Introduction
Self-perception theory, which was proposed by psychologist Daryl Bem in 1965, consists of two postulates. The first is that individuals learn about their own attitudes, emotions, and other internal states partially by inferring them from observations of their own behavior and the circumstances in which their behavior occurs. The second is that, to the extent that individuals’ internal cues regarding their internal states are weak or ambiguous, they must infer those internal states in the same way that an observer would—based on external cues. Thus, the theory proposes that people’s knowledge of their own feelings often comes from inferences based on external information rather than from direct internal access to their feelings.
To understand the self-perception process, one must first consider how an individual generally learns about another person’s feelings. The person’s behavior is observed, and possible external factors that might account for the behavior are considered. If powerful external inducements for the behavior are observed, the person’s behavior is likely to be attributed to those external inducements. If, however, compelling external causes of the behavior are not observed, the person’s behavior is likely to be attributed to some internal factor in the individual, such as an attitude or an emotion.
For example, if an observer watches a person give a speech supporting a certain political candidate, the observer may infer that the person likes that candidate. If, however, the observer knows that the person was forced to give the speech or was offered a large sum of money to give the speech, the observer is likely to attribute the speech to the external inducement rather than to the person’s attitude toward the candidate. This process of determining the causal explanation for a behavior is called the attribution process.
Self-perception theory posits that when internal cues are not particularly informative, people act like observers of their own behavior and engage in this same attribution process. Thus, when people engage in a new behavior and perceive no external factors controlling their behavior, they are likely to infer an attitude that provides an explanation for that behavior. Through this process, an individual’s behavior can affect his or her attitude. For example, if an individual eats pistachio ice cream for the first time with no external inducement and is then asked if he likes pistachio ice cream, he is likely to infer his attitude based on how much of the ice cream he ate and how fast he ate it.
The theory specifies two factors, however, that limit the extent to which an observed behavior will affect an attitude. First, if the individual has clear prior internal information regarding his or her attitude toward the behavior, a given instance of the behavior is not likely to affect that attitude. If a person has eaten and expressed a liking for pistachio ice cream many times before, a new instance of eating that ice cream is not likely to affect that person’s attitude toward it. Second, if there is a strong external inducement for the behavior, the behavior will be attributed to that external factor rather than to an attitude. If a person was ordered at gunpoint to eat the ice cream or was offered a large sum of money to eat the ice cream, she would not infer from the behavior that she likes pistachio ice cream, but rather that she ate the ice cream because of the external inducement (the threat of punishment or the promise of reward).
Research Support
Self-perception theory has been supported by various lines of research. The critical assumption underlying the theory is that individuals sometimes do not have internal access to the causes of their own behavior. This notion has been supported by a variety of findings summarized by psychologists Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson. These studies have shown that people often do not have accurate knowledge of why they behave as they do. For example, female participants were asked to choose a favorite from among four pairs of virtually identical stockings hanging on a rack. The position of each pair of stockings was varied, and the researchers found that the rightmost pair (usually the last pair examined) was chosen 80 percent of the time. When the participants were asked to explain their choices, they had no trouble generating reasons; however, none of the participants mentioned that the position of the pair of stockings affected the choice, even though it was clearly a major factor. Similar deficits in causal self-knowledge have been shown in connection with a wide variety of phenomena, including why people feel the way they do about books and films, and what factors affect their moods.
The primary hypothesis derived from self-perception theory is that, when individuals engage in a new behavior that differs from their past behavior and there appears to be little or no external inducement, they will infer an attitude that is consistent with that behavior. Many studies using the induced-compliance paradigm have supported this hypothesis. In the typical study, individuals are led to write an essay expressing an attitude on an issue that is different from their own initial attitude. If the participants perceive that they can choose whether to write an essay and they are not offered a substantial external inducement (for example, a large amount of money) for doing so, their attitudes become more consistent with the attitudes expressed in their essays. If, however, the participants are not given a choice or are offered a substantial external inducement to write an essay, they do not change their attitudes. Thus, the participants in these studies infer their attitudes from their behavior unless their behavior appears to be controlled by a lack of choice or a large external inducement.
Attitude Change
Self-perception theory has implications for the development of attitudes and emotions, persuasion, compliance, and intrinsic motivation. According to Bem, the self-perception process begins in early childhood, when children are taught how to describe their internal states in much the same way that they learn to describe external objects and events. For example, if a child consumes large quantities of grape juice, the parent may tell the child, “You really like grape juice.” Similarly, if a child has a temper tantrum, the parent may say, “You’re really angry, aren’t you?” In this way, children learn how to infer their own attitudes and emotions. The socialization
process can thus be viewed as training in how to infer one’s attitudes and emotions in a culturally appropriate manner.
Self-perception processes can continue to affect people’s attitudes throughout their life spans. Induced-compliance research indicates that, whenever people are induced to behave in a way that is somehow different from their past behavior and do not perceive a strong external inducement for doing so, their attitudes will become more favorable toward that behavior. Thus, by subtly encouraging a change in a person’s behavior, one can effect a change in that person’s attitude (persuasion).
One application of this notion is to psychotherapy. Various techniques used in psychotherapy encourage the client to behave in new, more beneficial ways; it is hoped that such techniques also lead the client to develop new, more beneficial attitudes. Consistent with this idea, a number of studies have shown that, when participants are induced to write favorable statements about themselves or present themselves to an interviewer in self-enhancing ways and they perceive that they freely chose to do so, they experience an increase in self-esteem.
Self-perception theory has implications for compliance as well as for persuasion. Compliance is acceding to a request from another. Research has shown that one way to increase compliance with a particular request is to first gain compliance with a smaller request. This phenomenon is known as the foot-in-the-door effect, a name derived from the door-to-door sales strategy of first getting one’s foot in the door. In the first demonstration of this phenomenon, some participants were asked to comply with a small request: to sign a safe-driving petition. All of them agreed to do so. Two weeks later, all the participants were asked to comply with a larger request: to place “Drive Carefully” signs in their front yards. Participants who had been asked to sign the petition were three times more likely to comply with the larger request than those participants who had not been asked to sign the petition. Many subsequent studies have confirmed this effect.
Self-perception theory provides the most widely accepted explanation of the foot-in-the-door effect. Compliance with the initial request is posited to lead individuals to infer either that they like to be helpful or that they like the requester or the type of request with which they have complied. The newly formed attitudes resulting from the initial compliance make the participant more receptive to the second, larger request. This technique is commonly used by salespeople, and it is also employed to increase compliance with requests made by charitable organizations, such as the Red Cross. More generally, the foot-in-the-door effect suggests that each small commitment people make to a personal, organizational, or career goal will lead to a larger commitment to that goal.
Intrinsic Motivation
All these applications of self-perception theory are based on the notion that, when behavior is not sufficiently justified by external inducements, an individual will infer that he or she is intrinsically motivated to engage in that behavior. Research on the overjustification effect has revealed a complementary tendency of people to infer that they are not intrinsically motivated to engage in an activity if there appears to be too much external justification for the behavior. From the perspective of self-perception theory, if an individual is initially intrinsically motivated to engage in a behavior but is offered a large external inducement for performing the behavior, the person may infer that he or she is performing the behavior for the external inducement; this attribution will lead the individual to conclude that he or she is not interested in the activity for its own sake. Thus, large external inducements for engaging in a previously enjoyable activity may overjustify the activity, thereby undermining intrinsic interest in that activity.
The classic demonstration of the overjustification effect was conducted by psychologists Mark Lepper, David Greene, and Richard Nisbett. Nursery school children were first given a chance to play with colorful felt-tip markers. The researchers noted the amount of time each child played with the markers and used this as a measure of intrinsic motivation. Two weeks later, the children were divided into three groups that were approximately equal in their initial levels of intrinsic motivation. Each child in the first group was simply asked to play with the markers. The children in the second group were told that, if they played with the markers, they would receive a “good player award,” a gold star, and a ribbon when they were done. The third group of children was not offered rewards for playing with the markers; after they were done, however, the children were given the awards, stars, and ribbons anyway.
