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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
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Maintenance and Decay of Past Behavior Influences: Anchoring Attitudes on Beliefs Following Inconsistent Actions

Dolores Albarracín

University of Florida, dalbarra{at}ufl.edu

Penny S. McNatt

University of Florida

Three studies investigated the influence of past behavior on the stability of the attitudes it elicits. In Experiment 1, the effect of a bogus behavior feedback was long lasting when people engaged in biased scanning, presumably because this process elicits behavior-consistent beliefs. In contrast, the effect of the feedback decayed when participants were forced to consider whether the behavior might have undesirable outcomes. A second experiment using a different behavioral paradigm and a field study further supported the interpretation that individuals resolve conflict between a past behavior and subsequent beliefs about it by aligning attitudes with beliefs instead of behavior.

Key Words: past behavior • behavior outcomes • attitude toward the behavior

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 31, No. 6, 719-733 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167204272180
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?