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Psychological
Questions
The Psychological Questions

Psychologists focus on
people’s behaviours and
attitudes (e.g. social
problem of drinking and
driving).

They are concerned with
programs which can help
people change their
behaviour (e.g. MADD).
The Psychological Questions

1.
2.
3.
Psychologists may ask the
following questions:
What must people do to
successfully change their
behaviours?
What factors make
behaviour-modification
programs successful?
Do most people need help
changing behaviour, or can
they be self-changers?
The Psychological Questions

Psychological research involves the
strong links between people’s
attitudes (what they think) and their
behaviours (what they do)

Psychologists want to know if it is
necessary to change individuals’
attitudes before behaviour can be
changed (e.g. change the person’s
attitude about drinking before
person will stop drinking and
driving).
The Psychological Questions

In search for answers
about changing people’s
behaviour, psychologists
ask the question:

Are friends more
effective then strangers
in changing a person’s
attitudes?
The Psychological Questions

How effectively does the
media mould and change
our attitudes?
The Psychological Questions


If society considers a
behaviour unacceptable,
and imposes sanctions
against it, are individuals
more likely to stop this
behaviour?
Or is it deeper than that?
The Psychological Questions

What personal qualities
make it easy or difficult
to persuade an individual
to change?

Are people generally
more receptive to logical
or emotional arguments?
Cognitive Consistency

Through their studies, social
psychologists have
discovered that most
individuals desire cognitive
consistency in their beliefs.

This means that we want to
avoid attitudes that conflict
with each other.

When two attitudes conflict
with each other we
experience discomfort.

Our desire to regain
cognitive consistency forces
us to change one of the
conflicting attitudes.

The most favoured
theory of attitude change
is called the cognitive
dissonance theory.
Example:



Suppose you smoke, but you
also believe that smoking
causes cancer and other
serious diseases.
You are experiencing
dissonance, meaning that
what you do conflicts with
what you think.
In your desire to regain
cognitive consistency, you
will probably try to avoid
facing the conflict. You may
avoid smoking in front of a
friend who is strongly
opposed to smoking (thereby
avoiding a lecture).

What are other options
to effectively reduce the
dissonance you feel in a
situation ?

You can change your
behaviour to make it
consistent with your attitudesyou can stop smoking.

You can reinforce your attitude
(e.g. my grandma was heavy
smoker and lived to be 93).

You may fool yourself
for a while, yet as long as
you live in a state of
dissonance, you will
probably experience
anxiety and be very
uncomfortable-even
hostile-if someone
criticizes your behaviour.
Dissonance

Did you ever do
something that you knew
was wrong and ended up
feeling anger; resulting
from the dissonance
between what you do
and what you think ?
Theory of Attitude Change



Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Six Stages of Change (Behaviour Modification)
-Pre-contemplation (denial, refusal)
-Contemplation (questioning)
-Preparation (investigation)
-Action (commitment)
-Maintenance (transition)
-Termination (completion)
Positive and Negative Reinforcement