On the predictive validity of attitudes: The roles of direct experience and confidence1

Previous research has demonstrated that behavior is more accurately predicted from attitudes formed via direct, behavioral interaction with the attitude object than from attitudes developed via indirect, nonbehavioral experience. The present research examined the hypothesis that the confidence with which an attitude is held may be a mediating variable in the observed relationship between the manner of attitude formation and attitude-behavior consistency. In the first experiment, it was demonstrated that subjects who formed their attitudes through direct experience held those attitudes more confidently and behaved more consistently with those attitudes than did subjects who formed their attitudes through indirect experience. In the second experiment, it was found that, regardless of the manner of attitude formation, subjects who were led to believe that they held their attitudes confidently displayed greater attitude-behavior consistency than did subjects led to believe that they held their attitudes with little confidence. Taken together, the results suggest that it may be fruitful to view confidence both as a variable which mediates the effect of the manner of attitude formation on attitude-behavior consistency and as one which, independent of how an attitude is formed, acts as a determinant of attitude-behavior consistency.     

Social identity and the attitude–behaviour relationship: effects of anonymity and accountability

Two experiments examined the impact of anonymity and accountability on the expression of group‐mediated attitude‐behaviour consistency. In Study 1, low and high identifiers (N = 106) were exposed to an attitude‐congruent norm and provided information about their intentions under anonymous and in‐group accountable conditions. In Study 2, salience of identity was manipulated, and participants (N = 185) were exposed to either an attitude‐congruent or an attitude‐incongruent norm, and provided information on their intentions and behaviour under anonymous and in‐group accountable conditions. In both studies, accountability elicited group‐normative attitudes and behaviour among individuals for whom the group was not a salient basis for self‐definition. When the group was a salient basis for self‐definition, the expression of attitude‐consistent intentions and behaviour was greater in anonymous conditions. It is suggested that strategic effects, such as those that occur in the presence of an in‐group audience, influence displays of group‐normative attitude–behaviour consistency. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self-focused attention and reactions to conflicting standards

A fundamental postulate of self-awareness theory that has received considerable empirical support is that self-focused attention increases behavioral consistency with “standards of correctness.” This appears to be true whether the standards are internal (such as attitudes or values) or external (e.g., norms). There is some question, however, as to what happens in situations in which an important personal standard conflicts with a salient external standard. Research by E. Diener and T. K. Srull (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1979, 37, 413–423) has suggested that under such circumstances the social standard is likely to predominate. However, there is reason to believe that the standards employed in their study may not have been very salient nor very important to the subjects. In the present experiment, subjects with either conservative or liberal sexual attitudes were exposed to information suggesting a prevailing norm of sexual liberalism. They were then asked to respond to a number of sexual and nonsexual attitude measures while their attention was or was not self-directed by means of a mirror. Primary results indicated that self-awareness enhanced conformity to the social standard (as in Diener & Srull, 1979) for the conservative subjects; however, correlational analyses within the self-focused and non-self-focused conditions indicated that self-aware subjects did not “abandon” their personal standards when responding to the conformity pressure. Instead, their responses tended to be more in line with their previously expressed attitudes than did the responses of the non-self-focused group. Results are discussed in terms of the effects of self-awareness on reactions to potent, but conflicting behavioral standards.     

Public and private self-awareness: When personal attitudes conflict with societal expectations

Different methods of inducing self-awareness have generally been assumed to be interchangeable. The present paper argues that the two most widely used manipulations of self-awareness—audiences and mirrors—differ in an important way: specifically, audiences increase focus on the public aspects of the self, whereas mirrors focus attention on the private aspects of the self. It is further argued that the standards that are used to regulate behavior depend upon which of these self-aspects is taken as the object of attention. Attention to the private self may result in behavior that reflects personal attitudes; attention to the public self may cause behavior to become more consistent with societal expectations. This reasoning was tested in two studies in which subjects served as “teachers” in an aggression paradigm. Each subject in Experiment 1 opposed the use of punishment in learing, but felt that other people favored it. Compared to the control condition, the presence of a mirror led to decreased levels of shock, and the presence of an evaluative audience led to increased levels of shock. Experiment 2 made use of subjects who favored the use of punishment but felt that others were against its use. Compared to the control group, the presence of a mirror led to increased levels of shock whereas the presence of an evaluative audience led to decreased levels of shock. Taken together, these findings indicate that self-awareness manipulations need to be chosen according to the aspect of self that is to be the object of self-attention. Discussion centers on the implications of the public-private distinction.     

