A Little Something and a Little Short
Good morning … this is us and our super woman cape … we decided if we were going to get to paper writing it today, we would need to wear it. You hearing us in there?? Ok, ok … we’re going to be nice. It’s now Sunday at about 9:30 am. We slept in late and then took the time to post and read our yesterday’s blog entry. I don’t think we ever really got past our own insecurities. We were like in anticipation of our sweetie all day. We’re going to try very, very hard to focus on school today. Even housekeeping has to wait until we get some work done.
For the record our sweetie pie did come over. Oh wait, wait … look at this … I caught a sun sparkle!!!
Wooh Hooo First one of the day!
Sorry that was like a station interruption. Hehehe we sent a copy to our Granddaughter.
Ok … pretty sure we’re off-bases here. Let’s talk about what it would take to get us started in school work. We went yesterday to school and then we finished reading a chapter and now today … we could write a paper? Maybe two? What do we have to do? Hmm? Ok open our OneNote and peek at the assignment … that would be a good idea. Hmm?
Ok this is the official word on that … we’re to write a paper about attitude and behavior. I know we read the chapter, but we will need to look at it to remember, but that’s ok, right? Let’s note the assignment.
u07d1 Attitude and Behavior
For this activity, you will discuss an article from the Internet and the text readings from this unit.
Instructions:
1. Incorporate an article in response to this discussion or discussion u07s2
2. Consider - What are the factors that influence the link between attitudes and behavior?
3. Provide examples that illustrate the factors you choose.
Ok, this doesn’t seem real hard, but we’re going to need doing some work. We’ll need to first open the book and look for the sections that apply. And then, we’ll have to take notes from our outlines and then we’ll need to get some other articles and takes notes. And then, we’ll have to choose the notes we want to write the paper and then actually write the paper, and then the end. We can do that, right? Because we are SUPER STUDENT!!!
Ok, looking in the book we are talking about the five pages 190-194. It’s titled “The link between attitudes and behavior.” Can’t get anymore direct than that. It’s exactly 10 am now … let’s give it a go … we’ll set the timer and see if we can do it in an hour or less … GO!
Start paper here …
Attitudes and behaviors do not always go hand in hand and this is especially true in consideration of self-reported attitudes (p. 190). There were many factors that we looked at that helped to explain the relationship between attitude and behaviors. They are listed below (Brehm, Kassin, & Fein, 2005):
Factor #1: If we want to measure attitudes and behavior, we need to pay attention to specific attitudes in relation to behavior (p. 191). If I wanted to understand the lunch time behavior of the individuals I work with then I would study attitudes during the lunchroom period. I might for example look at the behavior of individuals getting up to visit their peers, or not after lunch and question that relationship to attitudes at lunch time like flexibility, social norms and constructs, personal esteem, introversion, or satiety.
Factor #2: “The more specific the initial attitude question was, the better it predicted the behavior” (p. 191). Questions that might apply to the above would be “Do you feel comfortable standing up to stretch after you have eaten lunch? Do you like to dance during the last ten minutes of the lunch break? Is it good manners to talk to someone who is still eating? Or, have you exercised on the exercise bike after eating a full meal?”
Factor #3: Four aspects of decision-making that influence behavior are (p. 191):
A) “Behavior is influenced less by general attitudes than by attitudes toward a specific behavior (p. 191). To understand the full-meal scenario and exercise it is better to ask in relation to a specific piece of equipment such as the bike than to specify exercise in general. This avoids the middleman position of “it depends.”
B) “Behavior is influenced not only by attitudes but by subjective norms – our beliefs about what other think we should do” (p. 191). If no one is standing up to visit after eating, then regardless of what our attitude is on visiting, we most likely will withhold from standing up, until we are further cued, such as by the Sister saying grace.
C) “Attitudes give rise to behavior only when we perceive the behavior to be within our control” (p. 191). I might want to dance, but if the decision is made by a staff not to play music, because of all the dancing that has occurred in the dance class previous to lunch, I will change my attitude and behavior accordingly.
D) “People often do not follow through on their intentions” (p. 192). Although, an ideal situation would be that the individuals relax and do a little dancing after they finish eating they might ask for the dance music to be started, but then just stand by the music and talk casually with peers also standing on the dance floor.
Factor #4: “Specific attitudes combine with social factors to produce behavior” and sometimes attitudes are difficult to change depending on their strength (p. 192). Sister holds a strong attitude concerning prayers before and after each meal. The individuals wishing to follow suit also pray, but the behavior of making the sign of the cross is very different. Some of the individuals served faithfully follow sister’s lead of going up to down and right to left, but others with equal or greater ability drift off and make circling signs, tap their shoulders, or roll their head, which becomes very difficult to change, especially when repeated incorrectly, but consistently each time.
