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Reviving Campbell's Paradigm for Attitude Research
Florian G. Kaiser, Katarzyna Byrka and Terry Hartig
Pers Soc Psychol Rev 2010 14: 351 originally published online 30 April 2010
DOI: 10.1177/1088868310366452
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Reviving Campbell’s Paradigm for
Attitude Research
Personality and Social Psychology Review
14(4) 351­–367
© 2010 by the Society for Personality
and Social Psychology, Inc.
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DOI: 10.1177/1088868310366452
http://pspr.sagepub.com
Florian G. Kaiser1,2, Katarzyna Byrka2, and Terry Hartig3
Abstract
Because people often say one thing and do another, social psychologists have abandoned the idea of a simple or axiomatic
connection between attitude and behavior. Nearly 50 years ago, however, Donald Campbell proposed that the root of the
seeming inconsistency between attitude and behavior lies in disregard of behavioral costs. According to Campbell, attitude–
behavior gaps are empirical chimeras. Verbal claims and other overt behaviors regarding an attitude object all arise from
one “behavioral disposition.” In this article, the authors present the constituents of and evidence for a paradigm for attitude
research that describes individual behavior as a function of a person’s attitude level and the costs of the specific behavior
involved. In the authors’ version of Campbell’s paradigm, they propose a formal and thus axiomatic rather than causal
relationship between an attitude and its corresponding performances. The authors draw implications of their proposal for
mainstream attitude theory, empirical research, and applications concerning attitudes.
Keywords
attitudes, attitude measurement, environmental attitudes, conservation (ecological behavior), attitude–behavior relationship
It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture.
It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Prompted by recurrent findings of people saying one thing
and doing another (e.g., DeFleur & Westie, 1958; LaPiere,
1934; Rokeach & Mezei, 1966; Wicker, 1969), many contemporary social psychologists now conceptualize attitude
as a disposition tangible in evaluative responses (Eagly &
Chaiken, 1993) or in the strength of the association between
an evaluation and an object (Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, &
Kardes, 2008). Because of the apparent inconsistency between
attitudes and behavior, social psychologists have also ceased
to believe in either a tight and simple or an axiomatic connection between a general attitude and a specific behavior.1
Rather, they regard this connection as error prone, complex,
and causal (Ajzen & Fishbein, 2005). As a consequence, attitude research has progressively confined itself to investigating cognitive processes (e.g., Deutsch & Strack, 2004; Fazio
& Towles-Schwen, 1999; Schwarz, 2000) and novel factors
(e.g., perceived behavioral control: Ajzen, 1991; implementation intention: Gollwitzer, 1999; attitude strength: Krosnick
& Petty, 1995; habits: Ouellette & Wood, 1998) behind specific behaviors and to exploring moderators of the attitude–
behavior link (e.g., Fazio & Zanna, 1978).
Almost 50 years ago, however, Donald T. Campbell (1963)
challenged the then already notorious attitude–behavior gap
as a methodological rather than a theoretical conundrum. In
opposition to the conventional wisdom of the time, Campbell argued that verbal claims and other behavioral responses
toward an attitude object arise from a single “acquired
behavioral disposition” (p. 97). According to Campbell, the
apparent inconsistency between verbal evaluations and other
behavioral performances originates from the disregard of the
relative difficulties or costs of the various performances
(cf. Dawes & Smith, 1985; Wicker, 1969). For example, verbally endorsing the importance of financially supporting an
environmental cause is probably easier for most people than
actually donating money to an environmental organization.
At the same time, correlation coefficients are known to be
sensitive to extreme differences in the difficulties of, for
example, the two behaviors involved (e.g., Ferguson, 1941).
Thus, extensive differences in difficulties can artificially
1
Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany
Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, the Netherlands
3
Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
2
Corresponding Author:
Florian G. Kaiser, Otto-von-Guericke University, Institute of Psychology I,
P.O. Box 4120, D-39016 Magdeburg, Germany
Email: florian.kaiser@ovgu.de
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352
Personality and Social Psychology Review 14(4)
make correlations between verbal and other behavioral
performances toward an attitude object appear trivially small.
In this article, we argue for a paradigm for attitude
research that is grounded in Campbell’s idea. This paradigm
treats individual behavior as a function of a person’s attitude
and of the difficulty of performing the given behavior. In
arguing for Campbell’s paradigm, we also adopt Greve’s
(2001) notion of an axiomatic and, thus, formal—not causal—
attitude–behavior relationship. In doing this, we recognize
that Greve has addressed a circularity problem that previously was thought to undermine Campbell’s position (e.g.,
Raden, 1977).
According to Greve, treating the attitude–behavior relationship as a causal one involves a conceptual misunderstanding. The problem becomes apparent when a behavior is
conceptualized as an evaluative behavioral response. Such
responses confound the behavioral effect with the indicator
for its presumed cause, the attitude. For example, when a
person circulates a petition opposing the construction of a
nuclear power plant,2 the observation of the behavior would
be circularly explained with reference to an opposition-tonuclear-power-plant attitude for which circulating a petition
is also taken as its indicator. It follows that, if the definitions
of attitude and behavior are mutually dependent, then establishing an empirical connection between an attitude and
behavior implied by that attitude involves making a circular
argument (cf. Campbell, 1963).
Treating the attitude and behavior concepts as formally rather
than causally related means treating them as inseparable aspects
of a unity; they are seen as two sides of one coin. A latent attitude is a disposition to act, which becomes a manifest reality in
its behavioral indicators. Vice versa, the attitude denotes
the subjective significance of the behaviors through which
it becomes a subjective reality, as health concerns may, for
instance, turn the use of a bicycle into a health performance.
Arguably, a causal—rather than a formal—understanding
of the attitude–behavior connection leads to unresolvable
debates about its direction. History shows that it has also led
to the problematic conceptual distinction between general
and specific attitudes (e.g., Ajzen & Fishbein, 2005). Unfortunately, a causal understanding governs many (if not all) of
the contemporary attitude models, such as the tripartite model
(Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960), self-perception (Bem, 1967),
cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957), planned behavior
(Ajzen, 1991), and the social cognitive theory of self-regulation
(Bandura, 1991).
In the following, we detail our own version of Campbell’s paradigm and then review evidence concerning four
essential constituents of the paradigm, including the formal
link between people’s attitudes and actions. The evidence
we review comes mainly from work in environmental psychology on ecological or proenvironmental behavior. We
go on to discuss implications of Campbell’s paradigm
for contemporary attitude theory, particularly for models
within what we call the “behavior-explanation paradigm,”
such as the theory of planned behavior (e.g., Ajzen, 1991).
We also note some implications for empirical research and
practical applications.
Campbell’s Paradigm
In this section, we first specify the way in which behaviors
are thought to be conceptually connected with a particular
attitude, namely, as behavioral means to attitudinal ends, and
how the end or object of the attitude can be determined solely
through reference to the behavioral means. Second, we elaborate on how we think the order of behaviors, or the behavioral structure that defines an attitude, comes into existence.
Third, we explain how the level of a person’s attitude is
determined solely through reference to behaviors and their
“difficulty order.”3 Fourth, we explain the difference between
Campbell’s original proposal and our variant of the Campbell paradigm. Finally, we formally specify, mathematically
and verbally, our version of Campbell’s paradigm.
Attitudes Distinguish Sets of Behaviors. From Campbell’s perspective, stating the importance of environmental preservation and engaging in paper recycling would both stand as
behavioral means by which people realize their latent proenvironmental dispositions. In other words, a behavioral disposition such as a person’s environmental attitude is anticipated
to be observable in evaluative statements and ecological
behaviors alike. When discrepancies between declarative
and other relevant behaviors occur, they are caused by the
differential difficulties of the behaviors.
If a person’s attitude is revealed behaviorally, it also
should be possible, vice versa, to identify a person’s attitude
by inspecting what he or she says and does. However, the
problem with behavior is its indeterminacy (Greve, 2001).
