Act vs Behavior vs Attitude

Scholars have said attitude is the key target of persuasion. Persuasion attempts are indeed often designed to change our attitude toward a candidate, toward smoking, toward buying healthier foods, toward brand A, or toward our pro-life or pro-choice point of view.

But attitude shouldn’t be the key target of persuasion.

The real goal of persuasion is to change behavior—to get someone to act differently, to get a voter to vote for your candidate, to get a smoker to stop smoking, to get a parent to buy healthier foods for the family, to get a shopper to choose brand A over brand B

If you succeed in getting someone to act the way you want, your persuasion attempt succeeds whether or not attitudes change. If you fail to get someone to act the way you want, your persuasion attempt fails whether or not attitudes change. Imagine you are working for a major metropolitan city government. Like many cities, yours has overcrowded roadways and a mass transportation system that is losing money because of declining ridership. The mayor asks you to get some people off the roadways and onto mass transportation, easing both problems at once. With enormous effort and expense, you put together a communication campaign that generates a more negative attitude toward driving to work and a more positive attitude toward commuting by mass transit. If, despite the effort and the attitude change, people are still overcrowding the roadways and avoiding mass transit, your work has been in vain and the mayor will not be pleased. On the other hand, you might put your effort into making parking at city lots downtown a little more expensive and using the additional money to make mass transit a little less expensive. With this approach, you may have success at getting some drivers out of their cars and on to mass transit without necessarily changing attitudes. In the first case you have gotten attitude change without behavior change. In the second, you have gotten behavior change without attitude change. I suspect the mayor would be happier with the latter. Attitude change is one possible way of getting someone to act differently. But attitude change is not the only way and is quite likely not the most effective way.

And attitudes are hard to change. “Intellectual antibodies,” to use Naomi Klein’s phrase, get in the way. Intellectual antibodies help us preserve our preconceptions. These antibodies are also known as “Confirmatory Bias.” Confirmatory Bias is made up of two parts: (1) People tend to seek out information that reinforces their existing attitudes and avoid information that might undermine their existing attitudes, a phenomenon known as “Selective Exposure.” Conservatives watch Fox news and liberals watch MSNBC because Fox news reinforces conservatives’ attitudes and MSNBC reinforces liberals’ attitudes. (2) When information makes it through Selective Exposure, people interpret that information to fit their preconceptions, a phenomenon known as “Selective Perception.”

Strange as it seems, the act is easier to change than the attitude.

People who see our behavior believe our actions spring from some deep-seated quality within us. But we interpret our actions quite differently. We see our actions as springing from circumstance. So if circumstances change, we can change what we do and keep our attitude intact. How people act is a result of both attitude and circumstances. Circumstances have a much greater impact on behavior than we realize. Whereas attitudes resist change, circumstances are often malleable. Change the circumstances and you will change how people act. By changing the circumstances, the persuader has avoided our “Intellectual Antibodies.”

You may generally prefer a cookie to a pear. However, when you are hungry, if a pear is at hand and cookies are not, there is a much better chance you will choose the pear. Your behavior may change even though your preference for cookies doesn’t.

William James, the renowned American philosopher and psychologist, said back in 1899, that 99 percent of our activity is purely automatic.10 Recent psychological research confirms his suggestion. Much of our behavior results from cues in the environment, rather than conscious reflection and deliberation. When persuading, don’t begin by asking, “How can I get people to change their minds?” Ask instead, "How can I get them to act differently?" Getting people to act differently might or might not involve changing their minds. Cognitive dissonance research found that if you act in a way that is inconsistent with your attitude, you will generally adjust your attitude to fit with your action, that is, you will shift your attitude to justify or rationalize your behavior. Social psychologists are fond of seeing what happens when people act in ways that are inconsistent with their attitude. To get people to act that way, they conducted a variety of creative experiments. They have asked study participants to tell others that a clearly boring task is actually interesting and engaging.14 They have asked study participants to write essays arguing in favor of positions that contradict the participants’ own attitudes. They have asked participants to eat grasshoppers when the participants would rather not. In each case, social psychologists found that when participants acted in a way that was inconsistent with their attitude, their attitude changed in the direction of their behavior. Their attitude shifted to justify or rationalize their behavior. Even if people are somewhat indifferent about two items, being forced to choose one option over the other results in a change of attitude. Jack Brehm offered people a choice of two attractive items to take home as a gift. After people chose either one of the items, they felt more positively toward the item they chose and more negatively toward the item they rejected than they did before choosing. After they chose, people adjusted their attitude to rationalize their behavior. According to the theory of cognitive consistency, inconsistency between action and attitude is uncomfortable and adjusting the attitude reduces the discomfort. Self-perception theory is a reinterpretation of cognitive dissonance research. According to self-perception theory, we don’t really know ourselves. To use Wilson’s phrase, we are strangers to ourselves. We infer our own attitudes from how we behave. We figure out who we are by observing what we do. So, according to self-perception theory, attitude change doesn’t necessarily result from the discomfort we feel when our actions are inconsistent with our attitude. Rather, when our actions are inconsistent with our former attitude, we reinterpret our attitude, we reinterpret who we are. We even infer from our behavior attitudes that weren’t there before. What we do, regardless of the cause, changes our self-definition. It is difficult to change parental attitudes toward childhood vaccinations. It will probably be easier to change the act. If up-to-date vaccinations are required for school attendance and philosophical and religious exemptions are difficult to obtain, parents will comply. Not only will they comply, they will feel a lot more positively about vaccinations. People’s attitude will reflect their behavior. Changing the circumstances changes the behavior and changing the behavior, in turn, changes the attitude. In discussing this feedback body to mind, Wilson reminds us of Kurt Vonnegut’s advice: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” For the most part, the attitude change that results from behavior change occurs without us being aware of it. In fact, our current actions can cause us to forget or misremember what our original beliefs or attitudes were. Once we act, our attitude toward that action becomes more positive than it was before we acted. And, once we act, we remember our attitude toward that action as more positive than it actually was.

The fact that behavior change often leads to attitude change is the reason why the “gaining commitment” and “foot-in-the-door” approaches are included in lists of surprisingly effective persuasive techniques. Whether you are trying to persuade a boss, a friend, or a family member, aim for commitment. Commitment will be much easier to get than actual behavior change, and once you have commitment, behavior change will come more readily.

The easiest way to get people to act as you would like is to change the circumstances, making that act seem more natural, normal, and inevitable. And as you focus on an act, make that act appealing to the lizard. The lizard pays attention to how readily the act comes to mind. The lizard is concerned with the associations that are called forth by the act. The lizard notices how the people who perform that act behave and infers the qualities of the group the lizard would, in effect, join if it also performed that act. The lizard will be strongly affected by the emotion that the act evokes. Even mild affection can make a big difference. And the lizard is sensitive to the popularity of the act.

Redefine the act. Give it meaning. When you attach associations to the act you transform the act from an objective operation into a subjective, symbolic performance. If you do, you not only increase the probability of the act, you begin to change the attitude toward it.