Effects of past transgressions in an induced hypocrisy paradigm.

Full Abstract

Hypocrisy can be considered as a dissonance state expressed as a combination of two factors: commitment (advocating a pronormative position) and mindfulness (being aware of past transgressions). Such inconsistency between what people advocate and their past behaviors is usually reduced by modifying behaviors or behavioral intentions in line with normative advocacy. The aim of this study is to examine the conditions under which this set of behaviors (apparent hypocrisy) can occur. Specifically, the salience of the transgressions was manipulated: participants were led to recall 1 or 4 transgressions varying in severity (serious vs harmless). As expected, recalling 4 transgressions led to greater behavioral change than recalling only 1 transgression. Surprisingly, recalling 4 harmless transgressions induced greater behavioral change than recalling 4 serious transgressions.

Author information

Author/s: Fointiat, Valérie (V); Morisot, Vincent (V); Pakuszewski, Muriel (M);

Affiliation: Laboratory of Social Psychology, University of Provence, Aix-en-Provence, France. Valerie.Fointiat(-atsign-)univ-provence.fr

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Psychological reports (Psychol Rep), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-Oct; vol 103 (issue 2) : pp 625-33

Dates: Created 2008/12/23; Completed 2009/01/14;

PMID: 19102490, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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