Ch. 6: Attitudes, Behaviors, & Rationalization

What Attitudes Are

• Attitudes involve three components: affect (how you feel), cognition (what you think or believe), and behavior (your behavioral tendencies). In short, attitudes link what you think, feel, and are likely to do about something.

• Examples discussed: attitudes toward a president (e.g., Trump) or institutions (e.g., the University of Michigan) and how those relate to beliefs, feelings, and potential behaviors (e.g., attending a concert).

• Attitudes can be explicit (consciously accessible) or implicit (automatic, not always consciously endorsed).

Measuring Attitudes

• Explicit measures:

  • Likert scales: respondents rate agreement with statements on a scale from 1 to 7 (or other ranges). The midpoint is often 4, representing a neutral point between agreement and disagreement.

  • Micro/5-point scales: variations used for quick assessment of agreement with statements (e.g., explicit measures via survey items).

• Implicit measures:

  • Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the most common implicit measure, designed to reveal automatic associations that may not align with self-reports (e.g., race-related attitudes).

  • Accessibility: how quickly and accurately someone responds to congruent vs. incongruent pairings indicates the strength of an implicit attitude.

  • Centrality: how consistent an attitude is with other attitudes a person holds.

• Physiological measures as indicators:

  • Heart rate, cortisol (saliva) responses, etc., used to infer arousal or emotional engagement related to attitudes.

• Context for measurement:

  • The same attitude can be measured in different ways; choosing the measurement method can affect the observed relationship to behavior.

Origins of Attitudes

• Personal experiences: attitudes can form from direct experiences and are often unique to the individual.

• Social learning: attitudes can be acquired by observing others, through socialization, culture, and communication.

• These origins help explain why attitudes exist and how they are maintained or changed over time.

Functions of Attitudes

• Knowledge function: attitudes help organize information and serve as schemas that structure how we process new information. They allow us to integrate environmental information—even when it is consistent or inconsistent with existing attitudes.

  • Example: thinking about a positive attitude toward Michigan might lead to associative links (Ann Arbor, winter, etc.). This demonstrates how attitudes form a web of interconnected ideas.

• Schema/association function: attitudes organize related thoughts and experiences and prime related attitudes when one is activated (e.g., attending a concert may prime related cultural or social attitudes).

• Identity function: attitudes reflect values or identities (e.g., supporting social justice causes; a public figure who discusses mental health openly can influence how others view related issues).

• Behavioral guidance: attitudes can influence actions, but this link is not always strong or direct.

Do Attitudes Predict Behavior?

• The relationship is two-way: attitudes can influence behavior, and behavior can influence attitudes.

• A common question: do internal attitudes predict behavior, and under what conditions do they fail to?

Evidence and Key Experiments

• Attitude-behavior consistency varies by specificity:

  • General attitude toward a broad issue often weakly predicts specific behaviors.

  • More specific attitudes predict corresponding specific behaviors better.

• Example: predicting use of birth control pills

  • Attitude toward using birth control pills (specific attitude) predicts use with a correlation of r \approx 0.53 (i.e., r = 0.53).

  • The takeaway: measurement specificity matters for predicting behavior.

• Attitude-behavior gaps in real-world contexts:

  • Pollution/climate-change attitudes vs. actions: many report concern but engage in moderate or limited preventive actions (e.g., recycling) — illustrating attitude-behavior gap.

  • Volunteering example: about 75% may feel volunteering is important, but only ~33% actually volunteer; another clear gap between attitude and action.

• Classic observational study on prejudice and behavior (LaPiere):

  • Traveled with Chinese couple in the U.S. during a period of anti-Chinese sentiment.

  • Observed discrimination at about 1 establishment out of 251 encounters, contrasting with stated attitudes about prejudice.

  • The discrepancy contributed to debates about the attitude-behavior relationship; implications for policy and social attitudes persisted for years after.

