The Effect of People’s Personal and Social Identities on Their Experiences of Vicarious Hypocrisy

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to simultaneously test a new theoretical model, vicarious hypocrisy, which has been shown to produce changes in people’s sunblock usage attitudes and behavior, and to apply this model to another important health domain, dental hygiene. Across three online studies, I examined how exposure to a target’s hypocritical flossing behavior influenced participants’ own flossing attitudes and behavior. I hypothesized that knowledge of the target’s relationship to participants’ personal and/or social identities would influence participants’ experiences of vicarious hypocrisy. All three studies failed to confirm this hypothesis. The discussion considers whether feelings of vicarious hypocrisy can be created through online experiments and suggests future directions for research on vicarious hypocrisy. Keywords: attitudes, cognitive dissonance, flossing, health, hypocrisy, selfexpansion theory, social identity theory, vicarious