Trying Maya Best

Cognitive dissonance was first proposed by Leon Festinger (1957) to explain why our behaviors don’t always align with our attitudes towards someone or something. He argued that when our attitudes and behaviors don’t match, we experience psychological discomfort that motivates us to reduce this dissonance. As a result, we often change our attitudes to match the behavior that created the conflict (Festinger, 1957).  One type of situation that can cause dissonance is effort justification (Aronson & Mills, 1959), which suggests that when we put significant effort in or suffer for something that may not have a desirable outcome, we tend to justify that effort by changing our attitudes about it. In a study by Aronson and Mills (1959), female students were told they’d be joining a group discussion about sex. However, because sex is considered a taboo topic, participants had to pass an initiation test to join the group. In the mild condition of this study, students read a list of mil...

As demonstrated by sociologist Richard LaPiere (1934), our attitudes do not always perfectly predict how we behave. People sometimes act in ways that don't fully align with their beliefs. To better explain this gap, Icek Ajzen proposed the Theory of Planned Behavior (1991), suggesting that behavior is influenced not only by our attitudes but also by subjective norms and our perceived control of the behavior. According to this theory, behavior is predicted by a person’s intention, which is shaped by three factors. Attitudes , or our positive or negative evaluations of something or someone, help shape these intentions. In general, attitudes that are stronger and more specific are better predictors of behavior because they’re more accessible in memory through priming. Moreover, subjective norms also influence behaviors. The social pressures and expectations we experience from others—such as friends or family—can strongly affect the choices we make. Lastly, perceived control/self...

Why I chose this person: For this spotlight, I chose Dr. Jennifer Richeson because she is a highly influential woman of color in the field of social psychology. Simply put, she’s a badass. I was especially drawn to her work because it connects to topics we have recently discussed in class, such as race, prejudice, and ingroup and outgroup dynamics. Reviewing her research highlighted the importance of studying these topics and demonstrated how social psychology can deepen our understanding of race, stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. Background: Dr. Jennifer Anne Richeson has been the Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology at Yale University since 2016, a prestigious position recognizing her contributions to the field of social psychology. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Psychology with honors from Brown University in 1994 and continued her studies at Harvard University, where she earned both her M.A. (1997) and Ph.D. (2000) in social psychology. Before joining Yale, she ...