Bem’s theory of self-perception: definition and features

This theory provides a new perspective on the phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance.

Social psychology has always tried to understand how people behave in social situations. In addition, it has also been concerned with understanding how our attitudes are formed, and how they guide our behavior.

Daryl Bem's theory of self-perception has tried to explain how people determine how they behave in social situations. has tried to explain how people determine our attitudes towards different situations and behaviors. In this article we will know it in detail.

Related psychological concepts

Let's get to know some previous concepts in order to better understand Bem's theory of self-perception.

Attitudes

Attitudes are different different dispositions to behave, that is, they guide our behavior.. Eagly and Chaiken (1993) define an attitude as a psychological tendency that involves the evaluation of favorability or unfavorability towards an object.

For example, it would be the positive attitude towards elderly people, which predisposes one to help such people on the street when they are in need.

Cognitive dissonance

What happens when we act contrary to our attitudes or beliefs? A counter-attitudinal behavior is produced, which gives rise to cognitive dissonance.

The cognitive dissonance proposed by Leon Festinger consists of the tension or internal disharmony of the system of ideas, beliefs and emotions that a person perceives when he/she has at the same time two thoughts that are in conflict, or by a behavior that conflicts with his/her beliefs.

Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance suggests that when cognitive dissonance arises, people tend to try to reduce it, people tend to try to reduce such dissonance.The self-perception theory, for example by changing the attitude, so that our beliefs, attitudes and behavior are coherent with each other.

Bem's self-perception theory emerges as an alternative to this theory.

Bem's theory of self-perception

Daryl Bem was an American social psychologist who put forward the theory of self-perception (1965, 1972), which attempts to explain how we infer our attitudes from our attitudes. how we infer our attitudes from counter-attitudinal behaviors..

Bem eliminates cognitive dissonance as an explanatory factor for behavior, and in contrast to Festinger, he posits that subjects infer their attitudes from their past behavior in relevant or similar situations.. This happens because the internal signals (inspection) proposed by other theories (such as Festinger's) are often weak, ambiguous or uninterpretable.

Let us analyze in detail the two fundamental elements of Bem's theory of self-perception.

Past behavior and environmental conditioning factors

Bem (1972) understands attitudes not as a factor that determines behaviors, but as the explanatory factor of past behavior, and suggests that people develop attitudes as a function of their own behaviors. develop attitudes as a function of their own behaviors and the situations in which they have and the situations in which they take place, as we will see below.

The theory posits that when cognitive dissonance occurs, or when we are uncertain about our attitudes, we do not attempt to change attitudes out of motivation to reduce our psychological discomfort, but rather we we carry out a process of attribution on our own behavior..

He proposes that through interpersonal relationships the attitudes of any subject are inferred from the observation of two elements: one's own behavior (external and observable) and the environmental conditioning factors of the context. All this serves to understand behavior.

That is, people use the clues of our own behavior and external conditioning factors to infer our own internal states (beliefs, attitudes, motives and feelings). This is also applied to determine the internal states of others, which are inferred in the same way as the internal states of others.which are inferred in the same way as our own. All this serves to reason out the most probable causes and determinants of our behavior.

For example, if a person cleans a street for free, we probably infer that his attitude towards the cleanliness of his city is very positive. On the other hand, if this same act is performed by a person charging for the service, we will not make such an inference.

When is Bem's theory useful?

The processes of self-perception proposed by Bem's theory appear when we want to determine our own attitudes (we observe our behavior to know how we feel); these appear when we have to face unfamiliar events (Fazio, 1987).

Thus, we feel the need to to discover how we feel in relation to a new situation or a situation in which we have acted or in which we have acted counter-attitudinally.

For example, when we eat a large piece of cake at a party, just when we had started a diet. If we orient ourselves according to Bem's self-perception theory, we will observe our behavior and think, for example "because I ate the cake, the birthday must have been important", to escape a negative impact on our self-esteem or self-consciousness.

In this way, we are self-persuading, and sometimes it can be useful, even if we deceive ourselves in some ways.

Problems with the theory

Bem's theory of self-perception allows explaining many cases, but not all, since assumes that people do not have attitudes before the behavior occurs, and this is not always the case.and this is not always the case.

Generally, we have attitudes before we act, and precisely these attitudes guide our behavior. Moreover, these attitudes can change as a consequence of our behavior (as Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory argues).

Thus, Bem's self-perception theory would apply only in situations where we do not yet have formed attitudes or these are very weak.

Bibliographical references:

• Worchel, S. (2004). Social psychology. Ed. Thomson: Madrid
• Gerrig, R. and Zimbardo, P. (2005). Psychology and life. Prentice Hall Mexico: Mexico
• López-Zafra, E. (2010). Consumer behavior: contributions of psychology. Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos.