Pain + Ink = Dissonance = Awesome

As tempting as it is to write about boys again, I think I’ll have to write about feet tonight. Trust me; it’s still exciting.

The theory of cognitive dissonance states that when an individual’s attitudes and behaviors are inconsistent with one another it creates psychological tension that he or she is highly motivated to reduce, which means either changing the behavior or changing the attitude (Festinger, 1957). Interestingly, there are three different situations under which cognitive dissonance arises: (1) induced compliance, or induced justification, (2) effort justification, and (3) post-decision dissonance.

“Which of these concerns my feet?” you ask. The answer: effort justification. As displayed by Aronson and Mills (1959), effort justification is what happens when we find ourselves loving that for which we suffer. This suffering comes in many forms; it is anything we pay for – with money, our time, pain, stress, and so on.

Every day dozens of people walk through these doors and voluntarily suffer quite a bit.

On Monday, October 13th, 2008, I was one of those dozens. We see it in everything from fraternity initiations to expensive cars – the more we suffer for them, the more we love them. The same is true of tattoos, though most would NEVER admit to it.

I was the last walk-in of the night. I’d talked about getting a tattoo for several years, and decided to finally go through with it while I was visiting my older brother Jonny in San Marcos with my cousin Ped. They both have tattoos, and they both encouraged me. I was terrified of the pain, but now I know it’s the memory of that pain that will keep me loving what I’ve done to myself.

It took Rebecca, my tattoo artist, just $100 and 30 minutes to repeatedly stab my right foot with a needle to produce my permanent foot fixture.


I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I did, however, clutch so tightly to the table that my hands cramped up and I might have hyperventilated for a bit. It also certainly hurt like nothing I’d ever felt before. So why would anyone do this to themselves? The answer is simple effort justification; I’ll break it down for you.

Attitude = This hurts like hell and I paid a lot of money for it
Behavior = I’m letting someone permanently mark me

These two concepts are in opposition with each other, so people who get tattoos – including myself – must justify it. Because I suffered so much to get a tattoo – physically and financially – what I got must mean a lot to me, it must be really cool, I must never want to forget these symbols, I must actually like the pain a little bit.

I – just like everyone else sporting a tattoo – has had to rationalize the suffering and effort put into getting their “body art” to resolve their cognitive dissonance. I just hope that I don’t ever forget how much it hurt.

P.S. It's my family's cattle brand (for my Dad and my grandpa) and the sun from the Filipino flag (for my mom).

P.S.S. Don't tell my mom I got a tattoo.
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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.

Bet They'll Never Make that Mistake Again

If I ever really stopped to count, I’m certain I would discover that the number of things I have done because someone encouraged me to do so is greatly outnumbered by the list of things that I have done simply because someone said it wasn’t possible for me to do them.

Psychological reactance is when people react in opposition to threats to their free will by standing up for themselves and seeing whatever freedom has been threatened as more attractive (Brehm & Brehm, 1981). In other words, is someone says you can’t do something (or feel or think something), your freedom is impinged upon, and as a response you might be more likely to try to do (or think or feel) whatever it is they say you can’t. The reverse is true as well.

As an example, I offer to you my 18th birthday personal rite of passage: climbing my hometown water tower.

A few months prior to my birthday I’d read a short novel by Pete Hautman called “Godless,” which is about a kid who becomes obsessed with water towers – among other things. Since reading it I couldn’t stop telling people about how awesome it was, and of course they all said the same thing, “Don’t go getting any crazy ideas about climbing water towers now Whitney.”

The more I heard about how dangerous, reckless, irresponsible, pointless, illegal, and just plain stupid it was, the more I wanted to do it. What sent me over the edge – of my decision to climb, not of the edge of the tower (that’d be tragic) – was when my brother Jonny acted as though there was no way I would ever do it. We were having a camp out at my house with a bunch of our friends and I was telling one of them about how I was finally going to climb the tower that night – because I was already outside and therefore wouldn’t have to take the added risk of sneaking out of the house – when my brother laughed. “You’re the good kid,” he said. “You don’t do bad stuff, let alone illegal stuff. You stay inside and do your homework where it’s safe. Besides you couldn’t even if you tried.”

