Vicarious Dissonance, Attitude Change & Social Identity

描述(由申请人提供)：为了最大限度地减少人们将自己置于身心健康疾病的风险之中，能够影响他们对健康相关问题的态度和行为是很重要的。这项拟议的工作提出了一种基于理论的方法来影响态度和行为，并在一项旨在影响年轻人降低患皮肤癌风险的研究中达到顶峰。这项研究考察了人们的态度可能会因另一个人的行为而发生变化的可能性。这项拟议的研究专门针对代替性不和谐。替代不和谐假说认为，如果一个人观察到其他人的行为方式与他们的态度不一致，那么他有可能经历替代的认知不和谐，前提是该行为者是观察者所在社会群体的成员。这一假说将不和谐与社会认同的理论构建结合在一起。研究表明，拥有共同的群体成员身份，并对其群体有强烈认同感的人，往往具有群体原型成员的特征、情感和动机。因此，如果一个群体成员的行为方式导致了他或她自己的不和谐，也会产生其他群体成员的不和谐。即使其他小组成员没有采取态度不一致的方式，他们仍然会受到压力，要求他们改变自己的态度。提案中的研究分为四个部分。在第一部分中，实验旨在表明，人们的态度改变是作为他们自己群体中其他成员的反态度行为的函数，并且这种态度的改变确实是基于认知不和谐的过程。在第二部分中，实验直接评估了社会认同假设，旨在研究参与者、行为者和态度问题的原型性的重要性。第三部分对群体认同的强度进行了实验操作，并考察了人际认同和组内认同的相对贡献。第四部分试图展示代替性不和谐对与健康相关的重要态度和行为的影响。这项工作旨在说服皮肤癌高危人群更频繁、更有效地使用防晒霜。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In order to minimize people putting themselves at risk for physical and mental disease, it is important to be able to influence their attitudes and behaviors on health related matters. The proposed work suggests a theoretically based way to influence attitudes and behaviors and culminates in a study designed to influence young people to reduce their risk of contracting skin cancer. The research examines the possibility that people's attitudes can change vicariously from the actions of another person. The proposed research specifically addresses vicarious dissonance. The vicarious dissonance hypothesis holds that a person who observes others behaving in a manner inconsistent with their attitudes has the potential to experience cognitive dissonance vicariously, provided that the actor is a member of the observer's social group. The hypothesis combines dissonance with the theoretical construct of social identity. It is suggested that people who share a common group membership, and who feel strongly identified with their group, tend to take on the characteristics, emotions and motivations of the group's prototypical member. Thus, if a group member acts in such a way that produces dissonance in him or herself, it will also produce dissonance in other group members. Even though the other group members did not act in an attitude discrepant fashion, they will nonetheless experience pressure to change their own attitudes. The research in the proposal is divided into four parts. In Part I, experiments are designed to show that people change their attitudes as a function of the counterattitudinal behavior of other members of their own group and that the attitude change is indeed based on the process of cognitive dissonance. In Part II, experiments directly assess the social identity hypothesis and are designed to study the importance of the prototypicality of the participant, the actor and the attitude issue. Part III experimentally manipulates the strength of group identification and also examines the relative contributions of interpersonal and intragroup identification. Part IV seeks to demonstrate the impact of vicarious dissonance on an important health-related attitude and behavior. The work is directed toward convincing people at risk of skin cancer to use sun block more frequently and effectively.