Attitude toward abortion and attitude-relevant overt behavior

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Behavioral Science

Background:

• The relationship between attitudes and overt behaviors is a core concept in social psychology.
• Previous research has often found weak correlations between expressed attitudes and actual behaviors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between attitudes toward abortion and overt behaviors.
• To determine if strong attitudes predict behavioral choices and actions.

Main Methods:

• Two studies were conducted with undergraduate students assessing attitudes toward abortion via questionnaire.
• Participants later engaged in a task involving transcribing pro- or anti-abortion scripts, with varying degrees of choice and assigned conditions.
• Behavioral measures included script choice, recording name, authorizing tape use, and self-estimated persuasiveness.

Main Results:

• A strong attitude-behavior correlation (phi = .60) was observed when participants could choose which script to transcribe.
• In a condition with assigned scripts, attitude-congruency significantly predicted recording one's name (phi = .56), authorizing tape use (phi = .44), and self-estimated persuasiveness (phi = .36).
• Some intuitively relevant behaviors did not show significant association with attitude-congruency.

Conclusions:

• Attitudes toward abortion demonstrated a robust predictive relationship with overt behaviors in experimental settings.
• The findings suggest that under certain conditions, attitudes can strongly influence actions, challenging previous notions of a weak attitude-behavior link.
• The study highlights the importance of considering situational factors and behavioral measures when examining attitude-behavior consistency.