10 Attitude Formation and Change
Attitude Formation and Change
A fundamental tenet of consumer behaviour, and I believe of behaviour formation generally, is a model of the drivers of attitude formation. Any form of change involves understanding, shaping and directing attitudes and beliefs, and driving intent.
One model that can help us to make sense of it all and also develop strategies for change, rebuttal, and/or reinforcement is the three-component model of attitude formation. Take a look at this model in the image below. It shows the set of relationships that work together in various ways to motivate people to take action.
Each of the components is a specific factor or driver in the outcome. These are a rational appeal, an emotional appeal, and an intention or call to action. These can be put together in a variety of combinations to motivate the individual or team to do something.
You will also notice that there is an additional piece highlighting the importance of the beliefs that the individual or team might have towards the behaviour that is being proposed or promoted.
This model is suggesting to us that in order to make changes, to get things done, and to move ahead, we need a combination of reason or logic, a compelling emotional connection to the action, the intention to act, and finally the knowledge that it fits within the overall purpose and boundaries of the organisation.
A little background:
Reasoning and critical thinking are only part of the art of change, influence and persuasion. These arts, to be useful, need purpose and an outcome. In one sense this is about ‘winning hearts and minds’. The purpose of winning hearts and minds is to inspire and motivate people to commit to something and to do something.
The psychological mechanism by which we influence others is complex. Philosophers, psychologists, cognitive specialists and many others have explored this endlessly.
In a context where individuals and teams have choice the three-component model of attitude formation holds well. The overall idea is that some combination of thinking or logic, feeling or emotion, and intent to do something, work in combination to create the likelihood of the formation of attitudes or beliefs about or towards something, someone or an action. This intent has a high correlation with action.
We generally accept that one of the more direct processes is that a speaker, leader or other influencer first presents facts and statements to support the idea. Often there is the additional of an emotional aspect to the statements. Next, the influencer infers a course of action and would often be specific about action.
Not all communications use all components of the model. When you look closely at many situations and contexts, you see the respective overlaps which suggest that there can be multiple combinations depending on the reasoning and critical thinking behind the situation.
As well as a possible direct link between any of the four variables: cognition, affect, conation and attitude toward the behaviour; there can be a cognition- affect appeal, an affect-conation appeal, a cognition-conation appeal, and an cognition-affect-conation appeal. Of course, any combination of these with Attitude toward behaviour is possible.
However, there tends to be a rule of thumb in many situations, especially politics, stating simply that ‘emotions drive behaviour’!3 James Clear suggests that every decision is an emotional decision at some level. This implies that there is an element of emotion lurking somewhere even in places where reasoning, logic and critical thinking abound! He backs his claim up with a further claim that we can only be rational and logical after we have been emotional.
We are sure that now you are more aware of this attitude-action model you will be on the lookout for examples and how it works.
This short video may wrap this up for you.
The next stages involve another whole set of variables, many very messy ones, which is a story for another day.
Ajzen, I., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2019). Reasoned action in the service of goal pursuit. Psychological review.
Clear, J. (2018). Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results. Penguin Random House. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/543993/atomic-habits-by-james-clear/
Glasman, L. R., & Albarracin, D. (2006, Sep). Forming attitudes that predict future behavior: a meta-analysis of the attitude-behavior relation. Psychol Bull, 132(5), 778-822. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.5.778
Solinger, O. N., van Olffen, W., & Roe, R. A. (2008, Jan). Beyond the three-component model of organizational commitment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 70-83. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.1.70
Van Dessel, P., Hughes, S., & De Houwer, J. (2019). How do actions influence attitudes? An inferential account of the impact of action performance on stimulus evaluation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 23(3), 267-284.