What's Sexier than Social Psych? ..not much

So if there’s one thing I’ve learned this semester it’s that Social Psychology is the sexiest field on the planet. Why?

The number one reason – hands down – is the self-fulfilling prophecy. Just the idea that you change how a person is based on what you think of them and how you treat them is sexy as hell! Sure we learned that if a teacher is lead to believe that if a student is gifted, they will treat that student as if they are smart, and will consequently elicit actions from the student that lead them to perform better… but just think about all of the instances that this can apply to!!! Answer: Infinity. It has the potential to influence every human interaction we ever have – friendships, raising kids, dating partners, etc, etc etc. I swear I’m not sucking up; it seriously blows my mind every time I think about it!

Second, learning about the spotlight effect pretty much changed my life. I’m so much less stressed out now that I know that people usually don’t notice or don’t remember if I do something incredibly stupid, which is fairly often. I wasted so much time in the past worrying about what other people think of my crazy slipups and faux paus, and now I can just shrug anything off.

Affective forecasting is sexy for the same reason: it has changed my life. Sure, I know what makes me happy and sad, but I always think that I’m going to be miserable forever when something bad happens. Now I know that three months is the time limit; not matter how bad something is I know that it’s only a matter of time. As a result, I worry and few less sad which actually brings me out of my sad state even faster. I might still be sad about whatever event has caused my misery in the first place, but I’m at least not depressed about thinking I’ll never be happy again.

Mere exposure comes in at a close fourth. I like to like people, and I like for people to like me. It’s nice to know that just by being around them – even if we don’t notice each other – they’re more likely to like me (assuming I’m not a negative stimulus to begin with).

The sleeper effect is just really cool. It’s not really a good thing, because it allows sources of information that aren’t credible to hold more weight than they should once the source has been forgotten, but I find myself remembering this constantly now.


To top it off, Social Psychology is full of sexy people too, not just theories – fancy that!

1) Leon Festinger. Cognitive dissonance is my favorite to explain to people, and it’s my go-to example when people ask what social psychology is and I want to make sure that they know it rocks. Peg turning just makes so much sense! (I usually use the Zimbardo’s Grasshopper study when I explain it, but he’s too much of an A-hole from the Stanford Prison study to make my sexy list.)

2) Robert Cialdini. Because what isn’t cool about going undercover to figure out the world’s compliance techniques?!

3) Bill Swann. His study of couples done at the horse ranch and mall are pretty much the story of my life. In fact, as I was reading his study of self-verification I wrote those exact words in the margin, “Story of my life.”

4) Dan Wegner. Who doesn’t like to play footsie?! Just the fact that he incorporated one of my favorite past times into his research is enough to make this list. Next time I want to make someone like me, I’ll just be sure to secretly play footsie with them under the table. AND his book “White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts” was pretty great, despite his corny jokes.

5) John Gottman. Two words say it all: Love Lab. I don’t want to leave something as important as love up to “fate;” if I can make it work and there are sure signs that it will or won’t, I want to know. Besides, what’s sexier than love?

Bonus psychologist: Of course, Dr. Traci Giuliano, for being smart enough to know that just by having us do this assignment we will forever think Social Psychology is sexy (cognitive dissonance!)… :-)

Like Mother, Like Daughter

You would never tell from this picture, but my mother and I aren’t exactly best friends. I call my dad almost every day just to say “hi” when I’m walking to class, but generally the only time my mother hears the sound of my voice on the phone is if she happens to answer my dad’s cell for him – which I’m convinced she does simply because we would never talk at all if she didn’t.

Fortunately, our lack of communication is also positively correlated with our lack of arguments. Starting from the time I could talk and continuing up to this very day my mother have been having verbal battles of epic proportions. It goes without saying, however, that our worst fights took place when I was in high school – my angsty teenager phase.

Our arguments were the perfect example of conflict spirals. Conflict spirals are disagreements or quarrels that begin with one person (or party) irritating a second person, who responds in a similar irritating way, which causes the first person to take additional action, and on and on and on (Brett et al., 1998; Rubin at al., 1994). Interestingly, there are several different things that can cause conflicts to escalate in such a way. In the case of my mother and I, however, the spirals were most certainly due to only one thing: sunk costs.

