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Maintenance and decay of past behavior influences: anchoring attitudes on beliefs following inconsistent actions
Dolores Albarracín1, Penny S McNatt
1Department of Psychology, University of Florida, FL 32611, USA. dalbarra@ufl.edu
Abstract:
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.
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