Personality psychologists focus on the person. They study the personal traits and dynamics that explain why different people may act differently in a given situation, such as the one Willems faced. (Would you have helped the jailer out of the icy water?) Social psychologists focus on the situation. They study the social influences that explain why the same person will act differently in different situations. Might the jailer have acted differently—opting not to march Willems back to jail—under differing circumstances?

Our social behavior arises from our social thinking. Especially when the unexpected occurs, we want to understand and explain why people act as they do. After studying how people explain others’ behavior, Fritz Heider (1958) proposed an attribution theory: We can attribute the behavior to the person’s stable, enduring traits (a dispositional attribution), or we can attribute it to the situation (a situational attribution).

For example, in class, we notice that Juliette seldom talks. Over coffee, Jack talks nonstop. That must be the sort of people they are, we decide. Juliette must be shy and Jack outgoing. Such attributions—to their dispositions—can be valid, because people do have enduring personality traits. But sometimes we fall prey to the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977): We overestimate the influence of personality and underestimate the influence of situations. In class, Jack may be as quiet as Juliette. Catch Juliette at a party and you may hardly recognize your quiet classmate.

David Napolitan and George Goethals (1979) demonstrated the fundamental attribution error in an experiment with Williams College students. They had students talk, one at a time, with a young woman who acted either cold and critical or warm and friendly. Before the conversations, the researchers told half the students that the woman’s behavior would be spontaneous. They told the other half the truth—that they had instructed her to act friendly (or unfriendly).

Did hearing the truth affect students’ impressions of the woman? Not at all! If the woman acted friendly, both groups decided she really was a warm person. If she acted unfriendly, both decided she really was a cold person. They attributed her behavior to her personal disposition even when told that her behavior was situational—that she was merely acting that way for the purposes of the experiment.

WHAT FACTORS AFFECT OUR ATTRIBUTIONS? The fundamental attribution error appears more often in some cultures than in others. Individualist Westerners more often attribute behavior to people’s personal traits. People in East Asian cultures are somewhat more sensitive to the power of the situation (Heine & Ruby, 2010; Kitayama et al., 2009). This difference has appeared in experiments that asked people to view scenes, such as a big fish swimming. Americans focused more on the individual fish, and Japanese people more on the whole scene (Chua et al., 2005; Nisbett, 2003).

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We all commit the fundamental attribution error. Most of us have had the experience of meeting someone we know from a particular situation—a teacher, a boss, a family doctor—in a different context. Often, we may find ourselves surprised by the difference: A teacher who is authoritative and assertive in class seems lower key. The doctor, a revered authority in the office, seems like an ordinary person. Outside their assigned roles, professors seem less professorial, presidents less presidential, managers less managerial.

When we explain our own behavior, we are sensitive to how behavior changes with the situation (Idson & Mischel, 2001). (An important exception: We more often attribute our deliberate and admirable actions not to situations but to our own good reasons [Malle, 2006; Malle et al., 2007].) We also are sensitive to the power of the situation when we explain the behavior of people we know well and have seen in different contexts. We more often commit the fundamental attribution error when a stranger acts badly. Having only seen that red-faced fan screaming at the referee in the heat of competition, we may assume he is a bad person. But outside the stadium, he may be a good neighbor and a great parent.

As we act, our eyes look outward; we see others’ faces, not our own. If we could take the observer’s point of view, would we become more aware of our own personal style? To test this idea, researchers have filmed two people interacting with a camera behind each person. Then they showed each person a replay of their interaction—filmed from the other person’s perspective. Seeing their behavior from the other person’s perspective, participants better appreciated the power of the situation (Lassiter & Irvine, 1986; Storms, 1973).

WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR ATTRIBUTIONS? The way we explain others’ actions, attributing them to the person or the situation, can have important real-life effects (Fincham & Bradbury, 1993; Fletcher et al., 1990). A person must decide whether to attribute another’s friendliness to romantic interest or social obligation. A partner must decide whether a loved one’s tart-tongued remark reflects a mean disposition or a bad day. A jury must decide whether a shooting was malicious or in self-defense. In one study, 181 state judges gave lighter sentences to a violent offender who a scientist testified had a gene that altered brain areas related to aggressiveness (Aspinwall et al., 2012).

Consider the social and economic effects of attribution. How do we explain poverty or unemployment? In Britain, India, Australia, and the United States (Furnham, 1982; Pandey et al., 1982; Wagstaff, 1982; Zucker & Weiner, 1993), political conservatives have tended to attribute responsibility to the personal dispositions of the poor and unemployed: “People generally get what they deserve. Those who take initiative can choose to get ahead.” After inviting people to reflect on the power of choice—by having them recall their own choices or take note of another’s choices—people become more likely to think that people get what they deserve (Savani & Rattan, 2012). Political liberals, and those not primed to consider the power of choice, are more likely to blame past and present situations: “If you or I had to live with the same poor education, lack of opportunity, and discrimination, would we be any better off? Better to drain the swamps than swat the mosquitoes.”

