Attitudes and Behavior

The Difference Between Attitude and Behavior

In social psychology, attitudes and behaviors are viewed as connected to each other. It is important to remember, though, that attitudes and behavior are not the same things. Attitudes are predisposed feelings toward people, places, or things. They are different from beliefs, but beliefs can influence our attitudes. Behaviors are actions in response to stimuli. This includes observable actions, unobservable mental processes, and non-conscious processes.

The Functions of Attitudes

Attitudes help us navigate the world around us. We grow up learning and absorbing the attitudes held by our caregivers, and we start to develop our own attitudes about the world as we grow. The functions of attitudes have to do with how our attitudes help us make sense of the world. Some of these functions are gaining knowledge, maintaining self-esteem, improving social interactions, and expressing core values.

Gaining Knowledge

This is the role attitudes play in our ability to gain and interpret new information. Your attitudes inform how you interpret new information that you take in about the world. Having a positive attitude towards a public figure might lead you to interpret a negative story about them in the news as caused by situational factors rather than a moral problem. Your positive attitude toward that person will inform how you interpret new information about them.

Maintaining Self-Esteem

This is the role attitudes play in our ability to maintain our own self-image and self-esteem. Often this looks like maintaining a high regard for our own social circles because our social circles reflect back onto us.

Improving Social Interactions

This is the role attitudes play in our ability to maintain or improve social relationships and interactions.

This can look like holding positive or negative attitudes toward the style of a certain social group or club. The attitudes could be about appearance, music, food, or other group preferences.

Expressing Core Values

This is the role attitudes play in how we express our core beliefs or values. This can look like wearing religious symbols or politically affiliated clothing because of our attitudes toward the values or beliefs of that group.

The Effects of Attitude on Behavior

The attitudes we hold can impact our behaviors in a variety of ways. One way is through attitude change or persuasion. There are two main ways we can process a persuading message: central route processing or peripheral route processing.

Central route processing is when someone encounters an argument and thoughtfully considers the logic and strength of the argument's key points. When this happens, someone might be persuaded to adopt a new attitude or change an old attitude based on the overall merit of the argument. Sometimes juries will come to a verdict in a court case by central route processing if they thoughtfully listen to both sides of the argument and key points before deciding on their attitude towards the case verdict. They also have to separate personal biases and attitudes toward the case from their judgment of a person's guilt or innocence. Attitudes toward certain behaviors can influence guilty or not guilty verdicts.

Peripheral route processing is when someone becomes persuaded by factors that are not a part of an argument's key points, such as an emotional appeal or the person presenting the argument. TV commercials use well-known celebrities or beautiful people and places to make their products seem more attractive. We might feel like trying the product due to our attitudes toward the people and places in the commercial and not necessarily because the product is something we really want or need.

Not surprisingly, attitudes changed by central route processing tend to last longer and become more meaningful. But how do these attitudes impact our behavior? Attitude strength is sometimes a predictor of behavior. The stronger a feeling or attitude, the more likely it is to impact a person's behavior.

Usually, people strive to hold consistent attitudes. Those who feel that certain behaviors are immoral might also feel negatively towards a movie, book, or event that portrays that behavior. This desire to maintain consistent attitudes is problematic when we find ourselves holding beliefs and attitudes that are inconsistent. Cognitive dissonance happens when there are contradictions in a person's attitudes and behaviors. Despite desiring to maintain consistency, many people experience contradicting behaviors and attitudes which can lead to changes in behavior or attitude in order to resolve the dissonance.

Another way that attitudes can impact the way we behave is through role expectations. The expectations of how we should behave in certain scenarios can cause a shift in our attitudes and behaviors. We behave differently as high school students than as college students and as lower-level employees than as managers because of our expectations of how we should behave. If our role in life did not change, there would be no need to change our attitudes toward certain behaviors.

While it is easy to see how attitudes can influence our behaviors, attitudes are not a great predictor of behavior. People often feel one way and act a different way, or they say they'll do one thing and then they do something different. People often maintain attitudes that do not match their behaviors.

Examples of How Attitudes Lead to Behaviors

Over the years researchers have conducted many research studies involving attitudes and behaviors. Below are a few studies that highlight different ways attitudes connect and relate to our behaviors.

Richard LaPiere's Study

Richard LaPiere (1934) conducted one of the earliest studies looking at the relationship between attitudes and behavior. His study explored American prejudice and discrimination in the 1930s. LaPiere traveled to the west coast where Asian-American discrimination was extremely prevalent. He observed guests in restaurants and hotels to identify the mistreatment of Asian patrons. LaPiere observed only one instance of discrimination.

Later he called the same establishments and asked how each establishment felt about treating Asian patrons. LaPiere found that 90% of the establishments reported negative attitudes toward serving Asian patrons, which contradicted LaPiere's observations. While LaPiere's methods were far from foolproof and discrimination is much more complex than his experiment took into account, his study is an interesting example of how attitude does not always accurately predict behavior.

Leon Festinger's and James Carlsmith's study

In the 1950s, Festinger and Carlsmith conducted a research study exploring the concept of cognitive dissonance. They asked participants to perform a boring activity and then lie and tell the next subject that they enjoyed themselves. The next person was actually a confederate (a person who is in on the study). Some participants were offered $1 to lie, and some were offered $20 to lie.

The researchers assessed each participant's attitude towards the task. The results showed that participants who were given $1 to lie maintained a negative attitude towards the task. In their mind, $1 was not enough to justify lying, which would create cognitive dissonance between their attitudes and behaviors. Those who were offered $20 felt less dissonance about lying and a more positive attitude toward lying because they felt that the reward justified the lie. More money was enough to change a participant's attitude toward lying, and the attitude change impacted their experience of cognitive dissonance!