For example, consider a woman riding her bike along a city
street. Her bike riding looks the same regardless of her specific attitude. Whether or not she believes bike riding is a
perfect means to stay healthy, to save money, or to act ecologically, the behavior itself looks virtually identical. The
same holds for verbal behavior: A confession can, for
instance, be a means to fulfill one’s personal morality, to
rationally avoid punishment, or to courteously reciprocate an
interrogator’s agreeableness.
The indeterminacy problem can be solved if one inspects
an assemblage of verbal and other behavioral responses
implied by the attitude in question. Depending on their personal level of environmental attitude, people can show their
appreciation of a particular attitude object in a variety of
activities. For example, people can wash their laundry in an
energy-efficient way, vote for green political parties, and
admit a certain degree of environmental concern in surveys.
In other words, a disposition generically manifests in a multitude of verbal and other behaviors.
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Kaiser et al.
Conceptually defining an attitude within Campbell’s paradigm thus involves carving out a set of behaviors. This set
of behaviors in turn is thought to represent the means people
can use when implementing their personal levels of an attitude, or, put somewhat differently, when pursuing their personal attitudinal goal. However, the definition of an attitude
is dependent not only on the set of behaviors but also on the
order or structure of the behaviors.
Sets of Behaviors Are Ordered Transitively in Terms of Difficulty.
Necessarily, any behavior being performed involves costs,
which include effort and other personal resources, such as
time and money. In Campbell’s (1963, p. 160) terminology,
costs constitute the “situational threshold” or the difficulty of
a behavior. This difficulty may be rather small, as when a
person claims to be an environmentalist, or it may be relatively substantial, as when a person rides a bike to work
every day.
The costs of a behavior are specific to the behavior, as
they depend on the situation in which the behavior takes
place. In other words, costs are thought to derive from the
conditions that people face when performing an act; they do
not depend solely or even primarily on individual actors.
Thus, when different actors have the same conditions for
performance, behaviors can be transitively ranked according
to difficulty in an order that is independent of persons.4 This
transitive order or structure in the set of behaviors ultimately
defines an attitude.
In line with Campbell, we expect that people deliberately
choose among behavioral means to cost-effectively realize
their personal attitudinal goals. Generally, we assume that
people favor relatively more convenient, socially accepted,
and undemanding behaviors over more strenuous, socially
proscribed, and demanding behaviors when they manifest
their personal level of a certain attitude. That a person acts in
a particular way, therefore, is anticipated to be a function of
two components: (a) the person’s disposition, for example,
the level of his or her environmental attitude, and (b) the
specific difficulty of the particular behavior, which is the
composite of the costs involved when enacting the behavior.
Thus, various behavioral records can be used to assess the
specific level of a person’s attitude.
Behaviors Can Be Used to Identify an Individual’s Level of an
Attitude. A person’s attitude toward a certain object is most
obvious in the face of increasingly demanding hurdles or
progressively intolerable sacrifices (Schultz & Oskamp,
1996). The more obstacles a person overcomes and the more
effort that person expends to implement his or her attitude,
the more evident that person’s commitment to the particular
goal implied by the attitude.
Why would someone suffer every morning riding a bike
through rain and snow, struggle with his or her children to
save warm water, spend money on home insulation, and
donate money to environmental organizations if he or she
was not highly committed to environmental conservation?
Conversely, when a slight difficulty is enough to stop a person from taking behavioral steps beyond the easiest ones,
devotion to the attitudinal goal must be rather low. For
instance, when a person claims to be environmentally oriented, but avoids recycling, he or she probably does not care
strongly about environmental conservation. Technically
speaking, the more demanding the behavioral tasks a person
takes on, the more intensely he or she cherishes the goal
implied by the attitude, and vice versa.
In contrast to Campbell, we do not expect a personal disposition to operate in a compulsory or exclusive manner
when people realize it through their behavior. Clearly, individual differences in intellectual and physical capabilities
do matter when it comes to overcoming behavioral costs.
Nor do we believe that the various behavioral costs deterministically impose themselves on people. The fact that
individuals differ in their personal capabilities to perform
certain acts, that they have unique life circumstances, and
that they can often choose from various behavioral options
to implement their attitudes creates irregularities. Irregularities,
however, cannot readily be modeled. Rather than predicting
factual engagement, we, in opposition to Campbell, aim to
explain only the probability of engagement in a behavior.
This distinction has crucial implications with regard to the
choice of the psychometric model used to assess the specific
level of a person’s attitude on the basis of different behavioral records.
Beyond Campbell’s Original Proposition. Campbell himself suggested implementing his idea with the Guttman model (e.g.,
Guttman, 1944), which would serve the prediction of factual
engagement. Lowering the aspiration from predicting factual
engagement to predicting the probability of such engagement is in essence what follows from our choice to abandon
the deterministic Guttman model in favor of an analogous
but probabilistic model.
Why abandon Guttman’s model? It imposes unrealistic
demands. First, it demands that behaviors form a perfectly
transitively ordered set of tasks. That is, all behaviors are
ordered in respect to behavioral costs, and this order holds
for all actors. Second and concurrently, it demands that persons respond unvaryingly to the behavioral challenges. That
is, people must implement their attitudes in an absolutely
regular manner. Without exceptions, people have to engage
in all behaviors with costs below their particular attitude
level (and in none of the more costly ones). In sum, all people are expected to implement identical disposition levels in
a uniform manner. This expectation basically ignores personal and contextual particularities. Given the unfeasibility
of satisfying these requirements, operational Guttman scales
are a rarity in the scientific literature. It is the allowance for
irregularities in people’s behavioral performances that stands
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Personality and Social Psychology Review 14(4)
as the main conceptual advantage of a probabilistic over a
deterministic item-response model.
In contrast to Campbell’s original deterministic proposition, we adopt a less rigid model to implement his paradigm.
In our version, we expect a personal disposition to reveal itself
in a more discretionary manner. Also, the costs of performing
a behavior are seen as stochastic rather than deterministic constraints. Our variant thus leaves room for personal preferences
and contextual irregularities. Such irregularities and preferences are handled as nuisance factors, and frank acknowledgement of this unpredictability necessarily implies a lower
aspiration regarding explanatory precision.
Our Version of Campbell’s Paradigm. Campbell’s paradigm is,
we believe, more sensibly implemented with Rasch’s model
than with Guttman’s model. The Rasch model describes the
probability of engaging in a specific behavior as the arithmetic difference between the strength of a person’s attitude and
the difficulty of the specific behavior in question (see Bond
& Fox, 2001; Embretson & Reise, 2000). The formal link
between a person’s attitude and his or her probability of
engaging in a specific behavior can thus be mathematically
depicted with the following formula:
ln(
pki
) = θk–δi
1– pki
In this model, the natural logarithm of the ratio of the probability
of person k’s engagement (pki) relative to the probability of
nonengagement (1 – pki) in a specific behavior i (i.e., its odds)
is given by the difference between k’s attitude level (i.e., his or
her disposition, θk) and the difficulty of behavior i (δi).
As the transitive difficulty order within a given class of
behaviors normally holds for a population, it thus also
describes and hence defines the particular attitude for that
population. Conversely, an individual person’s attitude level
translates into the individual engagement likelihoods for
each behavior in the given class. This notion also surfaces in
DeFleur and Westie’s (1963) atypical definition of attitude as
“an inferred property . . . [that] is equated with the probability of recurrence of behavior forms of a given type or direction” (p. 21, italics original).
Note that in the mathematical formalization of Campbell’s paradigm people are distinguishable with respect to
their attitude levels, irrespective of the specific behaviors
used in the assessment (as long as those behaviors are part of
the recognized class of behaviors implied by the attitude).
