Do Attitudes Predict Behaviour Research

This theory was first created by Ajzen and Fishbein in 1980. This theory provides a framework to study the attitudes that support behaviours and suggests that the most important determinate of an individual’s behaviour is their behavioural intent. This is the individual’s intention to preform a certain behaviour, which is formed from a combination of their attitude towards the behaviour and the subject norm. (The subject norm is the individual’s perception of what others expect them to do).

Attitudes can also arise due to observational learning, wherein people internalize the attitudes of others; passing them on from one individual to the other. Attitudes can be held implicitly and do not innately imply behavior. Often individual’s will have consideration of a ground or opinion but not act on it when the chance rises. Many factors influence whether or not attitudes will come to impact behavior.

Social psychologists employ a variety of different measures in attempt to measure attitudes, which cannot be directly measured due to their hypothetical and unobservable nature. However, they are often inferable from behaviour. For example, a negative attitude towards smoking might be reflected in moving away from someone who lights up in your vicinity (behaviour). Attitudes measures can be explicit (i.e. participant is asked directly about their attitude towards an object – e.g. opinion poll), or implicit (i.e. measure wherein participants sub-conscious attitudes are assessed without their knowledge – e.g…) (Haddock and Maio, 2008). Questionnaires are the most common measure of attitudes, utilising one of four types of attitude measurement scales.

Attitude towards the action is a learned bias to respond favorably/unfavorably and consistently with respect to the action. This includes the degree of certainty about consequences from the behavior and likely outcomes. Subjective norms consist of social pressures which try to convince the individual to comply with the desired behavior. Subjective norms also consist of normative beliefs (what others prefer us to do) and motivation to comply (our desire to do what others expect). From our attitudes and social pressures a behavioral plan is derived. Behavioral intention’s is a course of action to follow, that is, a plan to put behavior into effect. From the person’s behavioral intentions comes one’s behavior. While the theory predicts behavioral intentions, it does not necessarily predict actual behavior because people don’t always behave in accordance with their intentions – as we witness in Breaking Bad.

The self-standards model of dissonance seeks to bring together a groups of prior explanations for the phenonon of cognitive dissonce. Describe Stone and Cooper’s model of cognitive dissonance and explain how it contrasts with previous models. Present and critically evaluate for and against the self-standards model as an explanttion of dissonance. Disscuss the way in which we could use the self-standards model to explain contrempory Australian attitudes to climate change.

“Attitudes are positive or negative evaluations, feeling, and tendencies that individuals harbor toward objects or concepts” (Wild). As the book mentions, attitudes are similar to values, these are formed according to a culture background and varies from country to country.

This essay will examine the strength of the link between attitudes and behaviour and show that attitudes do not always predict behaviour as there are a number of variables that need to be put in place before the evaluation of a person behaving according to their attitudes can be assessed. These variables will be discussed in some detail. The three component model will be discussed and also attitude formation will be touched upon, before the link between behaviour and attitude can be examined a general understanding of how and why attitudes are formed needs to be addressed.

Attitudes carry a huge weight in social psychology. In the past, the theory of attitudes was considered the most dominant study in social psychology (Allport, 1935). Throughout time, the term attitude has accumulated many definitions, a renowned definition being “a relatively enduring organisation of beliefs, feelings and behavioural tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events or symbols” (Hogg and Vaughan, 2014, p. 150). The focus on attitudes is so significant because the question of whether attitudes can predict behaviour has arisen time after time. If attitudes do predict behaviour, we can discover why people act in certain ways and, therefore, attempt to change negative behaviours. Over time, work has been carried out to determine to what extent attitudes predict behaviour.

Leon Festinger created the cognitive dissonance theory as an attempt to explain why people desire to have consistency between their behaviors and actions. Cognitive dissonance is the distressing mental state people feel when they find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold (Festinger, 1957; as cited in Griffin, 2009). Thus, people are motivated to change either their behavior or their belief when feelings of dissonance arise.

Social psychologists know that people’s attitudes define whether they have a successful, bright, happy future. Most people can agree that this is the case, but people must ask themselves why and what really makes up a person’s attitude. In past years, attitude was recognized as one of the most important psychological experiences of human beings. Over time, the significance of attitudes has increased specifically in understanding how people come to be who they are. This paper will discuss the structure of attitudes through the ABC Model which explains three different components (affect, behavior and cognition) and how these components play a role in people’s lives.

From Week 4 lecture, I have learnt about the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Initially, I thought that if a person intend to do something, they will put in their best effort to do it. However, I realized that I was wrong because ‘intention does not always accurately predict behaviour when there is a reflex or conditioned response involved.’(Long-Crowell, 2003) For example, ‘my friend with a phobia may intend to stay calm and collected when faced with their fear, but may end up having a panic attack instead.’(Long-Crowell, 2003) After this lecture, I have learnt that this theory explores the relationship between attitudes and behaviour. A person who have the intention to change is determined by attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. For example, a person who know about the negative effects are more willing to quit smoking.

The psychological concepts involved in this contemporary issue are implicit attitudes, obedience to authority, and dissonance reduction. Implicit attitudes are attitudes that are involuntary, unconscious, uncontrollable, and typically unknown to us. They differ from their counterpart explicit attitudes which are ones we

The TPB (Ajzen, 1985; 1991) was developed following an extension of the socio psychological Theory of Reasoned Action or TRA (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975) as a result of the original model’s limitations in dealing with behaviours over which people have incomplete volitional control. According to the theory, both attitude toward behaviour (Act) and subjective norms (SN) are immediate determinants of intention to perform behaviour. The TPB further proposes that intention to perform behaviour is the immediate cause of such behaviour. It represents motivational components, that is, the extent to which a person will exercise conscious effort in carrying out any intended behavioural actions.

Attitudes refer to one’s evaluations of the social world: others, objects and ideas. These overall evaluations can be positive, negative, or neutral, vary in their extremity and be based on a variety of information (Tesser and Martin, 1996; Petty, Wheeler, and Tormala, 2003 ). A popular conceptualization of the attitude construct, the tripartite theory, holds that there are three primary types of information in which attitudes can be based (Breckler, 1984; Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960; Zanna & Rempel, 1988) : cognitions or beliefs, affect or feelings and actions or behaviour. As defined by Richard Perloff, persuasion is the process which moulds and shapes attitudes. It is through persuasion that changes in attitudes can occur. The two methods

Attitudes are the way someone communicates, behaves and interprets the message from others. This is when they will apply different generalities to specifically comprehend various groups (such as: stereotyping). These factors help them to analyze and interpret the meanings of numerous cultures / subcultures. In most cases, this can often lead to clashes with many people not fitting into these categories and using them to generalize about specific segments of society. (Deresky, 2011) (Sepehri, 2011)