PSYB10H3 Chapter 7: Chapter 7
Document Summary
Johnson"s strategy highlights some important questions about the consistency between attitudes and behavior, especially whether the consistency between the two is the result of attitudes influencing behavior or behavior influencing attitudes. Those with strong pro environmental attitudes are more likely to vote green or democratic than republican. But everyone knows that people rationalize, so behavior influences attitudes as well. Environmentally minded individuals who drive gas- guzzling cars tend to convince themselves that automobile exhaust contributes very little to air pollution or global warming or that they don"t drive that much anyway. Research shows that attitudes are often surprisingly poor predictors of behavior, but it also specifies the circumstances in which they predict behavior rather well. Three components of attitudes attitude an evaluation of an object along a positive-negative dimension. At their core, then, attitudes involve affect (or emotion) how much someone likes or dislikes an object, be it a politician, a landscape, an athletic shoe, a dessert, or himself.
