Affective-cognitive Consistency Research Articles

How Affectively-Based and Cognitively-Based Attitudes Drive Intergroup Behaviours: The Moderating Role of Affective-Cognitive Consistency

The moderating role of affective-cognitive consistency in the effects of affectively-based and cognitively-based attitudes on consummatory and instrumental behaviors was explored using two experimental studies in the intergroup context. Study 1 revealed that affectively-based attitudes were better predictors than cognitively-based attitudes regardless of affective-cognitive consistency for consummatory behaviors (e.g., undergraduates’ supportive behaviors toward government officials). Study 2, which investigated task groups’ supportive behaviors toward an immediate supervisory group, found that for these instrumental behaviors cognitively-based attitudes were better predictors than affectively-based attitudes only when affective-cognitive consistency was high. The present research also examined the mechanism by which affective-cognitive consistency moderates the relative roles of affectively-based and cognitively-based attitudes in attitude-behavior consistency. Results indicated that attitude-behavior consistency is eroded primarily because of the weaker relationship of affective or cognitive components to behaviors than to general attitudes. The reciprocal implications of research on attitudes and work on intergroup relations are considered.

Feelings Toward the Poor and Beliefs About the Causes of Poverty: The Role of Affective-Cognitive Consistency in Help-Giving

ABSTRACT This study examined how affective-cognitive consistency moderates the strength of the relationship between attitudes toward the poor and help-giving intentions. Participant's (N = 198) overall attitudes toward the poor and the consistency of their affect (feelings toward the poor) and cognition (beliefs about the causes of poverty) were measured. Affective-cognitive consistency moderated the degree to which attitudes predicted welfare allocations and volunteering to help the poor, such that attitudes significantly predicted these decisions among participants whose feelings toward the poor were consistent with their beliefs about the causes of poverty.

The Strength of Job Attitudes: A Multi-Study Test

Integrating theory in the social psychology literature with the job attitudes literature, we position job attitude strength as a missing yet crucial moderator in many of the job attitude questions that have been a central focus of OB researchers and practitioners. We articulate the theoretical relevance of job attitude strength and provide meaningful direction to job attitude researchers interested in incorporating this theoretical perspective into their work by identifying and empirically testing multiple relevant operationalizations of job attitude strength (i.e., attitude certainty, attitude extremity, latitude of rejection, and affective-cognitive consistency). In introducing and empirically testing an important new moderator of job attitude-behavior relationships, we shed some light on the historically elusive job satisfaction-performance relationship. We test our hypotheses regarding (a) the convergent validity of multiple strength operationalizations and (b) their ability to moderate job satisfaction-outcome relationships across six distinct samples, utilizing multiple operationalizations of both attitude strength and job satisfaction and examining multiple dependent variables of interest to job attitude researchers and organizational scholars in general (e.g., job performance, withdrawal). Results are supportive of our hypotheses, indicating that job attitude strength clearly moderates the relationships between job satisfaction and performance, withdrawal, and organizational commitment, but that not all attitude strength dimensions are created equal in this regard.

The effects of structural consistency on attitude-intention and attitude-behavior relationships

The effects of structural consistency including affective-cognitive consistency (ACC) and attitude based on attitude-intention consistency (AIC) and attitude-behavior consistency (ABC) were explored. Results revealed the effect of ACC on attitude-intention consistency and the interaction of ACC and attitude based on attitude-behavior consistency. Specifically, an attitude with high ACC led to stronger intention. Regarding the attitude-behavior relation, cognitive-focus attitude with high ACC was a more reliable predictor of behavior, whereas affective-focus attitude predicted behavior equally in high and low ACC conditions.

Moderation of cognition-intention and cognition-behaviour relations: a meta-analysis of properties of variables from the theory of planned behaviour.

