Coming to Like What We Suffer For

Like I've said before, I'm a transfer student from Texas A&M. What you might not know is that I was a proud member of the Fighting Texas Aggie Cadet Corps, a hop and skip away from going to a military academy without the benefit of a tier 1 education. While I was in the Corps, I definitely experienced the effects of cognitive dissonance, a theory which states that when our actions and attitudes don't line up, we feel psychological tension just like hunger and are motivated to reduce it (Festinger, 1957). One of the ways to reduce cognitive dissonance, especially since our past behaviors can't be changed, is to adjust our attitudes to bring them in line with our behaviors thus resolving that tension. A study by Aronson and Mills (1959) supported that one way we do this is by effort justification, or changing our attitude to justify the effort we put into it. Therefore, we like what we suffer for no matter what the reality is.

While we were watching the video of the Marines being pinned with their gold wing pins, I remembered one of my experiences before. Obviously not as bad as having a pin being pins into my chest, but it involved some blood. Band members in the corps have to earn two sets of "brass" which we wear on our collars. Until we earn these brass, we wear two "AMU" brass on each collar which, among other things, clearing labels us as freshman, or fish in the Corps, not a good position to be in (our first names are actually changed to fish (with a lowercase f) and we have no first names until sophomore year). By earning the brass, we earn our place. Because we are in the band, "corps brass" (what the rest of the Corps wears) isn't as important as the "band lyre" which is actually what we will wear the rest of the four years. In way, the band has it worse because we have to earn both our place in the corps and in the band. We earn our lyres all first semester and they are given to us at the A&M vs. UT game on Thanksgiving. To earn our corps brass, we undergo a process called "Junior Hell Week" or "Junior Focus Week" for the parents.
Normally only the sophomores get on the fish's case about everything we do, and juniors only get upset when we do something really bad. During Junior Hell Week, they act like the sophomores, with the added bonus that when they make us do "corrective physical training" they don't have to do it with us like the sophomores. So not only do we do "corrective physical training" every weekday for at least an hour and a half (with a 2 hour Saturday session thrown in), but it's a harder work out than anything we've done before.
The instance in particular that I was reminded of was when we went to the park on campus (it's not hazing if they do it where other people can see, except no one is around to see at 5:30 in the morning). During the course of the workout, we did monkey bars over and over and over. So much that the skin on the more callous part of my palms torn back and left nice little flaps of skin for dirt to get caught under when we immediately went to do push-ups on ground afterward. I tried to wash them in the water fountain when we were given a water break, but we were too rushed to do much good. Plus then it was right back in the dirt. After our workout, we ran back to get into uniform for morning formation, but changing into class uniform from pt uniform takes enough time. I only had time to wash my hands with soap and stick bandages on. After breakfast, I cared for my hands as much as I could, but with all of the activity, they took a long time to heal.
The point in all of this, is at the time that it happened, I loved the Corps because I chose this for myself. I was putting so much into it and sacrificing so much for it, I had to really really like it justify my behavior because of cognitive dissonance. To this day, I say that the Corps wasn't that bad, and I'm glad I did it. But kinda like the people at Jonestown, I don't know what the Cause was. Sure I have some generic lessons I learned, but if you ask me why I did it, I probably would never tell you the same thing twice.
Sorry, for the long blog, but writing it has been soothing. I also gained 30 pounds almost immediately after leaving the corps because I had gotten quite used to eating whatever I wanted without any effect. My diet struggle while adjusting to the demands of Southwestern's academics is another cognitive dissonance story maybe for a test question like we had on the last test (wink at Dr. G.).
Tune in next week for some fascinating stories about obedience. :).

Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59, 177-181.

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Persuasion

Persuasion, a process that changes attitudes, can occur in two different ways. When we are motivated to analyze and elaborate, or think carefully and scrutinize persuasive information, we take the central route to persuasion (Greenwald, 1968; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). In the central route, the strength and quality of the argument matters most (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The other route I'll come back to later. A strong predictor that people will take the central route is their level of involvement in the subject (Petty & Cacioppo, 1984). For example, if someone is buying a car, he or she is more likely to evaluate important issues such as gas mileage, crash test ratings, number of seats, etc. However, if that same someone brings a friend along, the friend is more likely to consider more trivial issues such as which car is prettier, which brand has the best color of red paint, how many beer cases can fit in the back seat, etc. The friend's route to persuasion is called the peripheral route in which the message is not important, but the external cues are (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

A time when my attitudes were persuaded via the central route is when I decided to transfer schools. The persuader was my boyfriend who off-handedly mentioned how nice it would be to go to the same school our last night together at home before we left for spring semester. I had never thought of transferring before, and started to think about it quite seriously by looking up statistics and facts and opinions of others online. And as I thought about my first semester in which I wrote no papers, got a 4.0 without working harder than in high school, etc. it started to become a better and better idea. Before I knew it I was filling out an application, then scheduling and interview, then looking at financial aid offers, then ta-da. This situation included a lot of personal involvement considering it could decide my future, so I took the central route of persuasion.