Associations between visual attention,implicit and explicit attitude and behaviour for physical activity

The current study explored associations between previous physical activity and both implicit and explicit attitudes, as well as visual attention and activity motivation (intention). Analyses were performed on participants initially unaware of the physical activity focus of the study (N = 98). Higher levels of physical activity were associated with positive implicit attitudes and an attentional bias towards exercise cues. There was a quadratic (‘U’ shaped) relationship between implicit attitude and attention: the more extreme individuals’ implicit attitudes towards exercise (positive or negative) the greater their attentional bias to exercise cues. Furthermore, explicit attitude moderated the relationship between attentional bias and physical activity: attentional bias to exercise cues was associated with higher levels of physical activity only for those who had a strong positive explicit attitude. Findings suggested that implicit cognitions are linked with previous physical activity. Future research should consider strategies for strengthening positive implicit and explicit attitudes and directing attention to cues signalling healthy behaviour.     

What moderates implicit—explicit consistency?

Implicit and explicit indicators of attitudes or personality traits are positively, and variably, related. This review places the question of implicit ‐ explicit consistency into the tradition of attitude/trait ‐ behaviour consistency (e.g., Wicker, 1969). Drawing on dual-process models, such as the recent distinction between associative and propositional representations (Strack & Deutsch, 2004), we identify a working model of implicit ‐ explicit consistency that organises the empirical evidence on implicit ‐ explicit moderation into five factors: translation between implicit and explicit representations (e.g., representational strength, awareness), additional information integration for explicit representations (e.g., need for cognition), properties of explicit assessment (e.g., social desirability concerns), properties of implicit assessment (e.g., situational malleability), and research design factors (e.g., sampling bias, measurement correspondence).     

Attitude accessibility,attitude-behavior consistency,and the strength of the object-evaluation association

Two experiments were conducted in order to examine the accessibility of attitudes from memory as a function of the manner of attitude formation. The findings of the first experiment indicated that subjects could respond more quickly in a response-time task to inquiries about their attitudes when the attitudes were based upon direct behavioral experience with the attitude objects than when they were based upon nonbehavioral experience. It was suggested that, relative to indirect experience, behavioral experience may facilitate the attitude formation process and increase attitude accessibility once the attitude is formed. A second experiment found support for both of these notions. Two additional experiments indicated that repeated association of the attitude object and the attitudinal evaluation enhanced both attitude accessibility and attitude-behavior consistency. It was suggested that the strength of the object-evaluation association is a critical determinant of accessibility, which, in turn, acts as a central factor in the process by which attitudes affect later behavior. It was further suggested that the manner of attitude formation affects attitude-behavior consistency because direct experience produces a stronger object-evaluation association and, hence, a more accessible attitude than does indirect experience.     

Support for the Death Penalty and Rehabilitation: Question Order or Communication Effect?1

Response‐effects research has shown that survey questions shape and channel public opinion. Our study examines the degree to which the variance in people's cognitions about and attitudes toward crime policy proposals is a methodological artifact and the degree to which it represents media effects. Four different forms of a survey were used to manipulate the order of the proposal (death penalty vs. rehabilitation) and criterion (cognition vs. attitude). Results show that experimental manipulations affected cognitions or attitudes only for the death penalty. Respondents who were asked the cognition measure first showed a high level of consistency between the net valence of their arguments and their attitudes. Respondents who were asked their attitudes first reported relatively more affective arguments, a phenomenon that we label affective priming. Exposure and attention to specific media content influenced cognitions and attitudes differentially.     

