Attitudes and Behavior
Most attitudes are expressed through behavior. However, this is not always so. Sometimes we are thinking one thing (attitude) and behaving another (behavior). Why is this incongruence between attitude and behavior. What makes attitudes and behavior be in line with one another, what other factors are at work here?
Attitudes and Behavior
Perloff (2003) mentions in his book on Persuasion a number of reasons why attitudes result in certain behavior. They are divided into three categories, each containing some terms. They are the following:
1. Situational factors
a. Norms: beliefs about what behavior is appropriate in certain situations.
i. Injunctive norms: perception of behaviors that others approve of. ‘People ought to clean up after themselves’
ii. Descriptive norms: perception of behaviors that others actually do. ‘People drop their filth behind them on the streets, and not in waste buckets’.
b. Roles: the part we play in the social world we live in. these roles are often prescribed by social environments. For instance, the role of woman in society at large, or the role of a housewife on the level of households.
c. Scripts: bundles of expectations about an event sequence, and ways to react to it. ‘When a friend comes up to you and asks you how you’re doing, you automatically exclaim ‘fine, and yourself?’ even though you might feel miserable at the time. The script to the ‘how-are-you-doing-question’ is ‘fine, and yourself?’, and not something else’
2. Person characteristics
a. Self-monitoring: the level of adjustment to the social environment
i. High self-monitors display appropriate behavior in social situations, they adjust to the norms and values of those around them
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