A time when my attitudes were persuaded by the peripheral route is whenever I pick out a shampoo. Though I am personally involved, the issue simply isn't very important to me, so I am not motivated to elaborate on it very much. Whenever I go buy shampoo, I go to the store and just look at all of the different shampoo bottles. I let cues like brand, color, bottle, scent, etc. influence my decision rather than turning over every bottle and looking at the ingredients then looking up what the ingredient is supposed to do online ... blah blah blah. I end up picking the on in the prettiest bottle with the best smell despite whether it will give my hair the most volume or curl (neither of which I need). Because I rely on cues instead of the content of the argument to choose shampoo, I am using the peripheral route.

Greenwald, A. G. (1968). Cognitive learning, cognitive responses to persuasion, an attitude change. In A. Greenwald, T. Brock, & T. Ostrom (Eds.), Psychological foundations of attidudes (pp.147-170). New York: Academic Press.

Petty, R. E., Cacioppo, J. T. (1984). The effects of involvement on response to argument quantity and quality: Central and peripheral routes to persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 69-81.

Petty, R. E., Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Attitude as a predictor of Behavior

Most people would take for granted that our attitudes, or our positive and/or negative evaluations in reaction to a person, object, or idea (Petty & Chaiken, 2004), are directly related to our behaviors. LaPiere (1934) discovered that this is not necessarily the case. Many factors influence whether our behaviors follow our attitudes (Glasman & Albarracin, 2006). One of these factors is the strength of the attitude, and one of the factors that contributes to the strength of the attitude about something is the amount of information we have about it (Davidson et al., 1985).

This concept is true for me in political elections in two ways. First, when I was little, and I didn't know very much about elections, government, or current presidents (I say current because every self-respecting little kid knows oodles about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln). My attitude about elections was not very strong partly because I didn't know anything about the candidates running at the national level much less lower levels. If I had known more about candidates running for office, my attitude would be stronger which would cause a change in my behavior such as asking my parents to vote for a certain candidate.

Second, with my first presidential election in which I can vote coming up, I didn't know much until recently. Because I didn't have much information, my attitudes were not very strong, and I committed the crime of not voting in the primary (awful, I know). If I had known more, I would have had stronger attitudes, and been more likely to vote. Now that I do know a good bit about the candidates, I'm am surely going to vote in the general election coming up.


Glasman, L. R., & Albarracin, D. (2006). Forming attitudes that predict future behavior: A meta-analysis of the attitude-behavior relation. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 778-822.

LaPiere, R. T. (1934). Attitudes vs. action. Social Forces, 13, 230-237.

Petty, R. E., & Chaiken, S. (Eds.). (2004). Key readings in attitudes and persuasion. London: Taylor & Francis.

A 95% White Community

When I moved to Wylie at age 4, it had a population around 10,000 and was 95% Caucasian. I cannot remember encountering anyone from a different race until I was in intermediate school (5-6 grade). Even then, I can only think of about 4 people who were African-American, and a couple of people who were Indian. The brother and sister who were Indian were easy to tell apart because one was male and one was female. However, no matter how hard I tried, I could not tell the boys who were African-American apart. To me they all looked the same. They were not in my ingroup, or people in the same social group as me; they were part of an outgroup, or social group that I didn't belong to, that I had very little contact with, so I thought they were more similar than they actually were. This is called the outgroup homogeneity effect (Linville & Jones, 1980).