A) The most passionately held attitudes “1) directly affected their own outcomes and self-interests; 2) related to deeply held philosophical, political, and religious values, and 3) were of concern to their close friends, family, and social ingroups” (p. 192). An example of a passionately held attitude is one of self-importance by one of the individuals we serve. She typically dominates the group, especially as a member of the center’s choir. She sings in the choir at her own church and has taken the lead in some of the church and fundraising productions. Part of the problem with an attitude held with this high of self-importance is that it is hard to correct her singing, because she thinks that “a star” does not need correction.
B) “People tend to behave in ways that are consistent with their attitudes when they are well informed” (p. 192-193). In the above situation if the head of the center tells this individual that famous singers like James Taylor or Luther Vandross practice singing hour after hour each day to improve their skill, the above individual is much more likely to take heart and buckle down
C) “Attitudes are more stable and more predictive of behavior when they are born of direct personal experience than when based on indirect, secondhand information” (p. 193). From the perspective of someone working just lightly with the individuals in the choir, we have found that it is much easier to teach singing by actually doing it rather than just listening. The attitude of the group is that the practice hasn’t started until they open their mouths to sing. Before that they tend to fidget to their heart’s content.
D) “People hold attitudes with varying degrees of certainty, and they become more confident after they successfully resist changing that attitude in response to a persuasive communication” (p. 193). The individuals in the choir respond to Sister’s periodic admonitions concerning their singing ability by usually singing louder the next time, and with more spirit. They hold the attitude that they just need to try harder to please her or prove her wrong.
E) “Attitudes are highly accessible to awareness, which means they are quickly
and easily brought to mind … by mere sight or even just the mention of an attitude object” (p. 194). The individuals served are frequently brought to awareness of how good they are by the simple suggestion made by sister through a smile or wave of the hands, “I told you you could do it!” The attitude object is the praise from Sister. They know if they hold on long enough and don’t take her excitement personally, she is going to find reason to praise them soon enough.
F) “Situational factors can also bring an attitude into awareness” (p. 194). One other cue the individuals served pick up on is when sister discusses them frustratingly to another staff member that has entered the room, like when we exchange the duty of lunch monitoring. For example one individual forgets her glasses, so Sister might say sarcastically so and so could not see well enough to even find the chips in her bag. The individual overhearing this might then pour out the chips remaining in her bag and when sister catches her listening, she might further scold, I’ve reminded you over and over again to bring in your glasses, to which the individual might respond defensively, “I’m eating all of my chips.” The attitude is I am capable no matter what you say.
Reference
Brehm, S. S., Kassin, S., Fein, S. (2005), Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
End Paper here …
Ok … that’s one paper … the time is good … it’s 12:38 pm. We didn’t get any extra resources, but otherwise it was a good paper. Pretty much a formula of finding the factors or things I considered factors and then elaborate as to what came to mind. It’s pretty easy for us to find examples, because we are so used to doing it for the clients. I spot checked one other persons work … as I’d expected she listed 3-4 factors and let it go at that … She did put in good examples, but they were closer to what the book had listed. She didn’t leave that framework very far behind.
That’s ok, in general the nature of the beast is to get the ideas down, not much more. I think though that it is a general cause of Capella to help us along in thinking of the assignments being close to our real or ideal jobs, if not personal well-being. This particular assignment asked for examples so I felt comfortable with that. We’re going to take another 15 minutes and then get back to it, while we’re still in the working hard mode. If this paper went down easy enough, I would like to imagine reading chapter 8 between tonight and early tomorrow morning. I think the next chapter is on conformity and that is broken down to obedience and in instructing someone to be less conforming. Yeeks … just reading ahead … I guess we have to read chapter 7 which was expected, but also we need to read a supplementary article on Milgram’s experiment … this was a guy in the 60’s who did an experiment in shocking people, or at least pretending to shock someone (the confederate) and the victim ahem I mean subject was told to shock harder and harder. It was see if he would obey … similar to the Nazis in Germany following Hitler. I’ve heard about that experiment almost every year since I’ve started in psychology. It is like THE classic experiement that got the field into thinking regulations because it was so unethical. But, alas, we are jumping ahead of ourselves.
That is chapter 8 and we’ve got one more paper for chapter 7 … this next one is going to be on persuasion. This is the actual assignment:
u07d2 Persuasion
For this activity, you will discuss an article from the Internet and the text readings from this unit.
Instructions:
1. Incorporate the article you located in response to this discussion.
2. How could you use the principles of persuasion to market yourself?
Hmm, interesting … they’ve added a little twist to it … market myself, hmmm?
Yeeks. That was a trick question. Because although it looks simple, the material I might choose to use is like 18 pages long. I don’t think I have to do all that, but if I don’t go over the thick of it … I might lose substance in between the cracks. Might want to look at that by placing down a very skinny outline. Here we go … Back to work woooohoooo 4 minutes ahead of schedule!
Begin Paper Here ….
posted by Ann Marie @ 3/05/2007 07:57:00 AM
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