Simultaneously, behaviors are distinguishable by how difficult they are to realize, irrespective of the particular persons
used in the assessment of difficulties. These two constituents
of Campbell’s paradigm, together with two more, are at odds
with the current wisdom in social psychology and with mainstream attitude research, as we show next.
Constituents of Campbell’s Paradigm
From its mathematical formalization, four constituents of
Campbell’s paradigm can be derived. These contrast with
mainstream attitude theory. The four constituents imply that
the probability of engagement in a behavioral performance
can be explained with only two additively connected parameters: one for a person’s attitude and one for the costs of the
specific behavior involved. Without any person factors other
than one’s attitude, without any moderators, and without
unpacking behaviors and attitudes into progressively more
fine-grained units, behavioral engagement can be made
intelligible. Campbell’s paradigm thus stands as a parsimonious alternative to what we call the “behavior-explanation
paradigm” now conventionally used to research attitude–
behavior consistency.
To reinforce its standing as a viable alternative, in the following sections we elaborate on the four constituents of the
paradigm and the empirical support for them. The first constituent involves seemingly diverse actions forming a transitively ordered set of behaviors. The second constituent
involves an axiomatic and, thus, empirically perfect attitude–
behavior link. The third constituent has to do with the relevance of an attitude to behavior; an attitude is assumed to
release its motivational force on any action in the class of
behavior that defines it in an identical, unmoderated fashion.
The fourth constituent involves representing the factual costs
of a singular behavior in terms of its difficulty. This difficulty is in turn expected to be specific to each behavior and
to govern conduct, irrespective of the person involved and
irrespective of attitude level. All four constituents have been
addressed in previous research on ecological behavior, which
we will overview.
Constituent 1:Transitively Ordered Sets of Behaviors. In Campbell’s paradigm, individual dispositions are conceptualized as the behavioral means through which people
manifest their personal attitudes. Conceptualizing personal
attitudes as behavioral dispositions implies that seemingly
diverse actions, such as recycling and ownership of
an energy-efficient car, form a distinct but uniform set
of behaviors (for more examples, see Table 1). This in
turn means that diverse behavioral performances can be
mapped onto one dimension. Along this dimension, the
behaviors are distinct only quantitatively, in terms of difficulty. This contrasts with what is usually reported in psychological research, including that concerned with
ecological behavior, the research domain in which most of
the evidence concerning Campbell’s paradigm has been
developed.
Ecological behavior is commonly found to be multidimensional (e.g., Gatersleben, Steg, & Vlek, 2002). Instead of one
broad class of activities, it is expected to fall into several
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Kaiser et al.
Table 1. Twenty Ecological Behaviors, Ordered by Their Engagement Likelihoods
Behavior
pavg
phigh
1. I bought solar panels to produce energy.
2. I refrain from owning a car.
3. I buy meat and produce with eco-labels.
4. I am a member of a carpool.
5. I am a member of an environmental organization.
6. I contribute financially to environmental organizations.
7. I read about environmental issues.
8. I drive on freeways at speeds under 62.5 mph.
9. I buy unbleached and uncolored toilet paper.
10. I buy products in refillable packages.
11. In nearby areas (around 30 kilometers; around 20 miles), I use public transportation or ride a bike.
12. I ride a bicycle or take public transportation to work or school.
13. I drive in such a way as to keep my fuel consumption as low as possible.
14. I own energy efficient household devices.
15. I wash dirty clothes without prewashing.
16. I buy seasonal produce.
17. I wait until I have a full load before doing my laundry.
18. I bring empty bottles to a recycling bin.
19. I collect and recycle used paper.
20. I reuse my shopping bags.
.02
.06
.09
.10
.14
.14
.16
.30
.38
.40
.49
.61
.70
.72
.79
.84
.95
.96
.97
.98
.03
.11
.17
.19
.24
.25
.28
.47
.55
.57
.66
.76
.83
.84
.89
.92
.97
.98
.99
.99
Engagement likelihoods are given for a person with a 1 standard deviation above average environmental attitude (phigh) and for one with an average such
attitude (pavg).
narrow and highly selective, independent sets, such as energy
use, waste generation, and transportation (e.g., Stern, 2000).
Because defining an attitude within Campbell’s paradigm
involves carving out a set of behaviors transitively ordered by
difficulty, in the following, we review evidence that speaks of
a single class of ecological behaviors solely distinguishable
on the basis of their difficulties. We then go on to present
evidence that evaluative statements of the kind usually used
to measure attitudes are in fact comparatively easy behaviors.
This evidence is in line with the methodological explanation
that Campbell offered for the attitude–behavior gap.
The example of general ecological behavior. To date, Campbell’s paradigm has been successfully implemented in the measurement of personal engagement with different sets of
ecological behaviors with various samples in at least nine different countries (e.g., Hartig, Kaiser, & Bowler, 2001; Hartig,
Kaiser, & Strumse, 2007; Kaiser & Biel, 2000; Kaiser, Midden,
& Cervinka, 2008; Kaiser, Schultz, Berenguer, CorralVerdugo, & Tankha, 2008). Overall, the psychometric qualities
of this General Ecological Behavior (GEB) measure look
acceptable (e.g., Kaiser, 1998; Kaiser, Frick, & Stoll-Kleemann,
2001). For example, classical internal consistency coefficients
range from a = .72 (Kaiser & Wilson, 2000) to a = .88
(Scheuthle, Carabias-Hütter, & Kaiser, 2005). Test–retest reliabilities vary between rtt = .76 (Kaiser & Wilson, 2000) and
rtt = .83 (Kaiser et al., 2001).
In their exploration of the dimensionality of a set of selfreported behaviors assumed to vary in difficulty, Kaiser and
Wilson (2004) found that energy conservation, waste
avoidance, recycling, vicarious acts toward conservation
(e.g., political activism), and ecological transportation and
consumer behavior formed a highly oblique behavioral
space. Because of its obliqueness, this multidimensional
space could be parsimoniously projected onto a single
dimension with only a marginal loss in measurement accuracy (for similar findings and conclusions with different data
sets, see Byrka, 2009; Kaiser, Oerke, & Bogner, 2007).
In summary, the evidence speaks of a single class of transitively ordered ecological behaviors distinguishable by their
difficulties. Given the volume and the uniformity of the findings, these calibrations corroborate Campbell’s claim of an
underlying behavioral disposition at least with self-reported
ecological behavior.
Verbal statements are behavioral responses. According to
Campbell (1963, p. 97), evaluative claims and other behaviors toward an attitude object all arise from a single “acquired
behavioral disposition.” Such a disposition must, hence, be
observable not only in a person’s behavioral self-reports but
also in a person’s evaluative statements concerning an attitude object. Thus, conceptualizing environmental attitude as
a behavioral disposition requires that evaluative statements
and self-reported behaviors belong to one class of responses.
In line with Campbell’s expectation, we anticipate that evaluative statements are generally less demanding than corresponding behavioral self-reports.
With data from 1,746 residents in one of the major cities
in the Netherlands, Byrka (2009) confirmed that expressing
appreciation for a behavior in a questionnaire was relatively
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Personality and Social Psychology Review 14(4)
Figure 1. Evaluative statements and retrospectively self-reported
behavior in ascending order of difficulty
N = 1,746.Vertical bars represent 95% confidence intervals. The circled
plots are the cases in which verbal condemnation of the behavior apparently was more difficult than the self-report of the behavior itself. The two
behaviors are abstaining from using oven cleaning spray and from disposing of leftovers in the toilet.
less demanding than enacting the corresponding behavior.
By and large, the difficulty of a behavior was lower for verbal behavior, such as evaluative statements, than for effective behavior, even when these acts were only recalled, rather
than overtly demonstrated for an observer (see Figure 1).
This finding accords with colloquial wisdom that “talk is
cheap” and “actions speak louder than words.”