Sunk costs – also referred to as entrapment and escalation effect – is when parties in conflict attempt to justify their past investments by increasing their commitment to a cause, which is usually a failing one (Karlsson et al., 2005, Staw, 1997; Tan & Yates, 2002; Wong et al., 2006).

I’d like to be able to tell you specifically what at least one of our fights was about, but they escalated to such a high degree that I honestly could never remember what a single one of them was about. All I know is that they would start at something completely trivial and end with screaming to the point of voice loss and someone driving off for several hours. I can certainly imagine how one of them went though.

I would walk into the kitchen where she was cooking a delicious dinner – despite our differences there’s still no denying that she is a stellar chef – and she would remind me to finish a worksheet that I had mentioned I had for homework. I would be irritated from a long and get offended easily and say, “Mother how long have I been a straight A student? HOW many times have I EVER needed you to remind me to do my homework?! NEVER!” She would be upset by my disrespect and respond with even more anger saying, “How dare you talk to me in such a way! I’m just trying to look out for you and take an interest in your life! HERE I AM SLAVING OVER A MEAL AND YOU CAN’T EVEN HELP SET THE TABLE! YOU’RE SO UNGRATEFUL!”

I wouldn’t even care about her telling me to do my homework any longer but I wouldn’t want to back down and admit that I was out of line, so I would get even MORE upset, go to the cabinet, and start slamming down plates on the table, all the while yelling, “HERE! I’LL JUST DO EVERYTHING! I’LL SET THE TABLE, DO THE LAUNDRY, MAKE GOOD GRADES SO THAT YOOOOOUUUU’LL LOOK LIKE A GOOD MOTHER! Jonathan [my brother] NEVER has to do ANYTHING around the house! I HATE YOU!”

Similarly, my mother would likely want to save face as well and would throw down her spoon and launch into a triad about something completely unrelated like how she works so hard and doesn’t deserve to be treated like dirt in her own home by her own daughter. I’d storm out of the room, then storm back in, slamming doors all along the way. We would scream more and more, neither of us wanting to give up and admit that all of it was for nothing.

Thankfully, my dad – the referee, the peacemaker – would always make me apologize, but you see just how easy it is to get caught in a conflict spiral due to sunk costs. If we both had stopped pouring more and more anger into our fight in an attempt to justify all of the anger before it sooner, things never would have reached such a point.


*As a side note, I really do love my mom dearly and respect her more than any other woman on the planet. According to my dad, we fight the way we do because we’re really so much alike. He’s probably right.
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Brett, J. M., Shapiro, D. L., & Lytle, A. L. (1998). Breaking the bonds of reciprocity in negotiations. Academy of Management Journal, 41, 410-424.

Karlsson, N., Juliusson, E., & Gärling, T. (2005). A conceptualisation of task dimensions affecting escalation of commitment. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 17, 835-858.

Rubin, J.Z., Pruitt, D. G., & Kim, S. H. (1994). Social conflict: Escalation, stalemate, and settlement. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Staw, B. (1997). The escalation of commitment: An update and appraisal. Organizational decision making (pp. 191-215). New York, NY US: Cambridge University Press.

Tan, H., & Yates, J. (2002). Financial budgets and escalation effects. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 87, 300-322.

Wong, K., Yik, M., & Kwong, J. (2006). Understanding the emotional aspects of escalation of commitment: The role of negative affect. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 282-297.

More Dissonance, But For a Good Cause

The instant that high prices for Kaplan courses was mentioned in class I thought of my roommate Sarah. She won’t be taking the GRE, but she will be taking the LSAT. In the video below, you will see Sarah and a perfect example of effort justification.



As explained in one of my previous blogs, cognitive dissonance theory 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.

As displayed by Aronson and Mills (1959), effort justification is what comes about when we find ourselves rationalizing that for which we suffer. This suffering comes in many forms; it is anything we pay for – monetarily, painfully, with time, etc.

As you could see in the video, Sarah’s attitude and behavior were discrepant.

Her Attitude = $1000+ is a lot of money
Her Behavior = Bought LSAT prep course

These two concepts are clearly in opposition with each other, so people who pay for expensive prep courses – such as Sarah – must justify it. Because they suffer (by paying absurdly large amounts of money), they must think,“This course will really help me out. It’s so expensive there’s no way I can procrastinate and waste my money. It is extremely important that I do well on this test, and this course is what will make it possible for me to achieve my goals.”