“Couldn’t if I tried, eh?!” Those were the thoughts that ran through my head as I took the keys to his truck and drove off with the only one of his friends who seemed to think I would go through with it (or who cared enough to scrape my body off the pavement if I f-ed up).

Needless to say, I went through with it. The O and K in the middle of BROOKSHIRE look so much bigger from close up.

And, the my hometown looks so different from so high up.

I – like everyone else – want to be able to make my own decisions, to think and feel and do whatever it is that I desire. When someone – like my brother – threatens that, I am highly motivated to take matters into my own hands and maintain my freedom. The result is a negative attitude change, which is a move in the direction contrary to the one the speaker supported. Interestingly enough, had I agreed with my brother – that I was, in fact, a “good kid” who shouldn’t do illegal things – my motivation to protect my free will may have outweighed my actual opinion on the matter.
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Brehm, S. S., & Brehm, J. W. (1981). Psychological reactance: A theory of freedom and control. New York: Academic Press.

Strengthening Attitudes

The summer after my sophomore year of high school my father convinced me to apply for 4-H mock Congress. 4-H – for those of you that don’t know – is a mostly rural organization. Everyone jokes that it’s nothing but “cows, sows, and plows,” which to some extent it is. A lot of the people who participate in it come from very religious backgrounds in very small towns. Needless to say my opinions are very different from the overwhelming majority of 4-Hers.



Before hearing about unforgettable experience that summer it’s important to know a few things. First, our behaviors are affected by four different things: intentions, attitudes, social norms, and our ability to control those behaviors.

Focusing specifically on attitudes, which are reactions to people, things, or ideas that can be positive, negative, or mixed (Petty & Cacioppo, 1983) there are two things that affect how well our attitudes predict our behaviors: (1) how specific a measure of our attitude is (e.g., asking “Do you like high school football?” would be a better predictor of how likely a person is to want to watch your hometown’s football game, than asking “Do you like sports?”) and (2) how strong our attitudes are. That is, the stronger an attitude is, the more likely it will be to link to behavior.

Interestingly, there are different ways to strengthen an attitude, and therefore strengthen predictions of behaviors based on attitudes. Many of these attitude-strengthening factors could be seen in my experience at 4-H Congress.

On just the second day of our mini-legislative session the trivial bills (e.g., using “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, or allowing prayer in school) faded away and the next thing I knew I was standing before 300 suit-wearing peers being bombarded with scathing remarks and looks that could kill. I knew what I was up against; I knew Texas is a conservative state, but I didn’t exactly think that defending gay marriage would start a riot.

Summing every drop of courage my 15-year-old self could muster, I stood there, sweaty palms gripping the podium, emptying out my heart for these people and explaining my stance as best I could with both (1) information and (2) personal experience.

I was armed with everything I had learned about why gay marriage is such an important issue and how it concerns more than just violating archaic religious beliefs. That is, it affects everything from filing taxes to the ability to visit spouses in the hospital to Social Security benefits. Fortunately, the more information you have about a person, object, or idea the stronger your attitude will be, and the more likely you will be to act on it (Davidson, Yantis, Norwood, & Montano, 1985).

As for personal experience, I had one particular person in mind as I stood there being “boo”ed at by people who only hours before had been completely personably, civilized friends. I thought about Hannah, my best friend. I let them know that she deserved to pick out that perfect white dress and throw a bouquet of pale pink lilies and yellow orchids. Importantly, gaining information from personal experience makes attitudes stronger and more stable than just simply observing or receiving information secondhand (Fazio & Zanna, 1981). Maybe if they had known how awesome Hannah is or had a friend of their own who was gay, it might have changed their attitudes.

Sadly, it didn’t. No matter what I said they reacted the same way, with close-minded rage. Their angry voices swelled, filling the floor, their confidence being amplified by their cumulative outrage, until the Speaker of the House was forced by supervisors to call for a recess.

