits
• Better at your job so you continue to get the positive feedback
• Aggressive
▪ Disadvantages
• Narcissistic Personality Disorder: excessive reference to others for
self-definition and self-esteem regulation
• Crutch
o Self-Presentation
▪ How you generally present yourself with other people in mind
▪ When people act in ways contrary to their beliefs, they experience an inner
state of unpleasant inconsistency
▪ People seem to change their opinions or perspectives on something when
they experience cognitive dissonance in order to match their action
▪ The argument is likely why we try to appear consistent around other
people, so our actions that others observe match our own internal
evaluations of ourselves
▪ Our inner processes that we experience about ourselves also serve
interpersonal functions (not just self-serving functions)
o Self-Evaluation Maintenance (SEM) Theory
▪ Tesser proposed a dual process theory of how partners in a relationship
affect each others self-esteem and self-evaluation
▪ Reflection – if a person’s partner receives praise for something can also
strengthen the social standing of the other person and the relationship
between partners and vice versa
▪ Comparison – depending on a partner’s success or positive social reaction
from others, you may evaluate yourself as worse by comparison, which
could weaken your relationship and vice versa
o Traits
▪ A way in which social psychologists attempt to categorize people in to
patterns of behavior between action, feelings, and thoughts
▪ Basic Traits: characteristics are shared by all people in some degree
▪ Complex Traits: situational factors that might exclude some people
▪ 5 Factor Model
• Extraversion
o Capturing a person’s assertiveness, confidence,
spontaneity, or energy in a social environment
o Good at forming new social relationships or social
interactions quickly
o Firmer handshakes, straighter posture, or express emotional
states more openly
o Less cooperative when sharing resources
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