Importantly, Sarah was able to admit that she is not self-motivated enough to get by studying from a $30 LSAT prep book. With such a relatively inexpensive book there would be no dissonance if she did not study much from it, and therefore no need to change her behavior (to study more).

Additionally, you’ll notice that she decided to pay for the Kaplan course herself, rather than allowing her parents to foot the bill. This certainly makes a much larger impact; had she not paid for it herself, there would be no financial suffering and consequently it would be less likely that she would study as hard.

Furthermore, she mentions the fact that the Kaplan course offers her a lot more study aids and practice materials than a simple prep book would, but it seems plausible that it will be the justification for her financial suffering that will make the most impact.

Similarly, the same effect can be found in my friend Ashley's love for her experience in high school marching band.



As you could see, Ashley's attitude and behavior clashed as well.

Her Attitude = Band consumed a lot of time and caused a great deal of physical strain
Her Behavior = Stayed in band for all of high school

Again, these two concepts are in opposition with each other, so people who choose to be a part of organizations that are so demanding – such as Ashley – must justify their involvement with them. Because they suffer (by spending long hours at practice doing stressful exercises and getting yelled at), they must think, “This organization is amazing. It’s so demanding and so hard, I must really love the people I'm with and the music we play to put myself through such torture day after day.”

The same reactions of love for organizations that practically terrorize their members can be seen in fraternities, the military, and beyond. They all require that their members change the way they feel (i.e., decide that being treated badly was worth it) or change their behavior (i.e., leave the group).

In sum, both instances - Sarah's Kaplan studying and Ashley's love of band - stand as excellent examples of people's ability to justify and rationalize discrepancies between their attitudes and behaviors.
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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.

Oh Infomercials, How You Tempt Me!

During the summers I used to be slightly nocturnal, staying up until 4 a.m. and waking up around 2 o’clock in the afternoon. What would I do during the wee morning hours? Well, if I wasn’t talking on the phone with a delinquent guy who had his hair shaved into a mohawk or reading meaningless chick-lit (the book equivalent of a chick-flick), I was watching TV. If there’s one thing that I love about late night TV, it’s infomercials.

Infomercials are notorious for two things: (1) being completely unrealistic and (2) using the that’s-not-all technique. The that’s-not-all technique consists of two parts. The first part requires that a seller offers an inflated request. Then, he or she must reduce the appearance of the request’s size by presenting the potential buyer with an added bonus or discount (Burger, 1986). That is, people are more likely to make a deal or buy a product when it appears to have improved.

My favorite infomercial – after the rotisserie oven, which comes in at a close second – is the advertisement for Miracle Blade. Don’t you dare laugh; you know they’re SO COOL! I mean, who doesn’t want a set of knives that can cut through sheetrock, concrete, and the sole of work boots?!



I can just hear the infomercial now, “Order in the next 60 seconds and we’ll throw in a free Santoku knife at no extra charge!” Nevermind that I have no idea what a Santoku knife is, I should totally buy this set for $39.99 so that I can have one!

Or “For just 8 easy payments of $9.99 you’ll get one Miracle Blade Slicer, a Rock 'n Chop, a Filet and Boning knife, one Chop 'n Scoop, a Paring Knife, All-purpose Kitchen Shears, 4 Steak knives, a Tips & Guide booklet with Chef Tony’s secret recipes, AND as an added bonus you’ll also get 1 Additional Miracle Blade Slicer!!!!!!!!!”

Oh my gosh! How could ANYONE not want to buy a set when they throw in that extra slicer?! Really! Better yet, what about when they sell it to you as “a $460 value for only $39.95.”

If I had had a job and credit card when I first started watching infomercials there’s no telling how many of those Miracle Blades I would have called in for. Surely I’m not the only one who has felt this way either, because according to their website they have sold over 12 million Miracle Blade knives since 1989.

Miracle Blade – like so many other infomercials floating through the airwaves at 2 a.m. – always intends to sell its customers all of the pieces (including the extra Miracle Blade Slicer and the Santoku knife), but when they sweeten the pot before we’ve had a chance to consider the original deal it makes the deal seem improved, and therefore makes it more likely that people will call in and throw down the requested $39.95.
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Burgerm J. M. (1986). Increasing compliance by improving the deal: The that’s-not-all technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 277-283.

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.