• The Good Samaritan experiment (seminary students):

  • Three experimental conditions manipulated urgency: high hurry, intermediate hurry, low hurry.

  • A confederate in distress was placed in an alley; researchers observed whether students helped.

  • Result: students in a hurry were much less likely to offer help; whether their intended speech topic (parables about helping) was related to the outcome did not matter.

  • Key takeaway: situational factors (time pressure) often trump attitude content in predicting helping behavior.

• Moderating factors influencing attitude-behavior prediction:

  • Situational constraints: ability to act on attitudes is bounded by context and opportunity.

  • Strength and intensity of attitude: stronger, more entrenched attitudes predict behavior more reliably than weak attitudes.

  • Personal relevance: attitudes align more closely with behaviors when the issue is personally relevant (e.g., freshmen vs. seniors in a university policy change scenario: tuition increase vs. comprehensive exams).

• Attitude specificity and measurement strategies:

  • Predictive power increases when you measure attitudes, target, and behavior with aligned specificity (state-level vs. global attitudes).

  • Example: attitudes about attending a Michigan football game are better predictors of attending that game if measured with game-specific attitude items rather than general sports attitudes.

• Multi-method measurement and convergent validity:

  • Using multiple measures of attitudes and behaviors yields better predictive validity than a single measure.

  • Example: assess bioethics consciousness across recycling, energy use, transportation choices, etc., to approximate overall eco-sensitivity.

Enhanced Measurement Validity and Honesty in Self-Reports

• Bogus pipeline (deception-based honesty technique): participants are led to believe researchers can detect true attitudes via a “pipeline” instrument, which reduces social desirability bias.

  • Result: attitudes measured under bogus pipeline are more predictive of actual behavior because responses are more truthful.

• Focused findings with the bogus pipeline:

  • Sex differences in self-reported sexuality become smaller under bogus pipeline conditions, suggesting socialization and reporting biases influence self-reports.

  • Under anonymous conditions, differences are larger; under exposure threat (where responses could be seen by the experimenter), reporting becomes less connected to actual behavior.

• Practical implications:

  • When assessing attitudes that are socially undesirable (e.g., racism), incorporating methods that reduce social desirability bias can yield more accurate predictions of behavior.

Practical Implications and Applications

• If you want to predict behavior well, tailor attitudes measurement to be specific to the behavior, target, and context:

  • Example: predict attendance at a Michigan football game by asking attitudes about the game itself and the game context, not generic sports enthusiasm.

• Use multiple measures to improve accuracy:

  • Combine explicit measures (e.g., Likert items) with implicit measures, behavioral indicators, and observational data.

• Consider the personal relevance and immediacy of the attitude:

  • Freshman concerns about tuition increases may mobilize differently than senior concerns about comprehensive exams.

• Be mindful of situational constraints and opportunity:

  • A positive attitude does not guarantee action if the environment does not permit or facilitate the behavior.

• Ethical considerations in attitude research:

  • Techniques like bogus pipeline involve deception; ensure ethical review, debriefing, and justification for their use.

  • Studies exploring sensitive attitudes (e.g., prejudice, sexuality) require careful handling to avoid harm and ensure participant welfare.

Quick Takeaways

• Attitudes are threefold: affect, cognition, and behavior; they can be explicit or implicit.

• Measurement methods matter: explicit scales (1-7) vs. implicit tests (response time, accuracy) reveal different attitudinal information.

• Attitudes serve knowledge/schema and identity functions, shaping how we interpret information and respond to others.

• The attitude-behavior link is often moderate and highly dependent on specificity, context, and personal relevance.

• Real-world data (e.g., LaPiere, Good Samaritan) show that people may hold strong attitudes that do not always translate into behavior due to situational factors.

• Using multiple measures and, when appropriate, methods that reduce bias (bogus pipeline) can improve the predictive power of attitude data.

• Ethical considerations are essential when probing attitudes, especially regarding sensitive topics.