I would say that votes didn’t even need to be tallied for us to find out which side “won,” but the results were enough for me to feel as though I’d achieved my own small personal victory. More than 20% of the votes were “Undecided;” based on the percentage of people who had voted conservatively on every other issue, I like to think that my speech was what changed their minds – even if only a small amount. I fought tooth and nail for what I whole-heartedly believed in; answering every retort from a suit-wearing simpleton with an even better one. Not surprisingly, this only further fueled my support of gay marriage, because when you succeed in resisting change to your attitudes, it makes them even stronger (Tormala & Petty, 2002).
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Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1983). The role of bodily responses in attitude measurement and change. In J. Cacioppo & R. Petty (Eds.), Social psychophysiology: A sourcebook (pp. 51-101). New York: Guilford.

Davidson, A., Yantis, S., Norwood, M., & Montano, D. (1985). Amount of information about the attitude object and attitude-behavior consistency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 1184-1198.

Fazio, R. H., & Zanna, M. P. (1981). Direct experience and attitude-behavior consistency. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 14, pp. 162-202). New York: Academic Press.

Tormala, Z., & Petty, R. (2002). What doesn't kill me makes me stronger: The effects of resisting persuasion on attitude certainty. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1298-1313.

Let's Talk About Sex..ism!

A general rule of thumb for conversations with people you don’t know is to avoid –ism’s. Racism, Buddhism, Communism, Antidisestablishmentarianism – they’re all out. Despite not being well acquainted with many of you reading this, I’m going to break the rule anyhow. Tonight’s topic is SEXISM!

Sexism is discrimination based on one’s gender. Usually when people think of sexism, they think of obvious things like giving a little boy model cars to play with and giving a little girl a doll, or paying women less than men to do the same job.

I, however, would like to tell you a story involving a sneakier kind of sexism, one we don’t always pick up on when it happens. Ambivalent sexism is comprised of two parts: (1) hostile sexism, which concerns negative feelings about females abilities and worth and (2) benevolent sexism, which concerns affectionate but possibly condescending feelings (Glick & Fiske, 2001a).

What I’ve experienced most in my life is benevolent sexism – guys opening doors for you, offering to carry heavy objects, getting things off of the top shelf. Sure it seems sweet on the surface, but underneath all this chivalry often lurks the patronizing idea that we ladies need protecting.

Interestingly, my most recent experience with this form of sexism actually came from a woman. This summer at my monotonous job as an office assistant, when I wasn’t scanning medical charts, I was taking old ones to the storage room to be shredded.

I rather relished this task as it was my only opportunity to get away from the computer, but one afternoon my supervisor of sorts stopped me as I was carrying a box full of charts.

“Honey, you shouldn’t be lifting that. Let Ethan do it,” Kathy said.

I spun on my heel and said, “I’ve lived on a farm my whole life; I was bred for heavy lifting,” while doing my best not to glare at her, and silently thinking to myself, “Besides, that 95-pound twig of a kid couldn’t lift this anyhow.” (I couldn’t actually say that aloud, because Ethan is the boss’s son, and insulting the offspring of the person who signs your paychecks is never a good idea.)
It’s this kind of sexism that has irked me since elementary school – when Blake and Michael got to leave class to help Mrs. Smith carry old books off to storage and I had to sit in my seat working on my vocabulary assignment, because I was a just a little girl and girls can’t possibly be expected to sweat and lift things for fear that they might break a nail.

This same thing still goes on today, but in a more awkward way. I’ve actually had someone tell me, “You shouldn’t be lifting heavy stuff; you’ll crush your uterus.” To which I could not stop myself from responding with, “Good. I hate kids.”

Because benevolent sexism generally presents itself in the form of a caring, considerate gesture or comment, it often isn’t seen for what is really is: sexism, plain and simple.

Additionally, it is important to note that benevolent and hostile sexism go hand in hand. The two are positively correlated (Glick et al., 2000), so it’s likely that if you feel one way (i.e., that women deserve protecting) you also feel the other way as well (i.e., that women have less value than men).
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Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (2001a). Ambivalent sexism. In M.P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 33, pp. 115-188). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Glick, P., Fiske, S., Mladinic, A., Saiz, J., Abrams, D., Masser, B., et al. (2000). Beyond prejudice as simple antipathy: Hostile and benevolent sexism across cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 763-775.

