Not Practicing
What You Preach
By: Monica Davis
Background
• Wanted to discover info about prejudice towards ethnic
Chinese communities
• Lapiere wanted to test that spoken attitudes are often
poor predictors of actual behavior (what people say is
not often what they do)
• 1930-1931 Lapiere first traveled with young Chinese
student and his wife
Research
• From 1930-1933 the trio traveled over the U.S.
accumulating 10,000 mi- visiting hotels, restaurants,
and cafes
• Observed the couples’ treatment while he lagged
behind
• Chinese were unaware of Lapiere’s observation
• 6 months later a questionnaire was sent out to the
visited facilities
Results
• Only 1 out of the 251 facilities denied them service
• Treatment was good, if not better than how the
average person would be treated
• 51% response rate to surveys- over 90% stated they
would NOT serve Chinese customers
criticisms/subsequen
t research
• Yes or No questions = invalid measurement of a
person’s attitude towards specific group of people
• 5 categories
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•
•
•
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Strength of attitude
Stability of the attitude
Relevance of attitude to the behavior
Salience of the attitude
Situational pressures
Conclusion
• Attitudes do play a big role in one’s behavior
• Social attitudes can only be reliably measured by
studying human behavior in actual social situations