How do attitudes influence behaviour? PDF

Preview

Summary

How do attitudes influence behaviour? Practice essay, written for exam preparation. Wasn't a marked piece but I received a 1st (mark: 81) for this module....

Description

How do attitudes influence behaviour? One of the most influential theories looking at how attitudes influence behaviour is the Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Azjen, 1967). The model was developed to predict reasoned, deliberative behaviour. According to the model the immediate determinant of an individuals behaviour is their intention. If you intend to do something you are likely to do it. The model proposes that intentions are determined by attitudes and subject norms. The attitude is simply whether the person think performing that behaviour is good or bad and the subjective norm component refers to social pressures to perform or not perform the behaviour. The model further proposes that attitudes are shaped by a persons expectancy that the behaviour will produce the desired outcome, for example that recycling will help the environment and the value they assign to that outcome, for example that helping the environment is a good thing. Attitudes can be measured by multiple measure of expectancy and value. The subjective norm is shaped by beliefs about how important others expect the individual to behaviour and their motivation to comply with this. As such, subjective norm component can be measured by multiply belief and motivation values. Much research has confirmed that attitudes and norms do a good job at predicting intentions and behaviour. However, there are some cases were we may have a strong attitude and intention to behave a certain way but do not. Thus, Azjen noted that behaviour is also largely influenced by whether people feel they can or cannot perform the behaviour. For example someone may have a strong positive attitude towards getting the bus and intend to do so but if they don’t live on a bus route then they cannot. Thus the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Azjen, 1991) was developed to included perceived behaviour control as another determinant of behaviour. Perceived behaviour control can have an direct effect on intentions in that our perception of ability to act will influence our intentions to act, but it also have a direct effect on behaviour whether the behaviour can actually be performed. These predictions have strong empirical support. For example, nclusion of perceived behavioral control enhanced the prediction of behavioral intention and behaviour. Furthermore, a meta analysis by Albarracin et al (2001) found that future condom use was significantly related to behavioural intentions to use condoms and that intentions were predictive by both attitudes towards and subjective norms about condom use. However, there are some issues with the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Azjen, 1991). Firstly, the proposal that behaviour can be changed by identifying salient beliefs raising the question of whether some beliefs are more important than others in determining behaviours. Fishbein & Azjen suggested that salient, easy-to-remember beliefs are fundamental

determinants of peoples attitudes and behavioural intentions. It has been suggested that beliefs can be subgrouped on to two dimensions; negative versus positive outcomes and emotional versus instrumental outcomes. The extent to which these beliefs predict behaviours depends partly upon the type of behaviour. For example, beliefs about negative outcomes are most important when predict speeding behaviour, whereas beliefs about positive outcomes are most important in predicting the initiation of smoking. Furthermore, the risk as feelings heuristic suggest that emotions drive behaviour when our instrumental and emotional beliefs conflict, such as in the case of risky behaviour. Thus it is important to distinguish between different types of beliefs. Another question that arises is whether there are cases where behavioural intentions are more influenced by attitudes or subjective norms. It has been reported that overall attitudes are better predictors of behavioural intentions than subjective norms, however some were better predicted by subjective norms which raising the question when is one more predictive than the other. Ybarra & Trafimow (1998) investigated this by making people think about either ways in which they were different to their families, eliciting private-self beliefs or ways in which they were similar to their families which elicits collective-self beliefs. They found that behavioural intentions were better predicted by attitudes if private self beliefs had been elicited. On the other hand, subject norms were more highly correlated with behavioural intentions when public-self beliefs had been elicited. Thus demonstrating that the way we think about ourself can influence the link between attitudes and behaviour and that there may be a different role of attitudes in individualistic compared to collectivist cultures. It also may be the case that effect of the collective and private self may have different influences on attitudes that serve different functions, in that the collective self should have a greater effect on attitudes that serve a social adjustment function, whereas the individual self should have a greater effect on attitudes serving instrumental and ego-defensive functions. One limitation of both the Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Azjen, 1967) and the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Azjen, 1991) is that they only predict deliberative behaviour and thus is not useful when explaining spontaneous behaviour. The MODEL model (Fazio, 1990) was developed to uncover how attitudes influence both deliberative and spontaneous behaviour. The model suggests that if individuals have sufficient motivation and opportunity then they behaviour is based upon deliberative consideration of their attitude and other behaviour. However ,when either motivation or opportunity is not sufficient that individuals spontaneously process information. In this circumstance the model argues that attitude accessibility is vital as highly accessible attitudes will be automatically activated and thus elicited behaviour. Thus if an attitude is not accessible it is unlikely to predict behaviour. This was