The point to remember: Our attributions—to a person’s disposition or to the situation—have real consequences.

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35-2 How do attitudes and actions interact?

Attitudes are feelings, often influenced by our beliefs, that predispose our reactions to objects, people, and events. If we believe someone is threatening us, we may feel fear and anger toward the person and act defensively. The traffic between our attitudes and our actions is two-way. Our attitudes affect our actions. And our actions affect our attitudes.

ATTITUDES AFFECT ACTIONS Consider the climate change debate. On one side are climate change activists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014), who warn of accumulating greenhouse gases, melting glaciers, shrinking Arctic ice, rising seas, dying coral reefs, migrating species and vegetation, and extreme and warming weather. On the other side are climate change skeptics, who include many in the general public. The 31 percent who in 1998 thought “the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated” had increased to 42 percent by 2014 (Dugan, 2014).

Knowing that public attitudes affect public policies, people on both sides aim to persuade. Persuasion efforts generally take two forms:

Persuaders try to influence our behavior by changing our attitudes. But other factors, including the situation, also influence our behavior. Strong social pressures, for example, can weaken the attitude-behavior connection (Wallace et al., 2005). In roll-call votes, politicians will sometimes vote what their supporters demand, despite privately disagreeing with those demands (Nagourney, 2002). In such cases, external pressure overrides the attitude-behavior link.

Attitudes are especially likely to affect behavior when external influences are minimal, and when the attitude is stable, specific to the behavior, and easily recalled (Glasman & Albarracín, 2006). One experiment used vivid, easily recalled information to persuade people that sustained tanning put them at risk for future skin cancer. One month later, 72 percent of the participants, and only 16 percent of those in a waitlist control group, had lighter skin (McClendon & Prentice-Dunn, 2001). Persuasion changed attitudes (concerning skin cancer risk), which changed behavior (less tanning).

ACTIONS AFFECT ATTITUDES Now consider a more surprising principle: Not only will people stand up for what they believe, they also will more strongly believe in what they have stood up for. Many streams of evidence confirm that attitudes follow behavior (FIGURE 35.1).

THE FOOT-IN-THE-DOOR PHENOMENON How do you think you would react if someone induced you to act against your beliefs? In many cases, people adjust their attitudes. During the Korean war, many U.S. prisoners of war were held in war camps run by Chinese communists. Without using brutality, the captors secured the prisoners’ collaboration in various activities. Some prisoners merely ran errands or did simple tasks to gain privileges. Others made radio appeals and false confessions. Still others informed on fellow prisoners and divulged military information. When the war ended, 21 prisoners chose to stay with the communists. Some of the others returned home “brainwashed”—convinced that communism was a good thing for Asia.

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How did the Chinese captors achieve these amazing results? A key ingredient was their effective use of the foot-in-the-door phenomenon: They knew that people who agreed to a small request would find it easier to comply later with a larger one. The Chinese began with harmless requests, such as copying a trivial statement, but gradually escalated their demands (Schein, 1956). The next statement to be copied might list flaws of capitalism. Then, to gain privileges, the prisoners participated in group discussions, wrote self-criticisms, or uttered public confessions. After doing so, they often adjusted their beliefs to be more consistent with their public acts. The point is simple: To get people to agree to something big, start small and build (Cialdini, 1993). A trivial act makes the next act easier. Telling a small lie paves the way to telling a bigger lie. Succumb to a temptation and the next temptation becomes harder to resist.

In dozens of experiments, researchers have coaxed people into acting against their attitudes or violating their moral standards, with the same result: Doing becomes believing. After giving in to a request to harm an innocent victim—by making nasty comments or delivering presumed electric shocks—people begin to look down on their victim. After speaking or writing on behalf of a position they have qualms about, they begin to believe their own words.

Fortunately, the attitudes-follow-behavior principle works with good deeds as well. The foot-in-the-door tactic has helped boost charitable contributions and blood donations. In one classic experiment, researchers posing as safe-driving volunteers asked Californians to permit the installation of a large, poorly lettered “Drive Carefully” sign in their front yards. Only 17 percent consented. They approached other homeowners with a small request first: Would they display a 3-inch-high “Be a Safe Driver” sign? Nearly all readily agreed. When reapproached two weeks later to allow the large, ugly sign in their front yards, 76 percent consented (Freedman & Fraser, 1966). To secure a big commitment, it often pays to put your foot in the door.

