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Friday, April 5, 2019

Do attitudes predict behaviour

Do attitudes predict deportmentDo attitudes predict doings?The relationship among attitudes and demeanour is one of the most controversial topics in social psychology. Though the definition of attitudes can non be confirmed yet, this essay uses the description in Hoggs and Vaughans book (1995) that attitudes be a popular view or evaluation ab disclose persons, object or issue as well as a relatively enduring organization of beliefs, feelings and behavioral tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, evens or symbols. This definition indicates that there is a close relationship in the midst of attitudes and behaviour. While some critical evidences arose to show that attitudes have little prophetical power on behaviour after the LaPieres experiment (1934), the relationship among attitudes and behaviour is still macrocosm researched as one of the primary(prenominal) topic in the social psychology during recent years. This essay forget analyse the get togeth er between the attitudes and behaviour. This essay begins by looking at the attitude-behaviour inconsistency and then leave alone go on to focus on the possibleness of planned behaviour which whitethorn be regarded as the key surmise to deal with the attitude-behaviour relationship.It is so naive as to think a persons attitudes and behaviour ar linked directly and consistently. It can be seen all the condemnation that people say they want to wield fit but they never do excises, people are worried about global change while they are driving high exhaust cars and using air-conditions.The discovery of the attitude-behaviour inconsistency goes back to thirty-something America depending on the work of the Stanford sociologist Richard LaPiere. At that time, the people in the US had a strong parti pris on Asian. After LaPiere and his two Chinese friends traveled through the US, they were pleasantly surprised to find that out of the 250 hotels and restaurants they visited, all but one served them courteously. Six months later, LaPiere sent a questionnaire to all the hotels and restaurants they visited, asking will you approve members of the Chinese race as guests in your establishment? Incredibly 90% of participants answered no, they would not accept Chinese race into their establishment. This experiment do shows the inconsistency of attitudes and behaviour. After this research, Wicker (1969) found that the average correlation between attitudes and behaviour was and 0.15, which indicated the weak link between attitudes and behaviour. Though LaPieres experiment caused critics to the attitude-behaviour consistency, it did not deny the link between attitudes and behaviour. LaPieres experiment was not designed for attitudes research and there were some problems lay in the questionnaire that may convey some mistakes in this study the people who answered the questionnaires might not be the person who sever the Chinese couple the responders did not be told that the Chinese couple was polite, educated and well-dressed attitudes may have changed during the cardinal months.One of the influence factors in LaPieres experiment is the measuring method of attitudes. It is not easy to measure attitudes and researchers deposit heavily on asking people and using questionnaires which are all self-described methods. States by Fiske (2004), self-report measurement is more(prenominal) easily to gain the explicit attitudes than the implicit attitudes. When the conflict between explicit and implicit attitudes happened, behaviour is ceaselessly coursed by implicit attitude. As implicit attitudes always gained from indirect and complex methods, self-described method can scantily indicates it. The research done by Sherman, Rose and Koch, et al (2003) on implicit and explicit attitudes toward cigarette locoweed shows that implicit attitudes can predict behaviour more stably and accurately. Implicit attitudes are seldom influenced by other factors which can disrupt the correspondence between attitudes and behaviour. In the other words, the using of self-described questionnaires for measuring the attitudes may become a cause of inaccuracy in the prediction of the behaviour.Another important factor influenced LaPieres study is the six months. Though attitude is a stable and enduring evaluation, it may change as the time went by. So as the questionnaires were done after six months, the participants attitudes may have changed during the six month which may lead to the illusion that attitudes do not predict behaviour. As to the other studies on the link between attitudes and behaviour, time interval always exists between the measurement of attitude and behaviour. Some times it would last a keen-sighted time, six months, a month or some times just a week. But no matter how long it was, attitude may probably have changed during this period. This will influence the consistency between attitude and behaviour as well. When attitudes are us ed to predict behaviour, it would be influenced by many divers(prenominal) variables, much(prenominal) as the methods of attitudes measurement as mentioned above, the attitude strength, social norm, past experience and habits, etc. So the relationship between attitudes and behaviour is not related in a one-to-one fashion (Hogg and Vaughan, 1995). The general models relations with link between attitudes and behaviour are the heavy action theory (TRA) and the planned behaviour theory (TPB). These two theories are not in conflict, TPB is an avail of the first theory. The reasoned action theory was first put forward by Ajzen and Fishbein in 1974 which believed that behavioural intention is the result of the combination of inbred norm and attitude towards the behaviour and the behavioural intention leads to the behaviour. That is people will behaviour after evaluated by the attitude towards the behaviour and judge the propriety by the subjective norm. It emphasises that people can control the behaviour consciously, for example, I can do exercises regularly if I really want to keep fit. heretofore, as it mentioned above, there are few people do exercise though they want to keep fit. come along more some kind-hearteds of behaviour are less under peoples conscious control. For example, people will stockpile under the automatically activated attitudes without thinking rationally to choose the best reason for action. The repeated behaviour much(prenominal) as smoking as a habit may become divorced from attitude. This kind of automatically activated attitude like habits occurs frequently in daily. So people may only think rationally when they faced new or difficult situations. In addition, a behaviour that performed successfully not only depends on the behavioural intention, but also some other variables, such as opportunities and technologiesPeach, . Jimmieson and White, 2005 In order to describe the link between attitudes and behaviour more accurately, the p lanned behaviour theory (TPB) was carried out by Ajzen at 1989 as the extension of the original theory. Perceived behavioural control is the improvement in the TPB which means the persons belief about how easy or difficult to perform an act. To make such a decision, people need to combine the past experience with the present obstacles. The accuracy of the prediction of behaviour was improved in the study that Beck and Ajzen (1991) have done about the students dishonest behaviour since the perceived behavioural control has been measured (Hogg and Vaughan, 1995). So in the TRA and TPB, both the external variables such as opportunities, resources and the peoples internal variables such as normative beliefs and abilities are taken into consideration. This combination of external and internal makes TPB becomes the key theory dealing with the relationship between attitudes and behaviour. In these two theories, the action could be predicted if the persons attitude and social norm are favor able, as well as the level of perceived behavioural control is high.In this essay, the relationship between attitudes and behaviour has been analysed. The inconsistency between attitudes and behaviour was described followed by the reasons why this could happen in the LaPieres experiment. The self-report measurement which is widely used to measure attitudes has been evaluated as it would cause some inaccuracy in the prediction of future actions. The reasoned action theory (TRA) and planned behaviour theory (TPB) have been introduced in details as the main theories dealing with the link between attitudes and behaviour. To conclude, attitudes do predict behaviour once the variables in the measurement and the TPB are well-controlled. The scope of this paper was limited by the lack of introducing other variables influence the correspondence between attitudes and behaviour. However the first step is to realizse that attitude can predict behaviour no matter storge or weak. course creditFis ke S T. Social Being a Core Motive Approach to Social psychology. John Wiley Sons, Int, 2004. 244249Hogg, Michael A. and Vaughan, whole meal flour M. (2005). Social Psychology. Essex Pearson Education Limited. 150171Peach M, Jimmieson N L, And White K M. Beliefs underlying employee readiness to pay a building relocation a theory of planned behavior perspective. Organization Development Journal, 2005, 23(3), 923Sherman S J, Rose J S and Koch K, et al. Implicit and explicit attitudes toward cigarette smoking The effectuate of context and motivation. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 2003, 22(1), 1340

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