On the consistency between attitudes and behavior: Look to the method of attitude formation

A field study and a laboratory experiment were conducted to test the hypothesis that the method by which an attitude was formed is a crucial variable affecting attitude-behavior consistency. It was predicted that people who form their attitudes on the basis of direct behavioral interaction with the attitude object will demonstrate significantly greater attitude-behavior consistency than individuals whose attitudes were formed by other means. In the field study, students with direct prior experience with a housing crisis demonstrated greater consistency between their attitudes and behavioral attempts to alleviate the crisis than did students with similar attitudes but without prior direct experience. In the laboratory experiment, subjects who indicated their attitude toward a variety of puzzle types after working examples of each demonstrated greater consistency between these attitudes and subsequent behavior in a free play situation than subjects with similar attitudes formed on the basis of information given by the experimenter. It was suggested that direct behavioral experience produces an attitude which is more clearly, confidently, and stably maintained than an attitude formed through more indirect means.     

On the nature of attitude–behavior relations: the strong guide,the weak follow

This study investigated the role of attitude strength as a moderator variable with regard to the direction of the relation between attitudes and behavior. The hypothesis was tested that strong attitudes guide behavior, whereas weak attitudes follow behavior in accordance with self‐perception principles. The study (N = 106) consisted of two sessions. In session 1, attitudes and attitude strength (certainty, importance, centrality) towards Greenpeace were measured. One week later, participants returned to the laboratory (session 2) and were given the opportunity to donate money to Greenpeace. After the participants' decision to donate money or not, attitudes towards Greenpeace were measured again. The results were consistent with the predictions. First, strong attitudes were more predictive of donation behavior than weak attitudes. Moreover, session 2 attitudes of weak attitude participants were influenced by their donation behavior, whereas no such effect was found among strong attitude participants. Finally, strong attitudes were also found to be more stable over time than weak attitudes. The results provide a complete overview of the moderating role of attitude strength with regard to the bi‐directional attitude‐behavior relationship. Results are discussed in the light of attitude retrieval versus attitude‐construction processes. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

态度研究的新进展——双重态度模型

态度一直是社会心理学领域一个极为重要的研究课题,一直以来研究只关注有意识状态下人们的外显态度,对于无意识状态下的内隐态度最近才引起人们的意识。双重态度模型理论认为,人们对同一态度客体可能同时拥有两种不同的态度－－外显态度和内隐态度,这一理论对传统的态度概念及测量技术都提出了新的挑战。该对双重态度模型的理论来源、基本观点、双重态度类型及相关的研究证据作了详细介绍,最后探讨了双重态度模型理论对态度改变、态度测量及态度与行为一致性等未来研究方向的意义与启示。     

Investigating the social-adjustive and value-expressive functions of well-grounded attitudes: Implications for change and for subsequent behavior

Recent demonstrations of the plausibility of functional theories of persuasion have occurred within advertising contexts or have targeted potentially nebulous or uninvolving attitudes, and may thus have demonstrated the utility of functional explanations of attitude formation rather than attitude change. In the present study, attitudes that participants have acted on and consider important (i.e., the criteria they use to select dating partners) were the targets of persuasion. High and low self-monitoring individuals, who hold different dating attitudes that serve different functions, were exposed to functionally relevant or functionally irrelevant messages that reached either proattitudinal or counterattitudinal conclusions. As anticipated by functional theory, (a) low self-monitoring individuals changed their dating attitudes only after hearing a counterattitudinal message that addressed thevalue-expressive functions their dating attitudes served, whereas (b) high self-monitoring individuals changed their opinions only after hearing a counterattitudinal message that addressed thesocial-adjustive functions served by their dating attitudes. Although the data revealed that important attitudes can be changed via a functionally relevant appeal, only the low self-monitoring individuals subsequently used their changed attitudes to guide their behavior in a subsequent couple-matching task. Implications of these results for functional theories of persuasion and for variations in attitude/behavior consistency were discussed. This research is based on a Master’s thesis conducted by the first author under the direction of the second author.     