Racial attitudes likewise follow behavior. In the years immediately following the introduction of school desegregation in the United States and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, White Americans expressed diminishing racial prejudice. And as Americans in different regions came to act more alike—thanks to more uniform national standards against discrimination—they began to think more alike. Experiments confirm the observation: Moral action strengthens moral convictions.

ROLE PLAYING AFFECTS ATTITUDES When you adopt a new role—when you become a college student, marry, or begin a new job—you strive to follow the social prescriptions. At first, your behaviors may feel phony, because you are acting a role. Soldiers may at first feel they are playing war games. Newlyweds may feel they are “playing house.” Before long, however, what began as playacting in the theater of life becomes you. Researchers have confirmed this effect by assessing people’s attitudes before and after they adopt a new role—sometimes in laboratory situations and sometimes in everyday situations, such as before and after taking a job.

Role playing morphed into real life in one famous and controversial study in which male college students volunteered to spend time in a simulated prison. Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo (1972) randomly assigned some volunteers to be guards. He gave them uniforms, clubs, and whistles and instructed them to enforce certain rules. Others became prisoners, locked in barren cells and forced to wear humiliating outfits. For a day or two, the volunteers self-consciously “played” their roles. Then the simulation became real—too real. Some guards developed disparaging attitudes, and devised cruel and degrading routines. One by one, the prisoners broke down, rebelled, or became passively resigned. After only six days, Zimbardo called off the study.

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Critics question the reliability of Zimbardo’s results (Griggs, 2014). But this much seems true: Role playing can train torturers (Staub, 1989). In the early 1970s, the Greek military government eased men into their roles. First, a trainee stood guard outside an interrogation cell. After this “foot in the door” step, he stood guard inside. Only then was he ready to become actively involved in the questioning and torture. What we do, we gradually become. In one study of German males, military training toughened their personalities, leaving them less agreeable even five years later, after leaving the military (Jackson et al., 2012). And it’s true of us all: Every time we act like the people around us, we slightly change ourselves to be more like them, and less like who we used to be.

Yet people differ. In Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison simulation and in other atrocity-producing situations, some people have succumbed to the situation and others have not (Carnahan & McFarland, 2007; Haslam & Reicher, 2007, 2012; Mastroianni & Reed, 2006; Zimbardo, 2007). Person and situation interact. Much as water dissolves salt but not sand, so rotten situations turn some people into bad apples while others resist (Johnson, 2007).

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: RELIEF FROM TENSION So far, we have seen that actions can affect attitudes, sometimes turning prisoners of war into collaborators, doubters into believers, and compliant guards into abusers. But why? One explanation is that when we become aware that our attitudes and actions don’t coincide, we experience tension, or cognitive dissonance. Indeed, the brain regions that become active when people experience cognitive conflict and negative arousal also become active when people experience cognitive dissonance (Kitayama et al., 2013). To relieve this tension, according to Leon Festinger’s (1957) cognitive dissonance theory, we often bring our attitudes into line with our actions.

Dozens of experiments have explored this cognitive dissonance phenomenon. Many have made people feel responsible for behavior that clashed with their attitudes and had foreseeable consequences. In one of these experiments, you might agree for a measly $2 to help a researcher by writing an essay that supports something you don’t believe in (perhaps a tuition increase). Feeling responsible for the statements (which are inconsistent with your attitudes), you would probably feel dissonance, especially if you thought your essay might influence an administrator. To reduce the uncomfortable tension, you might start believing your phony words. At such times, it’s as if we rationalize, “If I chose to do it (or say it), I must believe in it.” The less coerced and more responsible we feel for a troubling act—as after writing that essay for only $2 and not $100—the more dissonance we feel. The more dissonance we feel, the more motivated we are to find consistency, such as changing our attitudes to help justify the act.

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The attitudes-follow-behavior principle has a heartening implication: We cannot directly control all our feelings, but we can influence them by altering our behavior. If we are down in the dumps, we can do as cognitive-behavioral therapists advise and talk in more positive, self-accepting ways with fewer self–put-downs. If we are unloving, we can become more loving by behaving as if we were so—by doing thoughtful things, expressing affection, giving affirmation. That helps explain why teens’ doing volunteer work promotes a compassionate identity. “Assume a virtue, if you have it not,” says Hamlet to his mother. “For use can almost change the stamp of nature.” Pretense can become reality. Conduct sculpts character. What we do we become.

The point to remember: Cruel acts shape the self. But so do acts of good will. Act as though you like someone, and you soon may. Changing our behavior can change how we think about others and how we feel about ourselves.