Nevertheless, people’s behavioral dispositions become
apparent in their evaluative statements as well as in other
behavioral records, such as retrospective behavioral selfreports. Interestingly, Byrka (2009) found two instances in
which the condemnation of unecological behavior was significantly more demanding than reports of refraining from
the act itself (see circled plots in Figure 1). This occurred
when the behavior was a relatively easy abstention and the
evaluation involved blunt condemnation. For example,
expressing disapproval for using oven cleaning spray was
comparatively more difficult than actually not using oven
cleaning spray. This latter finding speaks against a simplistic
view in which evaluative verbal statements are always seen
to be easier than other forms of behavior, although on average they will be easier.
The research just discussed implies that environmental
attitudes can be directly derived from what people claim to
value and report doing. Essentially, these evaluative statements and behavioral reports represent means through which
people realize their personal levels of an attitude (e.g., Kaiser,
Oerke, et al., 2007). In sum, the individual variety of reports
concerning a multitude of specific ecological behaviors can
be adequately represented with one person parameter (i.e.,
attitude level) if those behaviors are transitively ordered in
terms of their difficulty.
Constituent 2: A Perfect Attitude–Behavior Relationship. In line
with Conrey and Smith (2007) and probably with many others, it strikes us not only as counterintuitive but also as a
breach of the very idea of attitudes to imagine someone with
a strong environmental attitude who does not engage in at
least some of the corresponding behaviors. Yet this appears to
be a finding in research on ecological behavior (e.g., Vining &
Ebreo, 2002) and more generally (e.g., Ajzen & Fishbein,
1977). Attitudes alone—as a single determinant—have a
rather bad reputation when it comes to accounting for specific behavior (e.g., Schwarz, 2000). We argue, however,
that the problem is conceptual, that it lies in the way we, in
psychology, think about the attitude–behavior relationship, and that the problem can be addressed by applying
Campbell’s paradigm.
In the following, we review evidence concerning the
validity of the most central constituent of Campbell’s paradigm: the assumption of an axiomatic relationship between
attitude and behavior. We first review research that has found
attitude and behavior to be tightly empirically connected.
This is what one should expect with an axiomatic attitude–
behavior relationship. Second, we report a demanding test of
the validity of such a conceptual attitude–behavior connection. In this laboratory experiment, we tested the axiomatic
link by forecasting an unlikely overt behavior solely on the
basis of a participant’s environmental attitude. The behavior
was judged to be unlikely because it involved the sacrifice of
legitimate personal interests.
A virtually perfect empirical relationship. Defining an attitude in a Campbellian sense involves describing behaviors as
a transitively ordered set of means to implement different
levels of attitudinal goals. With such a definition goes a formally describable, axiomatic attitude–behavior connection.
Necessarily, any empirical gap between attitude, measured
exclusively with evaluative statements, and a set of behaviors critical for an attitude undermines the validity of Campbell’s paradigm. In fact, construct validity in line with the
paradigm requires a virtually perfect empirical attitude–
behavior link.
Studies done in a conventional planned behavior framework but employing Campbell’s paradigm in the measurement of behavior have found proportions of explained
behavior variance as high as 95% (e.g., Kaiser & Gutscher,
2003; Kaiser, Hübner, & Bogner, 2005). To implement
Campbell’s paradigm, these studies used scales rather than
single items for all of the conventional attitude measures as
well as for the behavior measure. Predictably, the more items
included in the concept measures used in these structural
equation models, the more variance in the behavior that
could be explained.
Similarly, with aggregated predictors from the planned
behavior theory, Kaiser, Schultz, and Scheuthle (2007)
could explain 91% of the variance in intention, which the
theory describes as the ultimate predictor of behavior. They
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Kaiser et al.
also found that intention explained 88% of the variance in
a behavior measure grounded in Campbell’s paradigm. Significantly, Kaiser et al. attained their results even though
they violated the compatibility principle,5 which is often
regarded as essential to attain attitude–behavior consistency within the planned behavior framework (e.g., Ajzen
& Fishbein, 2005).
Together, these findings corroborate the anticipated
absence of any noteworthy gap. Instead of an empirical
gap, there is evidence speaking of redundant information
between intention and behavior when the attitudinal and
behavioral concepts are both reliably captured with scales
and when Campbell’s paradigm guides the measurement of
individual behavior.
Although encouraging, these data are far from conclusive.
The evidence in favor of an axiomatic attitude–behavior relationship would be more compelling if an overt and, at the same
time, improbable behavior could also be predicted on the basis
of a person’s attitude level in laboratory experimentation.
Forecasting an improbable overt behavior from attitude. Such
evidence of predictive validity comes from research on
cooperation in a social dilemma experiment. Social dilemmas are public good or resource dilemmas stemming from
open access to a resource (see, e.g., Kollock, 1998; Messick
& Brewer, 1983). In such dilemmas, people are confronted
with a conflict between their motivation to cooperate with
others and their motivation to maximize personal gains.
Generally, it appears that people are inclined to maximize
their gains at the expense of the greater collective benefit
that would be realized through cooperation (Gifford & Hine,
1997). This means that cooperation is objectively improbable and, predictably, demanding.
Nevertheless, Byrka (2009) found that persons with high
levels of environmental attitude removed relatively less of
the common resource in her social dilemma experiment.
Whether such cooperation increased, however, depended on
the resource. If cooperation involved the attitude-relevant
resource “energy,” persons high in environmental attitude
demanded substantially less of it than high-attitude persons
considering the attitude-irrelevant resource “points” as well
as low-attitude persons considering either the relevant or
irrelevant resource (see Figure 2).6
Conventionally, the reasons for cooperating with others in
social dilemmas are expected to originate from individual
prosocial considerations (e.g., Gifford & Hine, 1997) and not
from concerns for the environment (see Smith & Bell, 1992).
Accordingly, cooperation with others traditionally means
dividing the common resources into equal portions of the
maximum replenishable size (e.g., Messick & Brewer, 1983).
For a collectively just and optimal solution in terms of gains,
it is not necessary to take an amount that is less than one’s
fair share and below the replenishable amount of the resource.
Yet Byrka (2009) found such self-sacrificing cooperation.
Figure 2. Points or kWatt allocated as a function of people’s
environmental attitude and the attitudinal relevance of the
resource
N = 131 (from left to right, n = 38, n = 29, n = 36, n = 28).Vertical bars
indicate 95% confidence intervals. The “line of social justice” represents
the fair and optimal performance from the point of view of the collective.
Resource requests along this line would leave each individual with an equal
share and the collective with the maximal profit or gain.
On average, persons high in environmental attitude
requested significantly less energy than what could be seen as
their fair portion of the replenishable resource. The 95% confidence interval for the average amount of energy requested
by the persons with a high environmental attitude did not
cross the “line of social justice,” which represents the fair and
optimal performance from the point of view of the collective
(see Figure 2). This finding is not just an aggregate effect
across the 10 rounds of the social dilemma experiment. Persons
with high environmental attitude engaged in self-sacrifice
from the first round on, but only if playing for energy.
Self-sacrificing is difficult to understand from an exclusively social interpretation of social dilemmas. It is, however,
understandable with regard to the motivation of environmentalists (cf. Hardin, 1968). Such a dilemma normally involves
two unfavorable outcomes, destruction of the environment
and forfeit of personal gains. One can reasonably expect selfsacrifice when forfeit of individual gains is the lesser of the
two concerns. This could occur if the person’s concern for the
environment (i.e., when holding a strong environmental attitude) rivals the egoistic concern for missing out on personal
gains (cf. Hardin, 1968). This would explain Byrka’s (2009)
discovery that persons with comparatively high levels of
environmental attitude sacrificed their socially legitimate
claims (even under artificial experimental conditions).
