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While this literature review mainly focuses on behaviour, it is important to consider the literature on attitudes before moving on to discuss the relationship between attitude and behaviour. Attitudes are hypothetical constructs attached to an individual’s orientation towards or, evaluation of, an ‘attitude object’ (i.e., thing, idea, person, group, action, self, etc). Typically, the literature understands attitudes based on the ABC model, comprising of three components; cognition (knowledge and beliefs), affect (emotional response) and behaviour (past and current behavioural response). Attitudes form as a result of direct experience with the object or through second-hand (mediated) information about it, the former tending to result in stronger and more consistent attitudes than the latter (Fazio and Zanna, 1981; Kraus, 1995; Glasman and Albarracin, 2006). Attitudes can be said to have an evaluative aspect and a particular intensity and direction; that is, people may hold a strong or weak opinion, which may be positive or negative (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993). It is also possible to be ambivalent about an attitudinal object, and thus hold both positive and negative attitudes. Attitude strength may be determined by an array of factors, such as involvement, ambivalence, certainty, confidence, importance, emotional intensity and underlying values (e.g. Stern et al., 1993; Maio et al., 2001; Verplanken and Holland, 2002).

Within an individual’s attitudes, there are differences or even contradictions between ‘explicit attitudes’ (attitudes that individuals are aware of and believe they have) and ‘implicit attitudes’ (attitudes that individuals may not be aware of or misjudge due to not recalling or inaccurately recalling previous experience which may mediate attitude) (Greenwald and Banaji, 1995). Attitude measurement tends to operate by direct extraction of communication of support or opposition (e.g. via a questionnaire), but may also be inferred from more subtle reactions to the attitudinal object (Smith and Mackie, 2007). Importantly, there may be a difference (or even contradiction) between communicated attitudes (explicit attitudes) and more subtle reactions (implicit attitudes), because of particular biases in the way people report their views, such as social desirability (i.e. saying what they think they should say or is the ‘right answer’ (Spence, 2005)) .Implicit attitudes can often explain more variance in behaviour than explicit attitudes, which suggests that behaviour is frequently driven by unconscious processes, rather than deliberation (Maio et al., 2007), see section 3.2.4, on Habit for further discussion.

Attitudes (unlike personality traits) are known to be dynamic, influenced by a range of factors, often ambivalent or uncertain, and frequently not predictive of behaviour. Wicker’s (1969) review of the available data on attitude-behaviour consistency indicated that the attitude concept’s explanatory power was limited, with up to 10% of overt behavioural variance, accounted for by attitudinal data, and concluded that:

"it is considerably more likely that attitudes will be unrelated or only slightly related to overt behaviours than attitudes will be closely related to actions" (p. 65)

Wicker’s (1969) influential review along with others (e.g. Deutscher, 1973) led to considerable scepticism of the attitude-behaviour relationship, to the degree where some suggested that it may be appropriate to discard the attitude concept (Wicker, 1971). However, several studies have indicated a substantial relation between attitudes and behaviour, in the context of organ transplants (Goodmonson and Glaudin, 1971), voting (Kelley and Mirer, 1974), and in an energy use study, the necessity of air-conditioning in maintaining home-owners health and comfort (Seligman et al., 1979). Findings such as these led to a more positive outlook on the usefulness of attitudes in predicting behaviour (Schuman and Johnson, 1976; Zanna and Fazio, 1982).

Ultimately it can be said that there is ‘sometimes’ a relationship between attitudes and behaviours, according to Fazio and Roskos-Ewoldsen (2005). Numerous studies suggest that attitudes do not influence behaviour (see Wicker’s, 1969, and; Deutscher’s, 1973 reviews), but sometimes attitudes can, and do predict behaviour.

Nevertheless, more recently, the validity, or indeed existence of attitudes has been questioned by Schwarz (2007) who points out that:

“Attitudes are hypothetical constructs that psychologists invented to explain phenomena of interest…Like all hypothetical constructs in science, attitudes derive their right to life from their explanatory power and live at the mercy of Ockham’s razor” (p. 638)

Other related conceptual analyses have suggested it is more accurate to think of attitudes as evaluative judgements formed when needed rather than long-term dispositions (Lord and Lepper, 1999; Smith and DecCoster, 2000). Such empirical and theoretical challenges have not impacted on popular theory which considers attitudes as:

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“...a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour”

(Eagly and Chaiken, 1993, p. 1)

Schwarz (2007) argues that this popular conceptualisation, which still exists in more recent texts (see Eagly and Chaiken, 2007), derives it’s intuitive appeal because it is compatible with humans’ tendency to explain others’ behaviour in terms of their dispositions. Schwarz (2007) notes the irony that this tendency is referred to as ‘fundamental attribution error’ (where dispositional based-explanations are overvalued, as explanations for the observed behaviours (Ross, 1977)), when exhibited by laypersons –but the same explanatory structure is endorsed as a crucial concept to the field, when the disposition is labelled ‘attitude’.

It is however important to acknowledge that attitudes have certain instrumental and symbolic functions for individuals, such as helping organise knowledge, inform decisions, express identity and seek connections with others (Maio and Olson, 2000). Furthermore, the concept of attitudes is helpful in understanding how individuals interpret and respond differently to the same information. Pre-existing beliefs and views (i.e. attitudes) have been shown to bias perceptions and guide behaviour: people are more attentive to, and accepting of, attitude-consistent information and tend to ignore or reject dissonant information (Nickerson, 1998). This characteristic of attitudes highlights the incomparable nature of individuals and the diverse effects of communication.