The term involvement has received numerous conceptualisations and operationalisations and several forms of involvement have been distinguished in the literature. The most prevalent types of involvement in social psychological research are: value-relevant involvement, a state emanating from individuals’ values and standards; outcome-relevant involvement, stemming from individuals’ desire to attain or avoid certain outcomes; and impression-relevant involvement, stemming from individuals’ desire to facilitate favourable social impressions. In addition, several other types of involvement, such as vested interest and content involvement, have also been distinguished. In consumer research, a major distinction has been drawn between product involvement, reflecting the perceived importance of and interest in a product category, and purchase involvement, referring to situations where the individual is concerned with a purchase decision. In addition, the term advertising message involvement has been used to denote interest evoked at the presentation of an advertising message.
According to social judgement theory, individuals highly involved with an issue tend to exhibit an extended latitude of rejection and to evaluate in a more negative manner counterattitudinal persuasive attempts. Their attitudes, therefore, are more resistant to counterpersuasion. The elaboration likelihood and the systematic-heuristic
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models of persuasion are concerned with the nature and extent of processing that occurs during exposure to a persuasive communication. Both models posit that careful consideration and elaboration of message arguments (central route to persuasion or systematic processing) is likely to occur when message recipients are involved with the message topic or issue. In contrast, recipients who are not sufficiently involved form their attitudes on the basis of simple decision rules and peripheral cues present in the message and, therefore, are relatively insensitive to the quality of message arguments.
Several studies, employing diverse conceptualisations and operationalisations of involvement, have investigated the moderating effects of the variable on the attitude- behaviour relationship. The review of empirical findings indicates that high involvement with an attitude object enhances attitudinal impact on behaviour.
Ch a p t e r 4
The role of involvement
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4.1
Introduction
Chapter 3 examined the consequences of involvement on attitude formation and on attitude-behaviour consistency. The reviewed empirical research indicated that high levels of involvement induce more extensive processing of information during attitude formation and are associated with more attitude consistent behaviour. Despite the extensive investigation of the effects of involvement on attitude formation and on attitude-behaviour consistency, research has not addressed the issue whether involvement plays a part in the actual processes through which attitudes exert their impact on behaviour. This is mainly because the investigation of attitude formation processes has proceeded independently from research on the attitude-behaviour relation and findings from these areas have not yet been integrated. This is particularly true for the more recent, third generation of research on attitude-behaviour consistency whose focus is on attitude-to-behaviour processes.
This chapter is concerned with the role of involvement in the attitude-behaviour sequence and discusses the potential effects of the variable within the most prominent attitude-to-behaviour models. In the first part of the chapter, Fazio’s (1986) model of automatic attitude activation is outlined and the potential role of involvement within this model is discussed. The second part concerns controlled attitude-to-behaviour processes. The theories of reasoned action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980) and planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1985, 1991) are presented here and suggestions regarding the role of involvement within these models are made. In the third part, Fazio’s (1990a) MODE model, which conceptually integrates automatic and controlled attitude-to-behaviour
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processes, is presented and the potential consequences of involvement within this model are discussed. In the last part of the chapter, the main hypotheses of the thesis are outlined.
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PARTI
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4.2
The model of automatic attitude activation
Fazio (1986) argues that social behaviour is not always rational and that attitudes can influence behaviour through automatic, unconscious processes. A process is characterised as automatic when it is unintentional, involuntary, effortless, autonomous and occurs outside of awareness (Bargh, 1989). Many daily social behaviours appear to be of this sort, in that individuals do not consciously reflect on their attitudes in order to behave. For instance, selecting a specific brand o f toothpaste from a supermarket shelf does not necessarily involve conscious and intentional consideration of one’s attitude towards this product. Instead, this attitude can be activated and guide behaviour in an automatic manner (e.g. by attracting one’s visual attention against competing products; see Roskos-Ewoldsen and Fazio, 1992).
According to the model of automatic attitude activation proposed by Fazio and his associates (Fazio, Chen, McDonel and Sherman, 1982; Fazio, Powell and Herr, 1983), detailed in Fazio (1986), any attitude is viewed as an association between an object and its evaluation stored in memory. Attitudes can guide behaviour in a spontaneous fashion by biasing the more or less positive or negative way an attitude object is perceived in the specific context it is encountered. These immediate perceptions of the attitude object, congruent as they are with the attitude, can prompt attitudinally consistent behaviour. According to the model, whether such differential perceptions occur depends on whether the attitude is retrieved from memory. Unless the attitude is activated, it cannot produce selective perception of the object in the
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immediate situation and, therefore, cannot in any sense guide subsequent behaviour (Fazio, 1990a).
In summary, the model (Figure 4.1) proposes the following steps: (1) Upon observation of the attitude object, one’s attitude might be accessed from memory. That is, the particular evaluative categories with which one has associated the object might become salient; (2) These evaluations, through a process of selective perception, may ‘colour’ one’s perception of the object in the immediate situation; (3) These immediate perceptions may then determine the definition of the event that is occurring; (4) The definition of the event, filtered as it is through the attitude, can influence the individual’s behavioural response in a manner congruent with the attitude.
Immediate
Attitude Selective perceptioits of — ..Definition — Behaviour activation perception the attitude object event
Norms — Definition of the situation
Figure 4.1. Schematic diagram of the automatic attitude-to-behaviour model (adapted from Fazio, 1986)
The model asserts that this automatic influence of attitudes is more evident in situations where social stimuli are ambiguous. For example, when an individual has a negative attitude towards a target person, he/she is likely to interpret any ambiguous comments or behaviours of that person in a negative manner (see Darley and Fazio,
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1980). These negative interpretations are likely to lead to a negative, hostile response from the part of the individual. The end result, thus, is behaviour consistent with the attitude that initiated the entire process even though this attitude was not deliberately used as a ‘guide’ (see Zanna and Fazio, 1982).
The model involves an additional component, that of norms, that can also contribute to the definition of the event that is occurring. The individuals’ knowledge regarding what behaviours are or are not normatively appropriate in any given situation may sometimes exert greater impact on the definition of the event than their own attitudes. For example, regardless of individuals’ personal views, their knowledge regarding the preferences of their friends, may influence strongly a decision to purchase and serve a particular wine at a dinner party. Thus, normative information regarding appropriate behaviour in a given situation may affect one’s definition o f the situation and hence definition of the event and, therefore, guide behaviour in ways not necessarily consistent with one’s attitude.
Irrespective of normative influence, behaviour will not be consistent with attitudes unless the attitude-to-behaviour process postulated by the model is initiated. That is, the attitude must be activated from memory in order to guide the definition of the event and thereby to influence behaviour. According to the model, the likelihood that the attitude will be activated upon mere observation of the attitude object, without any cognitive effort by the individual, depends on the strength o f the object-evaluation association in memory. In other words, only if the attitude object and its corresponding evaluation are strongly associated, it is likely that the attitude will be activated spontaneously upon encountering the attitude object.
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The strength of this association is assumed to be reflected in the ease or speed with which the attitude is retrieved from memory, in other words, the chronic
accessibility of the attitude (Fazio, 1986). It has been demonstrated that repeated attitude activation, which should have the consequence of strengthening the object- evaluation association, enhances the accessibility of an attitude. Subjects who had been induced to express their attitudes repeatedly were capable of responding faster to direct inquiries about their attitudes (Fazio et a i, 1982, experiment 3 and 4; Powell and Fazio, 1984).