Participations read an article on entrepreneurship. The masculine and feminine conditions read about entrepreneurs with masculine or feminine qualities, respectively. If it was an article for the implicit condition, the articles described the stereotypical characteristics of the gender. In the explicit condition, the article said what gender stereotype the characteristics were describing (i.e. they said something like, “entrepreneurs show masculine/feminine characteristics …. it pays to have masculine/feminine characteristics.”) When gender characteristics were explicitly stated, females had more intentions to go into entrepreneurship and males had less than when characteristics were presented implicitly. Males in control conditions had equal entrepreneurship intentions to the males in the implicit condition. Attitude Change So far, research has been presented on how attitudes form. After these thoughts, feelings, and behaviors develop, they can be changed. However, this is not an easy process. Cognitive Dissonance Theory …show more content…
Behavior change is hard because humans are always right and never make mistakes. In Aronson’s book: Mistakes We Made, but Not By Me (---), he explores how self-justification leads to the human belief that we are not in the wrong- we had a reason to do what we did. In fact, it was the right thing to do. As we have established, cognitive dissonance theory states that humans reduce tension by making changes internally or externally. We will explore ……. Research on the neural mechanisms of cognitive dissonance will be presented. There is hardly a debate anymore on if smoking causes cancer. Yet, people still engage in this risky behavior. Research can help explain why there are still smokers and if their attitudes and behaviors toward smoking can