Attitudes and Behavior Essay ⋆ Sociology Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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The role of attitudes in guiding behavior is an enduring social psychological concern. Two explanatory paradigms have emerged. One approach is grounded in positivism and deductive theorizing. The other is inductive and phenomenological, emphasizing process and construction.

Gordon Allport in the mid-1930s (1935: ”Attitudes”), articulated the positivist approach, when he defined attitudes as mental states which direct one’s response, placing attitudes in a causal, directive role. This laid the groundwork for a deductive, scientific approach to the relationship between attitudes and behavior. Attitudes were intrapersonal, psychological tendencies expressed through favorable or unfavorable evaluation of objects.

This approach has dominated contemporary research. Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen in the Theory of Reasoned Action have become the most widely known exemplars of this approach. Their four-stage, recursive model posits that attitudes explain behavioral intentions, if it is not coerced and nothing else intervenes. The core assumption is consistency. Attitudes are conceptualized as generic, transsituational, psychological expressions that guide behavior across circumstances.

Attiudes, because they are mental constructs present a measurement problem. Attitude scaling techniques were developed to address this problem. Techniques developed by Likert, Thurstone, Guttman, and Osgood have become the backbone of attitudinal data collection strategies. The common core of all attitude measurement is asking questions out of context to reveal these internal sentiments.

Some researchers, such as Fishbein, discourage the measurement of behavior, opting instead for the measurement of behavioral intention. This allows surveys to be the primary measurement tool for both attitudes and behavioral intentions. Through questions, respondents are asked to reveal what they intend to do or what they have done. Although a causal relationship is hypothesized, designs allow for the simultaneous measurement of attitudes and behavior.

The phenomenological approach also emerged early, most notably in the works of Thomas and Znaniecki (1918: The Polish Peasant in Europe and America) and Faris (1928: ”Attitudes and behavior”). In this approach attitudes and behaviors are interpersonal, not intrapersonal, phenomena. Social context is central to understanding the ways in which attitudes and behavior come together. This approach assumes that attitudes and behavior and thus their relationship are complex and situational.

Blumer challenged the very idea of a bivariate, objective, intrapersonal conceptualization of these concepts. For him the key to understanding the relationship between mental conceptualizations and actions was the actor’s definition of the situation. Actors continually interpret and reinterpret the situations in which they find themselves, in order to create and coordinate their actions with others.

This line of thinking was extended by Deutscher and his collaborators (1973; 1993). By reviewing and critiquing the extant attitude-behavior work, they conclude that a situational approach, in which social actors construct behavior and give it meaning in social situations, is what is needed. They emphasize that ”it’s what’s in between attitude and behavior” that counts. Situations are open, indefinite, and subject to continuous interpretation, reinterpretation and modification by the social actors embedded in them. People imbue situations with meaning, then act on the basis of that meaning. Behavior is constructed in concert with others, not solely by individuals.

Attitudes are important for understanding both behavior and its change. Relevant studies appear in almost every field of sociology, including law, criminology, family, and substance use. Given the affective and motivational nature of attitude conceptualization, work in the sociology of emotions, motive, and language have relevance for understanding the complexity of this relationship and resolving some of these intellectual disputes in understanding the relationship between thoughts and actions.

Bibliography:

Deutscher, I. (1973) What We Say/What We Do: Sentiments and Acts. Scott Foresman, Glenview, IL.
Deutscher, I., Pestello, F. P., & Pestello, H. F. G. (1993) Sentiments and Acts. Aldine de Gruyter, New York.
Blumer, H. (1955) Attitudes and the social act. Social Problems 3: 59-65.
Likert, R. (1932) The method ofconstructing an attitude scale. Archives of Psychology 140: 44-53.