Constituent 3: Attitude’s Efficacy Is Unrelated to Difficulty. Our
formal conception of Campbell’s paradigm demands that a
given attitude impose its motivational force on any act that
belongs to its corresponding class of behaviors. Necessarily,
a certain environmental attitude is expected to be just as
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Personality and Social Psychology Review 14(4)
effective with heavily obstructed behaviors, such as retrofitting homes for energy efficiency, as it is with less obstructed
behavior and even with facilitated behavior, such as paper
recycling. The assumption of uniformly effective attitudes
contrasts, however, with contemporary research that has
reported differentially effective, moderated environmental
attitudes (e.g., Diekmann & Preisendörfer, 1998; Guagnano,
Stern, & Dietz, 1995). This third constituent of Campbell’s
paradigm also contrasts with the popular interactionist perspective in contemporary social psychology.
According to an interactionist perspective, different attitude levels are expected to be differentially effective depending on behavioral costs (cf. Reis, 2008; Schmitt, Eid, &
Maes, 2003). Schultz and Oskamp (1996), for example,
argue that the influence of attitudes on behavior increases in
the face of increasingly difficult tasks or progressively intolerable sacrifices. Interestingly, research on moderation of the
attitude–behavior correlation by behavioral costs has led to
heterogeneous results. Some studies have revealed a positive
linear relationship between the difficulty of a behavior and
the strength of the attitude–behavior connection (Schultz &
Oskamp, 1996), whereas others have found a monotonic
negative relationship (Diekmann & Preisendörfer, 1998).
Guagnano et al. (1995) even uncovered a curvilinear
attitude–behavior relationship with a marked drop in strength
when the behavioral costs were very high or low, that is, with
easy and with difficult behaviors.
In opposition to these three models, the pooled data from
five survey studies revealed that the influence of attitudes on
their corresponding ecological behaviors did not depend on
behavioral costs (Kaiser & Schultz, 2009). Instead, attitude
(represented conventionally with evaluative statements) and
behavior (as self-reported performances) had a substantial
and unmoderated average relationship of r = .54.
Kaiser and Schultz’s (2009) data also showed that attitude–
behavior relationships were weaker for extremely easy and
extremely difficult behaviors; however, there are methodological reasons for this reduction. With extremely easy
behaviors (i.e., more than 95% of the persons reported acting
accordingly), they found evidence for greatly restricted variability, obvious in excessive positive kurtosis values. With
heavily constrained behaviors (i.e., less than 5% of the persons reported acting accordingly), they found a different
methodological reason for the apparently depressed correlations. The distributions for the respective evaluative statements used to measure attitudes and for the retrospective
reports of the extremely difficult behaviors not only were
nonnormal but also differed in the way they deviated from
normality. In summary, the previously reported heterogeneous findings may well have emerged for technical rather
than psychologically substantial reasons.
This is not to say that attitudinal differences do not matter.
On the contrary, attitudes matter with ecological behavior.
This is evidenced by a relatively narrow bandwidth of
attitude–behavior correlations (from .40 to .69) around the
mean of .54. Yet this rather uniform behavior relevance of attitudes is less evident and, thus, technically less easily recognizable with extremely difficult or easy activities (see Table 1).
For example, under heavily obstructed conditions even the
strongest attitude will render a behavior only a touch more
probable than a rather weak attitude. Vice versa, even a weak
attitude will result in a specific behavior nearly as much as a
strong attitude under highly supportive circumstances.
Table 1 lists the likelihoods for engaging in various
behaviors that Byrka (2009) describes for a person with a
comparatively high level of environmental attitude (phigh)
and for one with an average such attitude (pavg). The likelihoods are estimated with the Rasch model based on data
from 1,746 Dutch people. Evidently, attitudes of different
strength translate into different likelihoods for persons
engaging in comparable behaviors. In the calculations for
each of the two persons in question, attitude operates as a
constant. Thus, for each person, distinct engagement probabilities solely depend on the difficulty of the various behaviors: The more probable a behavior, the easier it is, and vice
versa (see Table 1).
In sum, the reviewed research speaks of environmental
attitude as uniformly effective with ecological behavior. This
uniform efficacy of attitudes occurs regardless of the factual
costs and so regardless of whether a behavior is obstructed or
facilitated. An individual attitude is, thus, person specific
and, as such, invariably effective irrespective of the difficulty of any one behavior that belongs to the class of behavior that defines the attitude.
Constituent 4: Behavioral Costs Are Facts for Populations. Enacting a
behavior involves factual costs. These costs primarily
depend on the specifics of the situation in which an act
takes place. Accordingly, Campbell called these costs situational thresholds. In the mathematical formalization of
Campbell’s paradigm, these costs are represented by the
difficulty parameter. Behavioral difficulties compose the
second factor beside attitude that controls individual
behavior.
Behavioral costs are assumed to be external to and, thus,
independent of persons. Hence, a given situation is thought
to impose its force on any particular act, irrespective of individual attitudes. In other words, each set of costs, each difficulty, has to be expected to be uniformly relevant to behavior.
Although distinct in magnitude, behavioral difficulties are,
consequently, presumed to hold for populations. This is the
fourth constituent of the paradigm. In the following, we consider how behavioral costs are addressed (or not addressed)
in other attitude research, how behavioral costs can be estimated, and how knowledge of behavioral costs enables the
prediction of attitude levels.
Factual behavioral costs in psychology. In today’s psychology, it is often assumed that behavioral costs, or situational
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forces, are acknowledged or perceived before they become
effective (e.g., Reis, 2008; Ross & Nisbett, 1991). For example, a blustery climate can discourage some from riding a
bike, but it may be seen as a challenge by others. Apart from
such motivational influences, behavior-explanation models
frequently disregard the factual situational determinants of
individual behavior that are independent of persons (Kaiser
& Gutscher, 2003).
The planned behavior framework is a noteworthy exception, by virtue of its perceived behavioral control concept.
This concept is meant to represent the situational constraints
affecting a behavior (e.g., Ajzen, 1991); however, using perceived control as a proxy for actual behavioral costs comes
with a serious methodological shortcoming. Within planned
behavior, the situational forces that affect a person’s actual
control on a specific behavior show in perceived control’s
direct influence on behavior. This, however, works only
with a performance measure that stands for a single behavior or a narrow set of behaviors, affected by a limited array
of constraints, as was shown by Kaiser and Gutscher (2003).
With scales that represent a broad class of behaviors with a
multitude of forces external to persons, perceived control
loses its significance. In other words, perceived control fails
as a proxy of actual behavioral costs when modeling a domain
as broad as environmental conservation using highly aggregated (and so more reliable) measures for the planned
behavior concepts.
Estimating behavioral costs. Situational influences can be
regarded as forces of the circumstances that people face
when enacting a behavior. Influences such as climate, infrastructure, and topography affect individual performances in
a more or less objective manner. In other words, situational
forces can be expected to facilitate or impede individual
behavior in ways that are not specific to any one actor
(Scheuthle et al., 2005). For example, a superior public
transportation system will generally make it easier to abstain
from using a car in a Swiss urban environment compared to
a Swedish one (Kaiser & Biel, 2000), whereas buying beverages in returnable bottles is unavoidable if the store does not
provide any beverages in alternative containers. Thus, situational influences are best considered as effective for an entire
population acting in its specific context.
In Campbell’s paradigm, situational influences are represented by the difficulty of a behavior, and this difficulty is
expected to operate independent of the actors involved,
regardless of personal attitude levels, regardless of the perception of obstacles or facilitators, and regardless of any personal differences in the capability to perform the behavior.
The difficulty estimate is, thus, regarded as the one decisive
feature of the behavior. This difficulty of a behavior surfaces
in the engagement likelihoods of populations. That is, from
what people generally dare or do not dare to venture, we
derive the difficulty of a behavior. Correspondingly, difficulty
of a behavior may be concealed by its appearance. For
example, the act of recycling a battery may look quite simple
in and of itself, but actually engaging in that act can in fact be
quite complicated when there is a lack of infrastructural support. In other words, inspecting the behavior itself does not
allow for recognition of its difficulty. Rather, its difficulty is
recognized in the proportion of persons enacting it. This
assertion echoes the point of Lucius Annaeus Seneca’s aphorism at the start of this text.
