Reviving Campbell’s Paradigm for Attitude Research

Abstract

Because people often say one thing and do another, social psychologists have abandoned the idea of a simple or axiomatic connection between attitude and behavior. Nearly 50 years ago, however, Donald Campbell proposed that the root of the seeming inconsistency between attitude and behavior lies in disregard of behavioral costs. According to Campbell, attitude- behavior gaps are empirical chimeras. Verbal claims and other overt behaviors regarding an attitude object all arise from one "behavioral disposition." In this article, the authors present the constituents of and evidence for a paradigm for attitude research that describes individual behavior as a function of a person's attitude level and the costs of the specific behavior involved. In the authors' version of Campbell's paradigm, they propose a formal and thus axiomatic rather than causal relationship between an attitude and its corresponding performances. The authors draw implications of their proposal for mainstream attitude theory, empirical research, and applications concerning attitudes.

Engaging in Pro-Environment Travel Behaviour Research from a Psycho-Social Perspective: A Review of Behavioural Variables and Theories

“…In an article recalling a historic debate, Kaiser, Byrka and Hartig [123] stated that "the attitude-behaviour gaps are empirical chimeras" (p. 351). They give a paradigmatic answer to many of the problems cited above using Campbell's definition of "behavioural disposition" [124].…”

A functional-cognitive framework for attitude research

“…For example, a person's evaluative response on a rating scale is often treated as a proxy of this person's attitude toward a given object and his or her object-related actions in real-life situations as are treated as behavioral instances that may or may not be influenced by the attitude (Ajzen & Fishbein, 2005). However, there is no a priori reason that justifies the treatment of one evaluative response as a superior measure of attitudes (see Kaiser, Byrka, & Hartig, 2010). After all, it is also possible that object-related actions in real-life situations represent more reliable reflections of attitudes than responses on evaluative rating scales.…”

“…Returning to the example of ecologically friendly products, verbal endorsements might fail to predict purchase behavior if the context includes cues related to ecologically friendly behavior while giving the verbal endorsement, but such cues might be absent when people make a purchasing decision (e.g., Schuldt, Konrath, & Schwarz, 2011). Hence, progress in predicting particular instances of evaluation (e.g., purchasing behavior) on the basis of other instances of evaluation (e.g., evaluative ratings) can be achieved by carefully analyzing the elements in the environment that influence the two kinds of evaluative responses (see Kaiser et al, 2010). We contend, therefore, that important advances may be made by clearly distinguishing the functional and cognitive levels and by engaging in sophisticated functional analyses of the different instances of evaluation (i.e., analyses of what it is in the environment that influences the evaluative responses).…”

Linking Consumer Opinions with Reservation Prices in an Agent-Based Model of Innovation Diffusion

“…In order to capture the adoption difficulty, the probability of a negative product evaluation is described by parameter f . The way we perceive difficulty is similar to [16].…”

“…Similarly the external field, h, related usually with advertisement [1,9] is a macroscopic variable, to some extent controllable by the company introducing the innovation. Also the difficulty, f , has been postulated as an objective, person-independent quantity [16], although it might be questionable and not very intuitive. However, definitely the independence parameter, p, and the size of the influence group, q, are microscopic variables.…”