Relative Influences of Affect and Cognition on Behavior: Are Feelings or Beliefs More Related to Blood Donation Intentions?

Abstract

Research ArticlesRelative Influences of Affect and Cognition on Behavior: Are Feelings or Beliefs More Related to Blood Donation Intentions?Sally D. Farley and Mark F. StassonSally D. Farley Virginia Commonwealth University and Albright College, Harrisburg, USA Search for more papers by this author and Mark F. Stasson Metropolitan State University, St. Paul, USA Search for more papers by this authorPublished OnlineSeptember 01, 2006https://doi.org/10.1027//1618-3169.50.1.55PDFView Full Text ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInReddit SectionsMoreAbstractThis study tested the relative predictive power of affect and cognition on global attitude and behavioral intention within the tripartite model of attitude structure. Participants (N = 264) completed questionnaires that included an item regarding blood donation experience, five semantic differential items, four behavioral intention items, and one global attitude item. Participants were randomly assigned to either an affective or cognitive instruction set for the semantic differential items. As predicted, semantic differentials were more highly correlated with both global attitude and behavioral intention when completed under the affective instructions than under the cognitive instructions. In addition, donors’ and non-donors’ attitudes on the semantic differential scales were distinguished from one another only when they were elicited under the affective instruction set. Results provide support for the tripartite model of attitude structure. Future research should examine the relative importance of affect and cognition in less emotion-laden domains.ReferencesAbelson, R. P., Kinder, D. R., Peters, M. D., Fiske, S. T.(1982). Affective and semantic components in political person perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 619– 630 First citation in articleCrossref, Google ScholarAjzen, I., Fishbein, M.(1980). 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structureblood donationPDF download