Attitude–Behavior Relations: A Meta-Analysis of Attitudinal Relevance and Topic

Abstract

The difficulty of finding a relationship between attitudes and behavior is one of the greatest controversies in recent social science research. The purpose of this study was to determine whether attitudinal relevance substantially affects the magnitude of the correlation between attitudes and behavior, and whether the effects are content free. Using meta-analysis, we integrated findings from 138 attitude-behavior correlations with a total sample size of 90, 908. The behaviors we studied ranged over 19 different categories and a variety of miscellaneous topics. Our results showed a strong overall attitude-behavior relationship (r = 79) when methodological artifacts were eliminated. As predicted, the higher the attitudinal relevance, the stronger the relationship between attitudes and behavior. This effect held true across diverse content domains. Implications for communication theory and practice are discussed.