Page 180 - The Social Animal

162 The Social Animal

(not because of a momentary distraction), and “Amy snapped at Ted
because she is a hostile person” (not because she momentarily lost her
temper).
An experiment by Edward Jones and Victor Harris demon-
77
strates that such inferences can be pervasive. In this experiment,
subjects read essays either favorable or unfavorable to Fidel Castro’s
regime in Cuba allegedly written by students in a political science
course. Half the subjects were told that the essay writers freely chose
the position presented in their essays, whereas the others were told
that the writers had been forced to take that position and were in-
structed to make the best case they could. Subjects then had to guess
the essay writer’s true attitude toward Castro. When the essay writ-
ers could choose a position freely, subjects assumed that the content
of their essays reflected their attitudes:Those writing pro-Castro es-
says were believed to be pro-Castro, and those writing anti-Castro
essays were assumed to be anti-Castro. This was not surprising.
What was surprising is that the same results occurred even when it
was made clear that the essay writer had been forced to argue an as-
signed position. In other words, essay writers forced to argue for
Castro were assumed to be pro-Castro, and those forced to argue
against Castro were assumed to be anti-Castro. In making their in-
ferences, subjects discounted the situational pressure to take a posi-
tion and assumed that the essayist’s behavior was a result of a firmly
held belief. In this case, the attitude-behavior relationship was lo-
cated in the head of the observer.

When Do Attitudes Predict Behavior? Just because atti-
tudes don’t always predict beliefs does not mean that attitudes never
predict behavior. The role of scientists is to try to determine the
conditions under which an event is more or less likely to occur. Rus-
sell Fazio has identified one major factor that increases the likeli-
78
hood that we will act on our attitude: accessibility. Attitude
accessibility refers to the strength of the association between an ob-
ject and your evaluation of it. For example, if I say “snake,” most
people will immediately think, “bad, dangerous.” If I say “Renoir
painting,” most will quickly respond, “beautiful.” We all know peo-
ple about whom we immediately think, “Oh, no, not that jerk
again,” or conversely, “Wow! What a wonderful person.” These are
highly accessible attitudes.