Effects of introspection on attitude-behavior consistency: Analyzing reasons versus focusing on feelings

Abstract

One type of thought, focusing on attitudes, has been found to increase attitude-behavior consistency, while another, analyzing reasons for feelings, has been found to reduce consistency. It is not clear whether these varying results were due to the different types of introspection performed or to other differences between the studies, such as the initial accessibility of the attitude. We assessed the effects of both kinds of introspection in two experiments in which attitude accessibility was held constant. Study 1 was a field experiment where people waiting in line at a college dining hall either analyzed the reasons for their attitudes toward different types of beverages, focused on their attitudes, or received no instructions to introspect in any way. The attitude measure was reported liking for the beverages, while the behavioral measure was the amount of each beverage subjects drank with their dinners. Study 2 included the same analyze, focus, and control conditions in a laboratory study where the attitude object was a set of five puzzles. The attitude measure was reported interest in the puzzles, while the behavioral measure was the proportion of puzzles subjects played with in a free-play period. In both studies analyzing reasons reduced attitude-behavior consistency relative to the correlations in the focusing and control conditions.