Abstract
Explicit attitude measures seem to be rather poor predictors of organ donation behaviour. This study examined whether implicit attitude measures acted as better predictors. Special attention was paid to the moderating role played by attitude strength in predicting deliberate donation behaviour. In this study (N = 78), explicit and implicit measures of attitudes towards organ donation, as well as behavioural commitment, were assessed. Implicit associations were measured by an Implicit Association Test; five constructs assessed self-reported—understood as reflected—attitude strength. The explicit attitude measure appeared to be the best single predictor of whether the participant ended up taking an organ donor card. More importantly, test results demonstrated the moderating role of attitude strength. In the case of low attitude strength, the likelihood of taking a donor card increased with an increasing positive implicit association. In contrast, increasing strength was associated with a weaker link between card taking and the implicit attitude measure. The results are discussed in light of the power of implicit associations to predict more deliberate behaviours.
Highlights
Over the past 20 years, a gap has been observed between positive attitudes toward organ donation and their lack of translation into behavioural commitment in terms of organ donor card signing, e.g. [1]
When considered simultaneously with an explicit attitude measure, the implicit measure had no significant impact on behaviour—the explicit remained the only significant predictor
Congruent with expectation, across three attitude strength indicators consistently the strength and the implicit measures interacted: When the attitude strength was weak, increasing positive implicit associations were related to an increased probability of taking a donor card
Summary
Over the past 20 years, a gap has been observed between positive attitudes toward organ donation and their lack of translation into behavioural commitment in terms of organ donor card signing, e.g. [1]. Over the past 20 years, a gap has been observed between positive attitudes toward organ donation and their lack of translation into behavioural commitment in terms of organ donor card signing, e.g. (2014) The Role of Attitude Strength in Predicting Organ Donation Behaviour by Implicit and Explicit Attitude Measures. Researchers investigating attitudes toward organ donation commonly rely on explicit, self-reported attitude measures, e.g. Two main limitations challenge the validity of self-reporting, cf [3]. Factors such as demand characteristics or self-presentation concerns may influence self-reporting. They afford introspection to indicate reliable attitude scores.
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