supported by Fazio & Williams (1986) who found that participants that could report their attitudes very quicker (high accessibility) had greater correlations between attitudes and behaviour than those who had low accessibility attitudes. But what makes an attitude highly accessible? Fazio (1990) suggests that attitudes become highly accessible when people have formed strong association between the evaluation of an attitude object and their mental representation which will occur with repeated pairings. Consistent with this people are faster at reporting their attitudes when they have previously expressed the attitude many times. Schuette & Fazio (1995) found that evaluations of pro or anti-attitudinal messages were consistent with participants attitudes when their attitude was highly accessible (expressed six times) and their motivation was low (less likely to scrutinise message so just base on compatibility with preexisting attitude: served as a cue that biased perceptions). However, when participants were highly motivated or their attitudes were not highly accessible (had only expressed them once) then evaluations were not correlated with their attitudes. This is because being motivated can lead people to overcome potential biases and repeating attitude just once does not make it accessible enough to influence perceptions. In fact, Olson & Fazio (2004) found that sometimes high motivation can lead people to overcompensate for negative attitudes. They found that when low in motivation to control for prejudice participants that possessed more negative spontaneous attitudes towards Blacks rated them more negatively. However, when motivation to control for prejudice was high, participants with negative spontaneous attitudes rated the Black individuals more positively relative to the White individuals. Thus they appeared to override and overcompensate for their negative spontaneous attitudes in an attempt to appear less prejudice: high motivation overrode effects of spontaneous attitudes as predicted by the MODE Model (Fazio, 1990). A study by Sanbonmatsu & Fazio (1990) tested the MODE Model by assessing whether participants would base their decision of which store to purchase a camera from on the description of the camera department or of the store when motivation and time pressure was manipulated. They found that participant were more likely to base their decision on the description of the camera department when they were motivated to make a good decision (had to justify it) and had no time pressure. However, if they were less motivated or under time pressure then they were more likely to base it on the description on the store. This study provides further support for the MODE Model, suggesting that motivation and opportunity influence whether attitudes influence behaviour through a spontaneous or deliberative route.

However, the effect of attitude accessibility on the attitude-behaviour relationship may be moderated by individual difference. For example, Synder & Kendzierski (1982) reported that attitude accessibility only moderated the attitude-behaviour relationship for low self-monitors but not high-self monitors. The authors suggested that this is because low self-monitors care about following through on their attitudes and can only do this when they remember them, in other words when they are high accessible. High self-monitors on the other hand, are concerned more about the situation so are less impacted by whether the attitude is active or not. Accessible attitudes are quicker to recall, serve a orientating function, whereby objects that participants had high accessible attitudes for where noticed more, show lower arousal thus suggesting they simplify our world, making decision making easier and are more influenced by direct than indirect experience, maybe because direct experience increases attitude certainty and strength. The MODEL model (Fazio, 1990) suggests they are more spontaneously activated. Support for this comes from a study by Fazio et al (1995) which used evaluative priming to measure the speed with which participants classified adjectives as bad or good following the presentation of target stimulus. Their study revealed participants responded faster to positive adjectives after seeing faces of people from their own group. Thus demonstrating that the spontaneous activation of attitudes leads to quicker processing of evaluative information that shares the same evaluation. However, there are some limitations to the MODE model (Fazio, 1990). Firstly it only focuses on simple, specific behaviour so may not be sufficient in explaining behaviour relevant to long-term goals and plans. This also applies to the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Azjen, 1991). Also there is the question of how we determine whether a behaviour will spontaneously or deliberatively use and attitude? It is hard to determine the threshold from crossing from spontaneous to deliberative route/ Further to this, a large percentage of our day to day behaviour is habitual, that is automatic and contextually dependent behaviour. Thus when assessing how attitudes influence behaviour is it important to consider the role of habits. The Composite Attitude-Behaviour Model (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993) suggests a link between attitudes, intention and behaviour, like the Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Azjen, 1967) and Theory of Planned Behaviour (Azjen, 1991). It proposes that there are a number of factors that affect attitudes towards behaviour: habits, attitudes towards the target, utilitarian outcomes, normative outcomes and self-identity outcomes. Highlights the role that habits (relevant past behaviours) can play in determining behaviour which is important as studies have found that habits can be highly predictive of behaviour. For example one study assessing travel behaviour reported that habits were

highly predictive of behaviour even after behavioural intentions and perceived behavioural control were taken into account, in fact if habits were strong they were the main predictor of behaviour. This highlights the importance of included habits in models that seek to assess the relationship between attitudes and behaviour. As previously mentioned, habits are context dependent, thus unstable context reduce how predictive of behaviour habits are. Subsequently, studies have investigated how habits can be broken and replaced. One common technique is implementation intentions (Gollwitzer, 1999) whereby participants decide where, when and how they will complete a new behaviour. This technique has proved successful in increasing the amount of plastic cups recycled and increases the likelihood of completing breast self examinations. Implementation intentions are particularly successful when they involve a change of context, for example travel behaviour is easier to change when people move house as the context becomes unstable. The technique also demonstrates a way of fixing the gap between intentions and behaviour. To conclude, deliberative behaviour can be predicted from behavioural intentions, which are based on attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. However these models do not account for the effect habits have on behaviour and do not explain the link between attitudes and spontaneous behaviour. It is interesting to note that there may be cases where behaviour is both spontaneous and deliberative, this should be investigated in relation to the MODEL model (Fazio, 1990)....