To date, some research inspired by Campbell’s paradigm
has illustrated how incomparable sociocultural and geopolitical obstacles and opportunities eventually can play out in
differences in the difficulty of some behaviors (e.g., Kaiser
& Wilson, 2000). Action under factually distinct conditions
can hence lead to disparities in what defines a given attitude
for different populations. (Remember that the definition of
an attitude is a function of two things, the set of behaviors
relevant for the attitude and the specific transitive order of
this behavioral class.)
In one study, Scheuthle et al. (2005) found that differences in infrastructure, affluence, and climate were well
reflected in the difficulties and transitive orders of 65 ecological behaviors in Spain and Switzerland. With a hit rate of
97.5%, they were able to accurately distinguish Swiss and
Spaniards solely on the basis of what constitutes an environmental attitude in the two countries, that is, the patterns of
preferences for various ecological behaviors with which to
implement one’s environmental attitude. People apparently
acted on their attitudes in a country-specific yet otherwise
fairly uniform way, irrespective of attitude level.
Conversely, when individuals act in similar sociocultural
and geopolitical conditions, such as within a country, the difficulty order of the behaviors is rather uniformly applicable
for anyone (Kaiser & Keller, 2001). The environmental attitude can then be described with respect to a single array of
behaviors transitively ordered by difficulty. This implies in
turn the possibility of forecasting individuals’ attitude levels
on the basis of whether or not a person engages in a specific
behavior for which there is valid quantitative knowledge
about its difficulty. Anticipating attitude levels from engagement in specific acts is not a trivial matter, and previous
attempts have not produced accurate forecasts (e.g., Ajzen,
Brown, & Carvajal, 2004; Sheeran, 2002).
Forecasting levels of attitude from behavioral difficulty. One
example of success can however be found in Byrka’s (2009)
research with vegetarians and nonvegetarians. Refraining
from eating animal products has objectively demonstrable
relevance for conservation (e.g., Taylor, 2000), but it factually is a highly unpopular behavior. Only about 4% to 7% of
the population in most Western societies commit themselves
to such a diet (e.g., Nederlandse Vegetariërsbond, n.d.;
Stahler, 2006). Working from this rough quantitative evidence about the difficulty of the particular behavior, Byrka
predicted that vegetarians would display higher average levels of environmental attitude than would nonvegetarians.
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along with adopting progressively more demanding behavioral means of expressing an attitude. In other words, with
rising costs, engagement must be accompanied by higher
levels of the corresponding attitude, which is precisely what
one should expect when attitudes and behaviors are axiomatically related.
Figure 3. Environmental attitude measured with the General
Ecological Behavior scale (top panel) and the New Ecological
Paradigm scale (bottom panel) as a function of the extent of selfreported vegetarianism
N = 222 (from left to right, n = 45, n = 50, n = 60, n = 67).Vertical bars
indicate 95% confidence intervals.
In Byrka’s (2009) study, environmental attitude was measured in two distinct ways, with a traditional instrument and
with a Campbellian measure. The former was the New Ecological Paradigm scale (NEP; Dunlap, Van Liere, Mertig, &
Jones, 2000), probably the most often used environmental
attitude measure to date. The NEP is exclusively based on
evaluative statements, such as “Humans are severely abusing
the environment” and “The balance of nature is very delicate
and easily upset.” The latter was the GEB scale (Kaiser &
Wilson, 2004). Already mentioned in our discussion of the
first constituent of the paradigm, the GEB is an exclusively
behavior-based attitude measure in the Campbellian sense.
In her research, Byrka anticipated that only the Campbellian
measure would prove sensitive to engagement in highly
demanding behavior (i.e., refraining from eating meat and
from consuming other animal products).
Byrka detected the predicted differences between vegetarians and nonvegetarians in their average level of environmental attitude, but only with the GEB scale (see Figure 3, top
panel). When the vegetarians were also distinguished concerning the degree of their devotion into basic, advanced, and
extreme ones, the association became even stronger. No such
difference could be established with the NEP, although the
difference between basic and extreme vegetarians in NEP
scores did approach significance (see Figure 3, bottom panel).
Byrka’s finding confirms that an increase in attitude level
monotonically parallels the increase in difficulty that goes
Summary of the Literature Review. The literature just reviewed
substantiates the four constituents of Campbell’s paradigm.
First, we have listed a considerable number of successful
applications of Campbell’s paradigm, confirming that an
array of behaviors relevant for a specific attitude could be
mapped onto one dimension. Along this dimension, the
behaviors were transitively ordered with respect to difficulty. Second, we have described research in which we
could corroborate a (nearly) perfect empirical association
between attitude and behavior when the respective measures were sufficiently aggregated. Given the postulated
axiomatic link between attitude and behavior, such a finding
had to be expected. Third, we also have shown that a person’s attitude manifests as a constant in each behavior that
defines the attitude, irrespective of the specific difficulties
of those behaviors. Fourth, we have similarly demonstrated
that the situational forces that impinge on a behavior—its
difficulty—factually affect individual behavior, irrespective
of the strength of the individual attitudes of the particular
actors, given that they act in the same geopolitical and
sociocultural context.
Implications for Attitude
Theory, Research, and Practice
The viability of Campbell’s paradigm has several far reaching
implications. In drawing out these implications in the following, we contrast Campbell’s paradigm to the planned behavior framework (e.g., Ajzen, 1991), which seems to be widely
accepted in contemporary attitude research as the standard for
addressing the problems following from attitude–behavior
inconsistency (e.g., Ajzen & Fishbein, 2005). Note that the
planned behavior framework is used here as the prototypical
exemplar of what we call the behavior-explanation paradigm,
a class of models that involve individual attitude or attitudelike belief as an independent concept standing next to intention as the ultimate predictor of behavior. Other exponents of
this paradigm are the health action process approach
(Schwarzer, 2008), the theory of trying (Bagozzi & Warshaw,
1990), and the prototype/willingness model (Gibbons,
Gerard, Blanton, & Russell, 1998), to name a few.
In the following subsections, we discuss four general
implications of Campbell’s paradigm for attitude theory,
research, and practice. We first discuss the resolution of one
of the most critical conundrums in contemporary attitude
theory, “evaluative attitude–behavior inconsistency.” We
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next explain how the conceptually implied axiomatic reciprocity of attitude and behavior compels psychologists to
pursue empirical questions other than ones concerning the
direction of their causal relationship. In the third subsection,
we show that employing Campbell’s paradigm implies that
attitudes can as well be criterion as predictor when we model
the psychological processes behind action. It also implies
that questions about how to change behavior and how to
change attitude are technically equivalent. By no means,
however, does the adoption of Campbell’s paradigm ban
from our research agenda questions concerning the development of attitudes or psychological mediation processes in
which attitudes figure; this should become obvious when we
consider questions about causation that require further study.
In our fourth and final subsection, we argue that the conception of attitudes as behavioral dispositions within Campbell’s
paradigm holds tremendous potential for application, not
least in the communication of psychological evidence.
Literal Versus Evaluative Consistency. The theory of planned
behavior was intended for the explanation of variance in
behavior (e.g., Ajzen & Fishbein, 2005). The theory is widely
used, yet various meta-analyses have revealed that it can
only account for approximately 25% to 30% of the variance
in target behaviors (e.g., Ajzen, 1991; Armitage & Conner,
2001; Sheeran, 2002; Sheeran & Orbell, 1998). This is
regarded as a minor issue, however, because empirical
research guided by the theory actually demonstrates what
Ajzen and Fishbein (2005) call “literal consistency” (see
Figure 4); if one employs measures that are properly developed in terms of specificity or generality, the proportion of
explained variance will increase to higher levels with progressively aggregated concept measures.