Family vs. Career, Men vs. Women

Most people like to believe that they don’t stereotype people. Stereotypes are beliefs people hold about a certain group (e.g., white guys can’t jump). Additionally, stereotypes are also known as “group schemas,” which are essentially mental frameworks for organizing what we know about groups. I’d certainly like to think that I see everyone as equals and take the time to get to know people before I pass judgment on them, but I suppose on some unconscious level I might not.

The IAT (Implicit Association Test) was developed as a way of getting at individuals unconscious thoughts or feelings (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). It measures the degree to which two different ideas are associated. I decided to take a few, which can be found online here: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/takeatest.html.

This online version of the IAT has you press either “E” or “I” to decide whether a word or image goes into one of two categories. For example, I started off with the Gender-Career Test. In this instance, “Male” was printed on the left of my screen while “Female” was printed on the right of my screen. When a female name (e.g., Rebecca) popped but I had to press “I” to associate it with the “Female category. When a male name (e.g., Ben) popped up I had to press “E.” Then the computer presented me with words related to the topic of Family (e.g., relatives, wedding) or Career (e.g., business, management), and I had to press “E” or “I” again depending upon which category the words belonged with. Then, the categories were combined; that is, Male was paired with Career, and Female was paired with Family. Again, names and words had to be placed in the correct categories using the “E” and “I” keys. Finally, the categories were switch; that is, Male was paired with Family, and Female was paired with Career. Based on how long it took to place the words I was given into the different category pairings, the IAT rated how closely I associated Gender with Career.

My results were interesting. According to the IAT, I have a moderate Male with Career and Female with Family, as compared to Female with Career and Male with Family.

I don’t feel that these results are consistent with my actual attitudes about gender and careers. I’m perfectly aware that both men and women can do any job, whether it’s being CEO of a company or taking care of a home. Not only that, but I’m supportive of women who seek jobs in fields dominated by men. In fact, growing up I feel like I spent more time with my dad, who does farm work at home, than I did with my mom who works long hours as a nurse. Yet according to these results I exhibit moderate implicit sexism.

I have two ideas about why my results turned out so different from what I believe I feel about gender and careers. First, it may be that I’m affected by mass media portrayals of women as homemakers and men as businesspersons, as well as my friends’ parents whose family dynamics were more stereotypical. Second, the words they chose were more corporate related than career related in general. For example, they used words like “management,” “corporation,” and “office,” rather than more broad words like “work,” “job,” or “occupation.” It’s possible that I do hold a stereotype for businesspeople – which is, in fact, a male dominated field – without holding a stereotype for “career women” or “career men” in general, making my initial evaluation of myself more accurate than this test would lead people to believe.

That being said, I feel as though the IAT is showing more of a cultural association than my true attitude. In the world we see more businessmen than we do businesswomen. It does not, however, mean that I think only men should only be businesspeople. I may associate them moderately simply because in our culture one is more common than the other.

Importantly, the IAT did make me think slightly differently about stereotypes and prejudice. Assuming these results are correct, it makes it more apparent that stereotypes and prejudice aren’t exactly the same thing. Stereotypes aren’t necessarily negative; they’re simply frameworks for the way we categorize things. Were I actually prejudice against women having careers I doubt that I would be here right now – writing a blog for a class, striving to get ahead, hoping for a promising career, not spending a moment wondering about raising a family, admiring my own mother for working so hard and making more money than my dad, encouraging my friends that are girls to work for the same things.

Interestingly, after my first Gender-Career IAT, I decided to take both the Asian and Age IATs just for fun (I have no automatic preference for ethnicity and American or Foreign, but a moderate automatic preference for young people as compared to old people). Then, I decided to go back and retake the original Gender-Career IAT with a strong determination to make the results more reflective of my true feelings. Surprisingly, in just 30 minutes my association of Male with Career and Female with Family changed.

I didn’t cheat; I simply concentrated extremely hard, and my “moderate” association change to a “slight” association. This made me somewhat skeptical of the IAT, though because the rating only changed one level and didn’t do something completely unexpected (e.g., show that I more strongly associated them now, or favored Men as Family-oriented) I’m inclined to trust their results.
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Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1988). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464-1480.