Vicarious Dissonance, Attitude Change & Social Identity

描述（由申请人提供）：为了尽量减少人们将自己置于身体和精神疾病的风险中，能够影响他们对健康相关问题的态度和行为是很重要的。拟议的工作提出了一种基于理论的方式来影响态度和行为，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高潮。这项研究考察了人们的态度是否会因另一个人的行为而发生变化。拟议的研究专门针对代理失调。代理失调假说认为，如果一个人观察到他人的行为方式与自己的态度不一致，那么他就有可能代理地经历认知失调，前提是行为者是观察者所在社会群体的成员。该假说将失调与社会认同的理论建构相结合。研究表明，拥有共同群体成员身份的人，以及对自己的群体有强烈认同感的人，往往会呈现出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在他或她自己身上产生了不和谐，它也会在其他群体成员身上产生不和谐。即使其他小组成员没有以态度差异的方式行事，他们仍然会感受到改变自己态度的压力。本文的研究分为四个部分。在第一部分中，实验旨在表明人们态度的改变是他们自己群体中其他成员的反态度行为的函数，态度的改变确实是基于认知失调的过程。在第二部分中，实验直接评估社会认同假设，旨在研究参与者、行为人和态度问题的原型性的重要性。第三部分实验操纵群体认同的强度，并考察人际认同和群体内认同的相对贡献。第四部分试图证明替代失调对重要的健康相关态度和行为的影响。这项研究的目的是说服有患皮肤癌风险的人更频繁、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.