In the theory of planned behavior, Ajzen and Fishbein
(2005) assert that strong correlations between attitude and
behavior can be expected only if concepts are compatible in
terms of the action involved, the target at which it is directed,
and the context and time of its performance (cf. Note 5).
Accordingly, that theory is conventionally applied in a specific way, with measures of specific attitudes and specific
behaviors. However, Ajzen and Fishbein maintain that specific measures do not accurately capture the essence of more
general attitudes, such as environmental attitude, particularly
when assessed with single-item measures.
Aggregating across different behaviors from a domain
leads to broader and more reliable concept measures and,
subsequently, higher proportions of explained variance in
behavior (e.g., Epstein, 1979, 1983). For example, instead of
inquiring only about bicycle use, a more reliable measure of
ecological behavior should result when it also encompasses
paper, glass and car oil recycling, environmental organization membership, and other conservation activities. Employing such compound measures simultaneously for attitude
Figure 4. Consistency issues within the planned behavior
framework
and behavior is the traditional answer to developing more
general (and more reliable) measures that have more predictive power (e.g., Weigel & Newman, 1976). The practice follows what is called the principle of aggregation.
With proportions of explained behavior variance in the
vicinity of 85% to 95%, our own research has corroborated
the validity of the aggregation principle within the planned
behavior framework (e.g., Kaiser, Schultz, et al., 2007). We
are not the first to achieve such results and with them to
confirm literal consistency on the general level (see, e.g.,
Fishbein & Ajzen, 1974). As we will see in the next subsection, however, this cannot be taken as good news for the
planned behavior framework because at best it merely corroborates the claimed circularity of such an empirical test
(cf. Greve, 2001).
Unfortunately as well, neither compatibility nor aggregation is a remedy for the attitude–behavior inconsistency issue
that truly matters theoretically, which Ajzen and Fishbein
(2005) call “evaluative inconsistency.” Evaluative inconsistency is the problem faced when trying to link a general attitude with specific performances (see Figure 4). For example,
when we know the strength of a person’s general environmental attitude, we would like to translate this information
into what he or she actually does specifically.
The planned behavior framework treats general attitudes
as comparatively distant from a specific behavior and thus
rather irrelevant to its performance (cf. Ajzen & Fishbein,
2005); it deliberately does not directly link general attitude
with specific behavior. In contrast, this is precisely what
our version of Campbell’s paradigm does when the likelihood of engaging in a specific ecological behavior is modeled as a function of a person’s environmental attitude and
the behavioral costs of the specific act. That is, the paradigm quantitatively describes a person’s general attitude in
terms of the likelihoods of engaging in various specific
behaviors (see Table 1).
Evaluative Consistency and Circularity. Evaluative attitude–
behavior inconsistency is not an empirical glitch but rather a
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conceptual conundrum (Greve, 2001). Thus, consistency is
not to be found in the proportion of explained variance but
rather in the way we think about attitudes and how we conceptually connect attitudes and behavior.
Today, the attitude–behavior relationship is almost
unanimously conceptualized as a causal one in which individual attitudes are thought to causally control behavior.
This becomes obvious when, for example, an attitude has
to be activated before it brings about a certain behavior
(cf. Fazio et al., 2008). By contrast, we believe in what
might be called a teleological linkage of behavioral means
with attitudinal ends, formally describable with the Rasch
model. According to this view, attitude and behaviors are
conceptually confounded in means–end relationships; they
are not separate entities. Portraying the attitude–behavior
relationship as a causal one thus entails two significant
conceptual misunderstandings.
The first of these is what the philosopher Gilbert Ryle
(1949) has called a category mistake. A category mistake
involves splitting a concept (e.g., attitude) and its indicators
(e.g., behavior) into two separate categories or entities rather
than seeing them as only one entity. The example that Ryle
provides is that of the university. Imagine leading a colleague around on your campus and showing him or her the
department buildings, the library, the laboratories, the administration complex, the lecture halls, the staff, the students, the
computers (the indicators, so to speak). Your colleague might
still ask, “But where is the university (the concept, so to
speak)?” The university is of course more than its indicators.
It is also the way in which these components are organized.
Yet seeing the indicators and their arrangement as separate
from the notion of a university would nonetheless be a mistake. The analogy is directly applicable to an attitude that is
defined by a set of behaviors, transitively ordered from easy
to difficult, and to Campbell’s paradigm, in which verbal
behavior (i.e., evaluative statements) and other behaviors are
mapped onto one, not two, dimensions.
The category mistake leads to a second conceptual misunderstanding. When the attitude concept is separated from
its indicators, it allows for a view of attitudes as entities that
are hidden in people’s minds, waiting to be launched (e.g.,
the association between a certain object and its evaluation;
Fazio et al., 2008). From our perspective, attitudes do not
need activation; they are present in a person’s deeds, feelings, and thoughts at all times (sometimes more apparent,
sometimes less). This view, like Ryle’s, parallels more classical notions, where an attitude is understood as a category
that establishes the boundary for a set of individual behaviors (e.g., Fishbein & Ajzen, 1974) through which an attitude becomes apparent.
Because of the category mistake, which has led psychologists to think of attitude as the cause behind people’s behavior, Campbell’s idea has been regarded as circular despite a
fairly successful first empirical test (see Raden, 1977). If the
definition of an attitude implies attitude–behavior consistency,
then empirical consistency is trivial and cannot corroborate
the validity of the attitude concept (Campbell, 1963). If a
person’s attitude is apparent in the behaviors that a person
realizes, we cannot really be surprised to empirically find
behavior perfectly explained by the attitude. This only confirms the circular nature of the empirical endeavor (see
Dawes & Smith, 1985; Greve, 2001).
Strictly speaking, adopting Campbell’s paradigm to guide
thinking about the attitude–behavior relationship renders
behavior-explanation models of the planned behavior variety
superfluous. There is no need to separate measures of behavior and of attitude as they are conceptually identical. This is
not to say, however, that there are no meaningful empirical
questions to pursue, including questions concerning psychological processes.
New Meaningful Empirical Questions. As the definition of an
attitude depends on a transitively ordered set of behaviors,
any set of (overt, self-reported, or verbal) behaviors can only
be said to represent an attitude with an empirical confirmation of its order. Thus, the key issue in defining an attitude in
a Campbellian sense is finding a class of behaviors that can
be calibrated as a Rasch scale. This is not a trivial matter, as
such a calibration can fail (as indicated by the question mark
in Figure 4), particularly when extremely varied behavioral
costs are involved (see Table 1), which is the rule rather than
the exception with behavior (see, e.g., Fishbein & Ajzen,
1974). With our research, we have repeatedly confirmed
various classes of behavior to be transitively ordered (e.g.,
Byrka, 2009; Kaiser, Oerke, et al., 2007).
Furthermore, even if behavior and attitude are conceptually confounded as within Campbell’s paradigm, we do not
have to abstain from inquiries about causal and developmental processes in attitude research. One set of those pursuits
could include studies concerning, for example, the role of
subjective utility considerations and social pressure in the
formation of attitudes (cf. Ajzen & Fishbein, 2005). Another
set of empirically meaningful pursuits could examine the
interplay of distinct attitudes, such as that between attitude
toward nature and environmental attitude. Campbell’s paradigm implies, however, that when the connection between
two attitudes is researched, it is equivalent to researching the
connection between two classes of behavior (cf. Brügger,
Kaiser, & Roczen, in press).
Other meaningful pursuits concern the causal processes
through which individual attitudes become established. For
example, Frick, Kaiser, and Wilson (2004) tested the significance of and the ways by which different kinds of
knowledge were thought to affect environmental attitude,
which was measured as a behavioral disposition in the
Campbellian sense.
