Inference of one's attitude from behavior recalled under linguistically manipulated cognitive sets

Abstract

To test Bem's (1972) hypothesis that individuals infer their attitudes from information about their behavior in a given context, subjects were asked their attitudes about a course after reporting their behaviors for the course and receiving a linguistic manipulation intended to produce an intrinsic or extrinsic cognitive context (set). Intrinsic set was manipulated by having subjects complete statements of the form "I generally do X because I …". Extrinsic set was manipulated by having subjects complete statements of the form "I generally do X in order to …". A pretest found that the intrinsic form resulted in a class perceived as more interesting than useful while the extrinsic form resulted in a class perceived as more useful than interesting. The present experiment found that subjects' attitudes are derived from information about different behaviors under the two cognitive sets. The attitudes of extrinsic set subjects were correlated with behaviors relevant to obtaining course out-comes like grades (contingent behaviors) and uncorrelated with behaviors relevant to personal interest (noncontingent behaviors); the opposite was found for intrinsic set subjects.