TOWARD A RECONCEPTUALIZATION OF ATTITUDE-BEHAVIOR CONSISTENCY

The attitude-behavior relationship has had a prominent place in social and behavioral science for more than a half-century. The initial expectations of strong asymmetrical causality have not been borne out, and contemporary research suggests that attitude-behavior consistency is a highly complex phenomenon. This paper undertakes a conceptual analysis based on the simplest longitudinal case in order to make explicit some overlooked features of the attitude-behavior relationship. Empirical examples are presented, and problems for further work are proposed.