As you can probably guess, as an ignorant 5th or 6th grader this mistake got me in a lot of trouble one day. I avoided as much as possible calling these guys by their names not because I didn't know them, but because I couldn't tell who was who. Inevitably, one day, I could not avoid saying one's name. I had a 25% chance of getting it right, and of course I didn't. So what else am I supposed to do but try again? Wrong again. It was not looking to turn into a good situation, so I just stopped and prepared for my punishment. He came close to me and asked, "Why don't you know my name? Is it because we all look the same?" I had no choice but to answer yes because it was the truth, and I'm not good at lying. A flash of fury ran across his eyes, but then he said, "It's okay, you all look the same to me too." What a relief. This insight helped me to understand that not just African-Americans look the same, but anyone in our outgroups looks the same. Luckily, the more I became acquainted with people of different races, the more I was able to realize the subtle differences between all people.

Linville, P. W., & Jones, E. E. (1980). Polarized appraisals of outgroup members. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 689-703.

PO Blog: What my voice says about what I think about you

I am a high self-monitor. Self-monitoring refers to peoples’ regulation of their own behavior in different social situations (Snyder, 1987), and high self-monitors, the type who are concerned with public image, saying the right thing, and being on everyone’s good side, score highly on the Self-Monitoring Scale, which has a range of 0-18 (Snyder, 1974; Snyder & Gangestad, 1986). I scored a 14.

One aspect of myself that I adjust for different social situations is the pitch of my voice. When I talk to authority figures (teachers, parents, etc.) or strangers, my voice is the lowest; when I talk to friends or classmates, my voice is mid-range or lower; and when I talk to my boyfriend, my voice is mid-range or higher. I noticed my own inconsistencies after I observed my commander varying his voice for interactions with his peers, those who had higher status, and those who had lower status. When I realized that I do the same thing, I questioned why he changes his voice, and what impact it has on others. In line with Bem’s self-perception theory, which states that we observe ourselves as an outsider like we observe others, if I answered these questions, I would learn more about myself (Bem, 1972).

I concluded that the real pitch of his voice is the one used when talking with his peers because in those instances he did not tuck in his chin and look slightly uncomfortable. However, when ever he talked to officers (higher status) or me (lower status), he did tuck in his chin to lower his voice. For the first question, I believe that he lowered his voice to appear more authoritative and competent because he only talked about business with people not in his status group, and when he talked business with his peers, he would also lower his voice. I do the same changes in my voice for authority and peers, but for my boyfriend, I also raise my voice sometimes to seem more innocent, dependent, and submissive. For the second question, I concluded that I would not think him any less authoritative or competent if his voice was higher, but I had also known him half a year by this point. The conclusion made me wonder if I stopped changing my voice for different social situations, would people think differently of me?

I decided to make the change on a Friday because I have one class which exposes me to teachers and classmates, and I also spend more time with my roommate and boyfriend, who are more likely to comment on a change. I changed my voice by deliberately raising my chin (not tucking it in) whenever I spoke to authority figures or was explaining something to a classmate or friend. I also deliberately tucked in my chin whenever I spoke to my boyfriend. The change was not hard to do because I could physically control it, but it was hard to hear myself talk differently in those situations.

Whenever I raised my voice, I got the questions “What put you in such a good mood?” or “Are you having a good day?” frequently from my classmates and my roommate. When I lowered my voice, my boyfriend almost hourly asked me what was wrong, and why I was so serious (Dark Knight reference purely coincidental).

I was nervous about how others would perceive me before I did the experiment, but when my friends thought I was happier, the change became easier and less awkward to hear myself talk. The change became a little straining when I talked with my boyfriend because he thought I was sad and it physically strained my voice to talk that much while lowering my voice. If others had thought anything other than my emotions, such as my competence, had changed, it would’ve been much more difficult.

I learned that the pitch of my voice is not as important in portraying my competence as in portraying my emotions while talking with people who already knew me. However, when I first meet people, I would never want to talk in a higher voice to an authority, because I do not want to convey a more submissive personality, or a lower voice to those closest to me, because I do not want to be that serious. I discovered that even though self-presentation strategies, ways we try to shape what others think of us and how we think of ourselves (Schlenker, 2003) such as self-monitoring, might not be meditated, they happen because we like to control how others perceive us.


Bem, D. J. (1972). Self-perception theory. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 6, pp. 1-62). New York: Academic Press.

Schlenker, B. R. (2003). Self-presentation. In M. R. Leary & J. P. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of self and identity (pp.429-518). New York: Guilford.

Snyder, M. (1974). The self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30, 526-537.

Snyder, M. (1987). Public appearances private/realities: the psychology of self-monitoring. New York: Freeman.

Snyder, M., & Gangestad, S. (1986) On the nature of self-monitoring: Matters of assessment, matters of validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 125-139.