Approximately one week later, each child was observed in a free-play period in which he or she could play with the markers or engage in other activities. The group of children that had previously been offered and had received rewards for playing with the markers spent less free time engaged in that activity than the group that received no rewards and the group that unexpectedly received the rewards. Thus, intrinsic motivation to perform the activity was undermined in children who had previously been offered a substantial external inducement to engage in it. Probably because of their reduced intrinsic interest, these same children drew lower-quality pictures with the markers than the children in the other groups. Similar effects have been shown for both children and adults across a wide range of activities. In addition, overjustification effects have been shown to result from external inducements such as deadlines and competition as well as from various types of rewards.
Behaviorists such as B. F. Skinner popularized the strategy of using rewards to reinforce behavior. Based on the overjustification research, the wisdom of this strategy has been challenged. Rewards are commonly used in child-rearing, education, and work settings, yet in all three settings it is harmful to undermine the individual’s intrinsic motivation to engage in the desired behaviors. For example, if a child has some intrinsic interest in doing homework, offering a reward for doing the homework is likely to motivate the behavior but is also likely to undermine the child’s intrinsic interest in the activity; thus, when the reward is no longer offered, the child may be less likely to engage in the activity than before he or she was ever offered a reward for doing it.
If the individual has no intrinsic interest in the behavior, there is no problem with using rewards, because there is no intrinsic motivation to undermine. In addition, research has shown that rewards do not necessarily undermine intrinsic motivation; they do so only to the extent that the reward is perceived to be a factor controlling the behavior. Thus, if a behavior is subtly rewarded or the rewards are viewed as indicators of the quality of one’s performance, they may actually increase rather than decrease intrinsic motivation. The key to the effective use of rewards is therefore to present them in such a way that they are perceived to be rewards for competence rather than efforts to coerce the individual into engaging in the task.
Self-Perception Theory Versus Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Self-perception theory first gained prominence in 1967, when Bem argued that the theory could provide an alternative explanation for the large body of evidence supporting Leon Festinger’s influential
cognitive dissonance theory. From its inception in 1957, cognitive dissonance theory generated considerable supportive research. The theory proposed that, when an individual holds two cognitions such that one cognition logically implies the opposite of the other, the individual experiences a negative tension state, known as dissonance, and becomes motivated to reduce the dissonance; this can be done by changing one of the cognitions or by adding consonant cognitions, which reduces the overall level of inconsistency.
Most of the research on the theory utilized the induced-compliance paradigm. In these studies, participants would be induced to engage in a behavior contrary to their prior attitudes; if the participants engaged in such counterattitudinal behavior while perceiving that they had a choice and had no sufficient external justification for doing so, they were assumed to be experiencing dissonance. Study after study supported the prediction that these participants would change their attitudes so that they would be more consistent with their behavior, presumably to reduce dissonance.
Bem argued that self-perception theory could account for these findings more simply than dissonance theory by positing that, when participants in these studies observed themselves engaging in a behavior with little external inducement, they logically inferred an attitude consistent with that behavior. Thus, Bem offered a cognitive explanation for the most popular motivational theory of the time. Since then, it has virtually become a tradition in social psychology for cognitive theories to be pitted against motivational theories in attempting to account for social attitudes and behavior.
This challenge to dissonance theory was viewed as a major controversy in the field, and it generated much research that attempted to support one theory or the other. Finally, in the mid-1970s, research emerged that resolved the controversy. Evidence was obtained that supported dissonance theory by showing that, when people engage in counterattitudinal behavior with little external inducement, they do experience a negative psychological state, and this negative state does motivate the attitude change following counterattitudinal behavior. However, it was also found that, when individuals engage in behavior that is different from behavior that would be implied by their prior attitudes but not so different that it is really inconsistent with prior attitudes, an attitude change may still occur; this attitude change is best accounted for by self-perception theory. Self-perception theory is also still considered to be the best explanation for the foot-in-the-door and overjustification effects, effects that do not involve counterattitudinal behavior and therefore cannot be explained by cognitive dissonance theory.
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