Explicit- and Implicit Bullying Attitudes in Relation to Bullying Behavior

The main aim of this study was to examine whether an assessment of implicit bullying attitudes could add to the prediction of bullying behavior after controlling for explicit bullying attitudes. Primary school children (112 boys and 125 girls, M age = 11 years, 5 months) completed two newly developed measures of implicit bullying attitudes (a general Implicit Association Test on bullying and a movie-primed specific IAT on bullying), an explicit bullying attitude measure, and self reported, peer reported, and teacher rated bullying behavior. While explicit bullying attitudes predicted bullying behavior, implicit attitudes did not. However, a significant interaction between implicit and explicit bullying attitudes indicated that in children with relatively positive explicit attitudes, implicit bullying attitudes were important predictors of bullying behavior. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Dimensions of “Introversion-Extroversion”

Recently, social psychologists have set forth various hypotheses concerning the conditions that may affect the extent of attitude-behavior consistency. In this research we test the hypothesis, generally suggested by Fishbein, that attitude-behavior consistency is affected by the extent to which attitude and behavior are measured at approximately an equivalent level of generality. Behavior was measured at two levels of generality, and attitude was measured at five levels of generality. As the various attitudes were found to be moderately related, a multiple regression analysis was employed to estimate the independent effects and combined additive effects of the attitudes on each of the two levels of behavior. Briefly, the data supported the hypothesis, showing that both specific and general patterns of behavior were only affected by attitudes measured at an equivalent level of generality.     

Attitudinal qualities relating to the strength of the attitude-behavior relationship

A study was conducted to examine the relation between each of several attitudinal qualities and attitude-behavior consistency. Subjects' attitudes toward volunterring to participate in psychological research were assessed. The number of experiments in which each subject volunteered to participate was employed as the measure of behavior. Attitude-behavior consistency was significantly related to (1) the amount of direct experience upon which the subject's attitude was based (specifically, the number of experiments in which the subject had previously participated), (2) the degree of certainty with which the attitude was held, and (3) how well-defined the subject's attitude was, as measured by the width of his latitude of rejection. These three attitudinal qualities were significantly intercorrelated, suggesting that direct experience with an attitude object may produce an attitude that is both better defined and more confidently held than an attitude formed through more indirect means.     

Interpersonal determinants of attitude change following counterattitudinal behavior

In a test of predictions derived from an identity-analytic model of self-presentational behavior, individuals who privately endorsed positive or negative attitudes about sexual behavior were asked to deliver a prosexuality speech while alone, while watched by observers, or while being watched by observers who questioned the morality of the subject’s actions. Subsequent attitude measures indicated that the subjects who initially adopted negative attitudes justified their behavior by expressing more favorable attitudes about sexuality, but only when no audience witnessed their speech. When an audience was present, these individuals emphasized their lack of choice. In contrast, subjects who privately endorsed positive attitudes publicly expressed less favorable attitudes when their morality was challenged by the observers. These findings suggest that attitude change following counterattitudinal behavior (a) stems from private image-maintenance needs as well as public self-presentational concerns, and (b) is sometimes designed to secure an image of morality as well as an image of consistency.     

Children's implicit attitude acquisition: Evaluative statements succeed,repeated pairings fail

From the earliest ages tested, children and adults show similar overall magnitudes of implicit attitudes toward various social groups. However, such consistency in attitude magnitude may obscure meaningful age‐related change in the ways that children (vs. adults) acquire implicit attitudes. This experiment investigated children's implicit attitude acquisition by comparing the separate and joint effects of two learning interventions, previously shown to form implicit attitudes in adults. Children (N = 280, ages 7–11 years) were taught about novel social groups through either evaluative statements (ES; auditorily presented verbal statements such as ‘Longfaces are bad, Squarefaces are good’), repeated evaluative pairings (REP; visual pairings of Longface/Squareface group members with valenced images such as a puppy or snake), or a combination of ES+REP. Results showed that children acquired implicit attitudes following ES and ES+REP, with REP providing no additional learning beyond ES alone. Moreover, children did not acquire implicit attitudes in four variations of REP, each designed to facilitate learning by systematically increasing verbal scaffolding to specify (a) the learning goal, (b) the valence of the unconditioned stimuli, and (c) the group categories of the conditioned stimuli. These findings underscore the early‐emerging role of verbal statements in children's implicit attitude acquisition, as well as a possible age‐related limit in children's acquisition of novel implicit attitudes from repeated pairings.     

