What Moderates Attitude-Behavior Consistency?

Attitude structure, as mapped through different measures of attitude strength, influences attitude-behavior consistency. For example, the accessibility of an attitude, the ease with which it comes to mind, has been positively correlated to voting behavior, consumer product choices, puzzle completion, and the choice to donate to charity (Fabrigar and Wegener, 2010, p. 187-188.)  To take another example, just believing that you’ve thought about something can lead to greater certainty and with that certainty, greater attitude-behavior consistency (Petty & Brinol, 2010, p. 241).  Other, more general features of attitude structure, such as the content of knowledge structures and the valence of evaluations, have been respectively correlated to influence on instrumental and consummatory behaviors (2010, p. 188).  In both cases there is a match between the content of knowledge structures linked to the attitude and the motivations in that particular situation.    

Ambivalence is usually negatively correlated to attitude-behavior consistency (2010, p. 188-189).  This is the case even for complex attitudes, which can include multiple evaluations of different valences.  Normally, these attitudes may be considered “informative guides even when the goal of the behavior has little direct relevance to any of the dimensions of knowledge (2010, p. 195), perhaps because they have been tested across a variety of situations and are considered generally relevant.  However, ambivalence decreases confidence in these attitudes, their perceived situational relevance, and, in some cases, willingness to act.   Less-complex attitudes may be even more affected (2010, p. 195).  

According to Petty et al.’s Meta-Cognitive Model, the MCM, individual evaluations and knowledge structures may be “tagged” with meta-evaluations of their likelihood, the confidence with which they should be held, accuracy, and certainty (Petty & Brinol, 2010, p. 218-219).  Ambivalence can cause clashes between attitudes which may be experienced as discomfort and prompt an adjustment of these tags (2010, p. 219).  Attitudes with meta-cognitive tags indicating certainty and confidence should be better correlated to behaviors both deliberative and automatic.  Attitudes with tags indicating their weakness and personal lack of confidence in them should, eventually, cease to affect behavior.  However, they may persist as implicit attitudes that affect automatic reactions (2010, p. 219). 

Because attitudes can form by many routes, including evaluative conditioning, heuristic, and elaborative processing (2010), it is possible for behaviors to change attitudes.  For example, “[a]ttitude self-reports filled out in front of a mirror . . . better predict subsequent behavior,” (Baumeister, 2010, p. 143) presumably biases attention toward the reflexive self.  Further, participants who have recalled “extraverted versus introverted tendencies” (2010, p. 146) typically begin to think of themselves as introverted or extroverted which can lead to the expression of introverted and extroverted behaviors (2010, p. 146).  Role playing can also induce attitude change (Petty & Brinol, 2010, p. 221).