Meta-analysis was used to quantify the moderating effects of seven properties of cognitions-accessibility, temporal stability, direct experience, involvement, certainty, ambivalence and affective-cognitive consistency-on cognition-intention and cognition-behaviour relations. Literature searches revealed 44 studies that could be included in the review. Findings showed that all of the properties, except involvement, moderated attitude-behaviour consistency. Similarly, all relevant moderators improved the consistency between intentions and behaviour. Temporal stability moderated PBC-behaviour relations, certainty moderated subjective norm-intention relations, and ambivalence, certainty, and involvement all moderated attitude-intention relations. Overall, temporal stability appeared to be the strongest moderator of cognition-behaviour relations.

Reexamining the Job Satisfaction-Performance Relationship: The Complexity of Attitudes.

The present article argues that organizational researchers tend to adopt an overly simplistic conceptualization and operationalization of job satisfaction (and job attitudes in general). Specifically, past research has failed to examine the affective-cognitive consistency (ACC) of job attitudes and the implications this has for the strength of the attitude and its relationship with behavior (e.g., job performance). Results from Study 1 suggest ACC is a significant moderator of the job satisfaction-job performance relationship, with those employees higher in ACC showing a significantly larger correlation between job satisfaction and performance than those lower in ACC. Study 2 replicated these findings. Implications for the study of job attitudes, limitations of the current studies, and multiple avenues for future research are discussed.

THE EFFECTS OF PRIOR EXPERIENCE AND THOUGHT ON THE ATTITUDE-BEHAVIOR RELATION

Millar and Tesser (l986, 1992) have proposed that thought may make either the affective or cognitive component of the attitude more salient and, thus, more important in the formation of a general evaluation. They further proposed that behaviors may either be cognitively or affectively driven and that when there is a match between the component emphasized by thought and the component driving behavior, the attitude behavior relation will increase. Alternatively, a mismatch will decrease the attitude-behavior relation. If this model is correct then we would expect the match and mismatch effects only when attitudes are low in affective-cognitive consistency. The current study examined the effects of affective-cognitive consistency on this model. The degree of affective-cognitive consistency was manipulated by varying the degree of exposure to analytic puzzles. As expected, the match and mismatch effects were obtained with low affective-cognitive consistency only.

Attitudes and the Prediction of Behavior: A Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Literature

The relationship between attitudes and behavior has been the topic of considerable debate. This article reports a meta-analysis of 88 attitude-behavior studies that reveals that attitudes significantly and substantially predict future behavior (mean r = .38; combined p <<. 000000000001). Relatively large and significant moderating effects were found for the attitudinal variables of attitude certainty, stability, accessibility, affective-cognitive consistency, and direct experience (mean q = .39). A smaller but significant moderating effect was found for self-monitoring (mean q = .29). Methodological factors associated with high attitude-behavior correlations included self-report measures of behavior (q =. 22), the use of nonstudents as subjects (q =. 17), and corresponding levels of specificity in the attitude and behavior measures (mean q = .47). The practical magnitude of attitude-behavior correlations is considered, as are the future directions of attitude-behavior research.

Attitude strength: One construct or many related constructs?

A variety of attributes differentiate attitudes that are stable and conseguential from those that are not, including extremity, certainty, importance, knowledge, intensity, interest, direct experience, accessibility, latitudes of rejection and noncommitment, and affective-cognitive consistency. Although these dimensions are clearly conceptually and operationally distinct from one another, researchers have often assumed that some are interchangeable, or that two or more reflect common higher-order constructs. Three studies using multitrait-multimethod confirmatory factor analysis assessed the relations among these dimensions. Although some of these dimensions are strongly related, most are not, and a multifactor model seems necessary to account for their intercorrelations

The effects of affective-cognitive consistency and thought on the attitude-behavior relation

The present study is concerned with the moderating role of affective-cognitive consistency in the relationship between attitudes and behavior. Based on earlier research ( Millar & Tesser, 1986), attitudes were conceptualized as containing an affective and a cognitive component and subsequent behaviors as being driven by one of these components. It was hypothesized that if the affective and cognitive components are in good evaluative agreement (high affective-cognitive consistency), then thought emphasizing either component would lead to a similar general evaluation that should relate to all behavior in a similar manner. However, if the affective and cognitive components are not in agreement (low affective-cognitive consistency) then thought emphasizing different components would lead to different general evaluations that relate deferentially to subsequent behavior. To test this hypothesis, the affective-cognitive consistency of attiudes about analytic puzzles was measured. The participants were either affectively or cognitively focused prior to an evaluation and then played with the puzzles under instrumental and consumatory conditions. As predicted, thought prior to the evaluation only affected the attitude-behavior relation when attitudes were low in affective-cognitive consistency.