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All of the foregoing research pursuits assume the validity
of our attitude conception. We can however appreciate that
our conceptualization will not go unchallenged. As a final
example here we can mention a specific research question
that involves competing attitude conceptions. It concerns the
contrast between our understanding of attitude as an acquired
behavioral disposition and the notion of attitude as an evaluative association with an object (e.g., Fazio et al., 2008).
Attitude as evaluative association involves an explicit or
implicit activation of the link between an attitude object—
say, broccoli—and its evaluation—awful, for example. Dependent on the strength of the association, activation is expected
to affect the speed with which the person executes a specific
behavior, such as refusing to eat broccoli. The stronger the
association is, and so the stronger the attitude, the shorter the
response latency for executing the behavior.
Understanding attitudes the Campbellian way, by contrast,
does not require that a person be reminded of an evaluation of
the attitude object (again, say, broccoli) to engage in a particular behavior (refusing to eat offered broccoli). Being reminded
via priming that one hates broccoli might accelerate the rapidity of its refusal. Yet even without such activation, an antibroccoli attitude alone is expected to lead to refusing offered
broccoli provided that the distaste is strong enough to overcome the behavioral costs involved, such as acting discourteously. The question here is whether the individual’s attitude is
more accurately reflected by the action as such, the refusal
with its particular behavioral costs (i.e., what he or she does),
or by the response latency of the refusal (i.e., how he or she
does it). From a Campbellian perspective, it is expected to be
the former, observable in the performance likelihoods of individuals; from an attitude-activation perspective, it is anticipated to be the latter, observable in individual response
latencies. One empirical test would involve determining
whether activation loses its significance for the response
latency in persons with high levels of a Campbellian attitude.
Potential for Application. Apart from its various conceptual benefits, Campbell’s paradigm has some advantages for the
application of psychological science as well. When it comes
to applications such as interventions designed to change
behavior, practitioners may not be interested in acquiring a
deep psychological understanding of underlying processes
nor intricate theoretical insights about the origins of behavioral problems. They may instead prefer that these insights be
left to the experts, such as those charged with running behaviorchange campaigns. This preference is presumably strong
when a practitioner faces an urgent situation. When a patient
is in agony, he or she first wants mitigation of the pain; the
doctor’s explanations for the pain are a secondary matter.
Similarly, we assume that policy makers under time pressure
prefer to have quantitative evidence presented in such a way
that it effectively facilitates their decision making, without
them having to acquire and evaluate a mass of theoretical
knowledge. Behavior-based attitude measures grounded in
our version of Campbell’s paradigm provide just that.
In their article, Kaiser, Midden, et al. (2008) work from the
Campbell paradigm in presenting a decision support system
for policy makers that embraces a double strategy. They
describe significant differences in individual attitudes and,
thus, in the overall behavioral performance of individuals at
various geographical locations. Aggregated individual data for
certain collectives are in turn used to identify sociocultural
factors that control the differential preferences for various specific actions for those collectives. As such, Kaiser, Midden,
et al.’s system allows for evidence-based judgments regarding
four generic policy questions concerned with the alteration of
behavior: who, where, what, and how. Particularly advantageous for any practical purpose is the fact that, although still
employing arbitrary metrics (Blanton & Jaccard, 2006), Rasch
scales translate into easy-to-understand and meaningful probabilities because of the person-independent transitive order of
the behaviors involved (Embretson, 2006). That is, when we
know the strength of a person’s general environmental attitude, we can translate this information into what he or she
probably does specifically (see Table 1 for an example).
Conclusion
In this article, we have provided arguments and evidence in
support of an almost forgotten attitude conception, one that
refers to attitude as an entity that directly shows in what people do in a particular behavioral category (e.g., DeFleur &
Westie, 1963). What we call Campbell’s paradigm describes
individual engagement in a specific behavior as the arithmetic
difference between a person’s general attitude and the costs of
the specific behavior in question. In contrast to Campbell’s
original proposal, we have implemented the paradigm by
using the probabilistic Rasch model rather than the deterministic Guttman model. The assumption that seemingly diverse
actions belong to one behavioral category is one of four constituents of Campbell’s conceptualization of personal attitudes
as behavioral dispositions. Similarly essential is the assumption of an axiomatic and thus perfect attitude–behavior consistency. At the same time, both the strength of a personal attitude
and the costs of a behavior are conjointly and additively pertinent for individual action. In statistical terminology, one could
say that attitudes and the costs of a behavior each work as
main effects, and they do not interact.
As we have shown, evidence from different studies
employing various research designs, samples, and statistical
methods substantiates all four of these constituents. Although
the evidence comes mainly from the environmental conservation domain, we have reason to believe that our arguments
will generalize to other domains as well (see Byrka, 2009;
Haans, Kaiser, & de Kort, 2007).
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Personality and Social Psychology Review 14(4)
Finally, above all, Campbell’s paradigm rests on attitude–
behavior consistency, which also is an indispensable ingredient of Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory
(e.g., Festinger, 1957), another pillar of attitude research.
Unlike previous models of consistency, we mathematically
describe “evaluative consistency” between general attitude and specific behavior by using the Rasch model rather
than the Pearson correlation. With this technical modification, individual attitude can be directly derived from people’s verbal and overt behaviors. Once again, the individual
attitude becomes the motivational force that has to be
strong enough to overcome the situational threshold
involved in the realization of an activity (cf. Allport, 1935;
Campbell, 1963).
In conclusion, we believe that Campbell’s conception of
attitudes as behavioral dispositions holds tremendous potential for theory and practice alike, including campaign evaluation and innovative behavior modification strategies.
Campbell’s paradigm, as we call it, also holds the promise of
a novel, parsimonious and prolific way to understand one of
the core concepts in psychology.
Acknowledgments
We wish to thank Steven Ralston for language support in the
preparation of preliminary drafts of this article. We also thank
Adrian Brügger, Andreas Ernst, Gary Evans, Sam Gosling, Antal
Haans, Jaap Ham, Wouter van den Hoogen, Wesley Schultz,
Michaela Wänke, three anonymous reviewers, and the editor,
Galen Bodenhausen, for substantive comments on earlier versions of this article. In addition, our gratitude goes to all of the
colleagues who helped us to develop our empirical and theoretical arguments over the years.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect
to the authorship and/or publication of this article.
Financial Disclosure/Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support
for the research and/or authorship of this article: This research was
supported by a grant from the J. F. Schouten Graduate School of
User-System Interaction Research at Eindhoven University of
Technology, Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
Notes
1. Behavior here refers to any real, unequivocally describable,
verbal or nonverbal activity that is observable even beyond a
given scientific method of investigation. This definition excludes
behavior that is objectively identifiable only with psychological research methods (cf. Wicker, 1969).
2. The particular example for an evaluative behavioral response is
from Eagly and Chaiken (1993, p. 12).
3. Instead of level, the technically correct term in attitude research
would be extremity or intensity (see Eagly & Chaiken, 1993).
However, for readability, we also use level or the more colloquial term strength throughout this text.
4. An order of objects is called transitive in mathematics under
conditions exemplified by the following: If Object A is greater
than Object B, and B is greater than C, then A must be greater
than C.
5. According to the compatibility principle, strong correlations between attitude and behavior can be expected only if both concepts
are measured correspondingly in terms of the action involved,
the target at which they are directed, and the context and time of
the performance (e.g., Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977, 2005).
6. Note that the effect depicted in Figure 2 does not depend on the
low-attitude persons considering the attitude-irrelevant resource
being included in the comparison. With a comparison of the
high-attitude persons considering the attitude-relevant resource
to the remaining two conditions combined (i.e., high-attitude
persons considering the attitude-irrelevant resource and lowattitude persons considering the attitude-relevant resource), the
effect remains statistically significant.
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