Attitudes and the Prediction of Social Conduct

Abstract

Both theories and definitions of attitudes have been strongly influenced by the belief that the ultimate validating referent of an attitude is behaviour. Nevertheless, the yield from some 50 or more years of research which has sought to establish that a knowledge of an individual's verbally expressed attitudes would enable one to predict his conduct has been meagre. This paper attempts to clarify some of the conceptual issues involved in the prediction of action from psychological events, in particular those associated with the dispositional or latent process concept of attitudes. It is argued that the wrong sort of explanatory work has been demanded from the concept of attitude. In stable social settings, where some success has been achieved in establishing a degree of attitude-behaviour congruence, an equally accurate prediction could probably be made without reference to attitudes. In shifting social contexts, where repeatedly predictions from attitudes have failed to come off, an inquiry into attitudes is likely to be fruitful, not because there could be a simple deterministic relationship between attitudes and conduct, but because it could contribute to our understanding of the interaction between social change and individual choice.