Attitude strength: Distinguishing predictors versus defining features

Attitudes play a fundamental role in many aspects of social psychology, but researchers have long recognized that attitudes vary in their susceptibility to change and their influence on behavior and cognitive processes. This insight lies at the heart of attitude strength, which is defined as an attitude's durability and impact. A variety of attitude attributes such as certainty and ambivalence have been shown to correlate with these aspects of attitude strength, which has made for some confusion as to what variables define strong attitudes versus predict an attitude's strength. In this article, we highlight this distinction between predictors and defining features of strength and review recent programs of research demonstrating the independence of strength‐related attitude attributes and attitude strength itself. Specifically, although some attitude attributes are associated with the attitude's durability and impact, there are conditions under which those attributes fail to predict attitude strength or even have the opposite effects. Throughout, this review reveals nuances in the attitude strength literature and provokes new questions for future inquiry.     

Using the self to change implicit attitudes

Implicit attitudes are automatic evaluations that occur upon encountering an object. Pairing a particular object with one's self should lead to a positive implicit evaluation of that object as, on the whole, people evaluate themselves positively. Study 1 (N = 83) demonstrated that asking participants to associate themselves with a particular drink (A) and others with an alternative drink (B) was enough to enhance implicit preference for drink A over drink B indexed by scores on the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Two further studies were conducted to rule out the possibility that the effects of the manipulation were restricted to the procedure and measures adopted in Study 1. Study 2 (N = 81) tested the mechanism underlying the effects of the manipulation. The results suggested that the change in implicit attitudes towards the drinks varied as a function of the level of one's self‐esteem. Specifically, associating one's self with drink A led to more favourable implicit attitudes towards drink A particularly when one's self was evaluated more positively. In the third study (N = 44), the basic effect of the manipulation was replicated in an alternative measure of implicit attitudes (the Affect Misattribution Procedure). In all three studies, the effects were unique to implicit measures and did not generalize to explicit measures. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Case Study Method of Rehabilitating Drivers

Summary

This study was designed to examine the relationship between attitudes toward homosexuality and attitudes toward certain aspects of heterosexual sexuality and to personal sex guilt and sex stereotyping. One hundred twenty-six Canadian male students completed a series of specially devised attitude scales pertaining to these areas. On the basis of their responses to the anti-homosexual scale, subjects were divided into a prohomosexual (Pro-H) and antihomosexual (Anti-H) group.

Results showed that Anti-H respondents were more intolerant of a variety of heterosexual behaviors. Anti-H Ss reported more personal sex-guilt and higher level of repression of their own sexual impulses than did Pro-H subjects. The Anti-H group also demonstrated a greater stereotyping of the sexes by their sex-typing of a variety of personality characteristics, hobbies, and professions. These Ss were also more willing to label a man as homosexual when he exhibited what they thought of as a single feminine characteristic than were Pro-H subjects.

These findings provide supportive evidence for the theoretical formulations of Churchill (4) regarding antihomosexualism in a sex-negative environment. As the intercorrelations between the three principal attitude scales were only moderate, it appears that attitudes toward homosexuality are at least somewhat specific, not just part of a more general sexual attitude. Similarly, anti-homosexual attitudes correlate positively but moderately with general sexual conservatism and with personal sex guilt.

Discussion of these moderate correlations suggested the relevance of various sources of prejudice. The uncritical acceptance of culturally pervasive stereotypes could account for much measured antihomosexual feelings. It was also suggested that development of the culturally acceptable masculine identity is facilitated by the individual's desire to avoid the stigmatization of being “feminine;; which, in cultural terms, means also being “queer.”