Fluent Essays

Consider the following scenario of Julie: As her New Year’s resolution, Julie decided it was finally time she got in shape. Years ago, she ran regularly, but more recently, work and family have dominated her time. Julie still thought running was her best option; she lived in Florida with its year-round good weather, and the only financial investment was a good pair of running shoes and the right clothes. Having finally made this decision, Julie was very excited. She bought new shoes, running shorts, and performance tops, making her commitment to running even stronger. She designed a realistic running regimen she was certain she could follow. Day 1 came and, dressed in her new gear, Julie started down her street; the plan was to run to the nearby park about one mile away. She did not want to push it on the first day; after all, it had been years since she had run. When she had run a little less than a block, she was gasping for air, forcing her to stop. Her lungs were on fire, she was dizzy and nauseous. What Julie failed to consider was her pack-a-day cigarette smoking habit that seemed to throw a wrench in her plan. Conflicted, Julie knew something had to change. She fancied herself a runner who liked smoking cigarettes; unfortunately, running and smoking were incompatible. Would her desire for cigarettes convince her that getting in shape was not all that important? Or, would her desire to get in shape convince her that smoking was counterproductive to her goals?  To Prepare Think about how different theories of attitude change explain Julies dilemma. Consider how different theories of attitude change address the likelihood of someone in Julies dilemma changing her or his attitude or behavior.   Post a description of the theory of attitude change that best explains Julie’s dilemma. Per the theory, explain whether Julie would be more likely to change her attitude or her behavior. Please explain why.ATTITUDES ESTABLISHED BY CLASSICAL CONDITIONING1 ARTHUR W. STAATS AND CAROLYN K. STAATS Arizona State College at Tempe O SGOOD and Tannenbaum have stated, ... The meaning of a concept is its location in a space denned by some number of factors or dimensions, and attitude toward a concept is its projection onto one of these dimensions defined as evaluative (9, p. 42). Thus, attitudes evoked by concepts are considered part of the total meaning of the concepts. A number of psychologists, such as Cofer and Foley (1), Mowrer (5), and Osgood (6, 7), to mention a few, view meaning as a response—an implicit response with cue functions which may mediate other responses. A very similar analysis has been made of the concept of attitudes by Doob, who states, An attitude is an implicit response . . . which is considered socially significant in the individuals society (2, p. 144). Doob further emphasizes the learned character of attitudes and states, The learning process, therefore, is crucial to an understanding of the behavior of attitudes (2, p. 138). If attitudes are to be considered responses, then the learning process should be the same as for other responses. As an example, the principles of classical conditioning should apply to attitudes. The present authors (12), in three experi- ments, recently conditioned the evaluative, potency, and activity components of word meaning found by Osgood and Suci (8) to contiguously presented nonsense syllables. The results supported the conception that meaning is a response and, further, indicated that word meaning is composed of components which can be separately conditioned. The present study extends the original experiments by studying the formation of attitudes (evaluative meaning) to socially significant verbal stimuli through classical con- ditioning. The socially significant verbal stimuli were national names and familiar masculine names. Both of these types of 1 This study is part of a series of studies of verbal behavior being conducted by the authors at Arizona State College at Tempe, The project is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (Contract Number NONR- 2305 (00)), Arthur W. Staats, principal investigator. stimuli, unlike nonsense syllables, would be expected to evoke attitudinal responses on the basis of the pre-experimental experience of the 5s. Thus, the purpose of the present study is to test the hypothesis that attitudes already elicited by socially significant verbal stimuli can be changed through classical conditioning, using other words as unconditioned stimuli. METHOD Subjects Ninety-three students in elementary psychology participated in the experiments as 5s to fulfill a course requirement. Procedure The general procedure employed was the same as in the previous study of the authors (12). Experiment I,—The procedures were administered to the 5s in groups. There were two groups with one half of the 5s in each group. Two types of stimuli were used: national naDissonance and Discomfort: Does a Simple Cognitive Inconsistency Evoke a Negative Affective State? Nicholas Levy, Cindy Harmon-Jones, and Eddie Harmon-Jones The University of New South Wales Festinger (1957) described cognitive dissonance as psychological discomfort that resulted from a cognitive inconsistency. Discussion of dissonance for the past 60 years has focused on the classic paradigms and the motivation to reduce dissonance, but some have noted that this represents a narrow application of Festinger’s ideas (Gawronski & Brannon, in press). Recent research has suggested, but not demonstrated, that simple cognitive inconsistencies may also evoke the affective and motivational state of dissonance (e.g., E. Harmon-Jones, Harmon-Jones, & Levy, 2015). In the current experiments, participants read sentences that ended with incongruent or congruent final words. In Study 1, sentences with incongruent endings led to more negative implicit affect than did sentences with congruent endings. Study 2 replicated this finding, with the addition of self-report and facial electromyography. These findings indicate that simple inconsistencies can evoke dissonance. Keywords: dissonance, consistency, emotion processing, implicit measures, affect Festinger’s (1957) cognitive dissonance the- ory revolutionized the understanding of the re- lationships between cognitive, motivational, and affective processes. According to the orig- inal theory, “In the presence of an inconsistency there is psychological discomfort” (Festinger, 1957, p. 2). Inconsistency here refers to “non- fitting relations between cognitions” (Festinger, 1957, p. 3). Festinger, (1957) speculated that If a person were standing in the rain and yet could see no evidence that he was getting wet, these two cogni- tions would be dissonant with one another because he knows from experience that getting wet follows from being out in the rain. (p. 14) It is interesting to note that Festinger did not distinguish between dissonance as a relation between cognitions and dissonance as a moti- vational state of discomfort: “nonfitting rela- tions among cognitions [are] a motivating factor in [their] own right.” (Festinger, 1957, p. 3). In this light, Festinger’s example suggests even simple inconsistencies would cause dissonance discomfort. Although this theory and evidence (see below) suggest that a simple cognitive in- consistency should evoke psychological dis- comfort, no prior research has tested this di- rectly. Thus, the current research examined whether a simple cognitive inconsistency could evoke the psychological discomfort of disso- nance. Models of affect recognize that affective states are characterized by psychophysiological dimensions (e.g., Bradley, Greenwald, Petry, & Lang, 1992; Russell, 1980), including, but not limited to, affective valence (how pleasant or unpleasant an affective state is; E. Harmon- Jones, Harmon-Jones, Amodio, & Gable, 2011) and arousal (Gable & Harmon-Jones, 2013)