Motivation vs. Cognition in Social Psychology

1. Motivation vs. Cognition in Social Psychology • Self-Serving Bias in Attribution • Miller & Ross (1976) analysis of these findings • Motivational account • Cognitive account • Cognitive account is more parsimonious • Tetlock & Levi (1982) analysis of these findings - There is no way to differentiate between the two accounts • Research on Outcome dependency- • Berscheid, Graziano, Monson, & Dermer (1976)

2. Cognitive Dissonance Studies • The Original Theory • Festinger & Carlsmith (1962) • Festinger’s Interpretation • Self-Perception Theory • Bem says we don’t need all that inconsistent cognitions stuff, we watch our own behavior and infer our attitudes from what we see. • Overjustification effect • Lepper, Green, & Nisbett • Zanna, & Cooper (1974) Study - Dissonance and the Pill.

3. Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, (1973) - Overjustification Effect

4. Zanna & Cooper (1974)Dissonance & the Pill

5. Self-Affirmation Theory • Steele & Lui (1983) - Dissonance and Values Affirmation • Steele, Spencer & Lynch, 1993 - Self-Esteem & Dissonance • Under normal conditions there are no differences between highs and lows • But when reminded of their self-esteem highs no longer show typical attitude change; lows show an unusually large amount of attitude change • Self-Affirmation has effects on other variables too - like persuasion, prejudice, and health behaviors

6. Steele & Liu (1983)

7. Self-Esteem and Dissonance

8. Mechanisms for Motivated Reasoning - Santioso, Kunda, & Fong • Study 1 - • They told people that either extraversion or introversion leads to success. • Then in a supposed second experiment they had people list their extraverted and introverted memories • Study 3 - latency study • Study 2 - ruled out priming • Study 4 - Selected introverts and extraverts and they still got the effect

9. Santioso, Kunda, & Fong Study 1

10. Santioso, Kunda, & Fong Study 3

11. Santioso, Kunda, & Fong Study 4

12. Mechanisms for Motivated Reasoning • Motivated memory search • Motivated belief construction • Defining traits idiosyncratically - • I say I am very idealistic and sensible, but not that I am very punctual or neat • Dunning, Meyerowitz, & Holzberg (1989) • Amount of effort put into processing information • We put more effort into refuting what we want to refute and we don’t scrutinize what we want to believe • Lord, Ross, & Lepper (1979)

13. Dunning et al. (1989)

14. Revisiting the Motivation vs. Cognition Debate • What can we now say about parsimony? • Motivation and cognition are now on equal footing as explanatory mechanisms • The distinction is now blurring between motivation and cognition • Should we use motivation or cognition in making decisions? • Taylor and Brown (1988) & Murray, Holmes, & Griffin (1996) suggests that positive illusions can be good

15. Mood as a Basis of Thinking -Mood Congruent Judgment • Mood as a source of priming • Esses and Zanna (1995) - mood and rating of ethnic groups • Mood as a source of information • Schwarz & Clore (1983) - the weather and your satisfaction with your life as a whole

16. Esses & Zanna (1995) Mood & Stereotyping

17. Esses & Zanna (1995)Mood and Rating of Traits

18. Schwarz & Clore (1983)

19. Mood as a determinant of cognitive strategies Mood Maintenance • Mood and persuasion • Wegener, Petty, & Smith (1995): Happy mood leads to peripheral processing unless systematic processing can make you happy; sad mood leads to systematic processing • Mood and stereotyping • Bodenhausen (1993): People in a happy mood use stereotypes when evaluating others • Mood and helping • McMillen & Austin (1971): People who did not feel guilty helped for 2 minutes; guilty people helped for 63 minutes