Affective-cognitive consistency and thought-induced attitude polarization.

Subjects whose preexperimental attitudes toward either capital punishment or censorship were high or low in affective-cognitive consistency were identified. These four groups thought about their attitudes by writing two essays, one on the topic for which consistency had been assessed (relevant essay) and one on the unassessed topic (distractor essay). In accord with the hypothesis that thought-induced attitude polarization requires the presence of a well-developed knowledge structure, high-consistency subjects evidenced greater polarization than low-consistency subjects only on the relevant topic after writing the relevant essay. Content analyses of subjects' relevant essays yielded additional data confirming Tesser's ideas regarding mediation: High (vs. low) consistency subjects expressed a greater proportion of cognitions that were evaluatively consistent with their prior affect toward the attitude object and a smaller proportion of evaluatively inconsistent and neutral cognitions. Moreover, although high-and low-consistency subjects did not differ in the amount of attitudinally relevant information they possessed or their awareness of inconsistent cognitions, their method of dealing with discrepant information diverged: High-consistency subjects evidenced a greater tendency to assimilate discrepant information by generating refutational thoughts that discredited or minimized the importance of inconsistent information.

Affective-cognitive consistency and thought-induced attitude polarization.

Affective-cognitive consistency and thought-induced attitude polarization.

Affective-cognitive consistency and the effect of salient behavioral information on the self-perception of attitudes.

Affective-cognitive consistency and the effect of salient behavioral information on the self-perception of attitudes.

Affective-cognitive consistency and the effect of salient behavioral information on the self-perception of attitudes.

Affective-cognitive consistency and the effect of salient behavioral information on the self-perception of attitudes.

Affective-Cognitive Consistency and Self-Conceptual Structure

This study evaluated a model of self-conceptual organization. The model, an adaptation of the affective-cognitive theory of social attitudes, predicted the maintenance of consistency in the perceived organization or structure of self-conceptual items. Undergraduate subjects ( N = 74) completed a questionnaire assessing self-conceptual structure and then returned one week later to complete a similar instrument. Control subjects were simply retested; subjects in four experimental groups completed the posttest following adoption of roles designed to create different types of imbalance in self-conceptual organization. Pretest results indicated a moderately consistent structuring of self-conceptual items. In response to the various types of role-induced imbalance, subjects tended to reestablish consistency through a significant reorganization of self-conceptions.

A Graphic Approach to Rosenberg's Affective-Cognitive Consistency Theory

The Abelson-Rosenberg consistency theory has failed to live up to its potential in providing adequate explanation andfostering creative research. Specifically, the theory fails to fully operationalize "least effort" and rarely presents falsifiable hypotheses. This paper attempts to adapt consistency theory to a geometric framework correcting the above shortcomings and several others so that consistency can be fruitfully applied in psychology, political science, and other social sciences. Two examples are included from political science to illustrate the geometric approach.

Religion and the "Right to Life": Correlates of Opposition to Abortion

The small amount of literature on the relationship between religion and attitudes on abortion does not give us a clear indication of the importance of religion in determining attitudes on abortion. But literature on political attitudes indicates that opposition to easy abortion is associated with political conservatism. There is another body of literature indicating that religious and political conservatism/liberalism are highly correlated. The hypothesis inferred from this is that the membership of the more conservative Protestant churches (and probably the Catholic Church) would tend to oppose easy abortion, while the membership of the more liberal churches wouldfavor easy abortion. An aspect of Rosenberg and Abelson's Affective-Cognitive Consistency Theory provides theoretical backing for this hypothesis. Using a nationwide sample of National Opinion Research Center data, we found that religious

Affective-cognitive consistency, attitudes, conformity, and behavior.

Affective-cognitive consistency, attitudes, conformity, and behavior.