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，重要的是能够影响他们对健康相关事项的态度和行为。这项拟议中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可以从另一个人的行为间接改变的可能性。拟议的研究专门针对替代失调。替代失调假说认为，一个人观察到别人的行为与他们的态度不一致，有可能间接地体验认知失调，前提是行为者是观察者的社会群体的成员。该假说将不和谐与社会认同的理论建构结合起来。有人建议，人谁共享一个共同的组成员，谁觉得强烈认同他们的组，往往采取的特点，情绪和动机的组的原型成员。因此，如果一个群体成员的行为方式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。即使其他群体成员没有以不同的态度行事，他们仍然会经历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，实验的目的是表明，人们改变他们的态度作为一个功能的反态度的其他成员的行为，他们自己的集团和态度的变化确实是基于过程的认知失调。在第二部分中，实验直接评估社会认同假设，并旨在研究参与者，演员和态度问题的原型的重要性。第三部分实验操纵群体认同的强度，并探讨了人际和群体内认同的相对贡献。第四部分试图证明替代失调对一个重要的健康相关的态度和行为的影响。这项工作旨在说服有皮肤癌风险的人更频繁和有效地使用防晒霜。

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.