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The Role of Attitude Accessibility in the
Attitude-to-Behavior Process
RUSSELL H. FAZIO
MARTHA C. POWELL
CAROL J.WILLIAMS*
Attitudes toward a number of products and the accessibility of those attitudes as
indicated by the latency of response to an attitudinal inquiry were assessed. Subjects with highly accessible attitudes toward a given product displayed greater attitude-behavior correspondence than did those with relatively less accessible attitudes. Furthermore, subjects with less accessible attitudes displayed more sensitivity to the salience afforded a product by its position In the front row, as opposed
to the back row, than did subjects with more accessible attitudes. The implications
of these data for a model of the process by which attitudes guide behavior are
discussed.
T
he topic of attitudes clearly occupies a central
position in research on consumer behavior (e.g.,
Engei and Blackwell 1982; Kassarjian and Kassarjian
1979). In part, the attention given to the attitude construct stems from the fact that much advertising can
be described as social influence attempts aimed at creating positive attitudes toward the product. Indeed,
considerable research has been concerned with understanding this persuasion process (e.g., Boyd, Ray,
and Strong 1972; Lutz 1975; Petty, Cacioppo, and
Schumann 1983). The assumption underlying such
persuasive attempts is that the development of positive attitudes will produce a corresponding change in
behavior. As a result, consumer research also has
been concerned with understanding the relation between attitudes and subsequent behavior (e.g., Day
and Deutscher 1982; Ryan and Bonfield 1975; Smith
and Swinyard 1983). It is this attitude-behavior relation that constitutes the focus of the present article.
Fazio and his colleagues proposed a model of the
process by which attitudes guide behavior (Fazio
1986; Fazio, Powell, and Herr 1983). In brief, the
model views behavior in any given situation as a func-
tion of the individual's immediate perceptions of the
attitude object in the context of the situation in which
the object is encountered. "Perception" refers to the
individual's current feelings about, or appraisal of,
the object as experienced in the immediate situation.
According to the model, attitudes guide such appraisals of the object, but only if they have been activated
from memory upon observation of the object. Hence,
the accessibility of the attitude from memory is postulated to act as a critical determinant of whether the
attitude-to-behavior process is initiated. Various aspects of the model have received empirical support
from both correlational and experimental investigations in such contexts as voting behavior (Fazio and
Williams 1986), the evaluation of evidence related to
a social policy issue (Houston and Fazio 1989), and
"free-play" behavior with intellectual puzzles (Fazio
et al. 1982; see Fazio 1989 for a review). The major
goal of the present research was to assess the generality of the model to a consumer behavior domain. The
research focuses upon the relation between attitudes
toward specific products and product-selection behavior.
The hypothesis here is that the status of individuals'
attitudes along an attitude/non-attitude continuum
moderates the attitude-behavior relation. Fazio and
his colleagues (Fazio 1989; Fazio etai. 1986) have defined this continuum in terms of the strength of the
association in memory between the object and the individual's evaluation of the object. At one end of the
continuum is the non-attitude; no a priori evaluation
of the object is available in memory. If asked to express an attitude, the individual needs to construct
one on the spot. Such constructions presumably will
involve some assessment of attributes of the object
*Russell H. Fazio is Professor of Psychology, and Martha C. Powell and Carol J. Williams are Research Assistants, all in the Department of Psychology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405.
This article was prepared while the first author was supported by
the National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Development Award MH00452. The research was supported by a grant
from the Ogilvy Center for Research and Development. The authors thank Clark Leavitt and Alexander Biel of the Ogilvy Center
for their helpful consultation while the research was being designed
and David Sanbonmatsu for his assistance in data collection. Portions of these data were presented at the 1986 Association for Consumer Research Annual Conference in Toronto.
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ATTITUDE ACCESSIBILITY
that are recalled from memory and/or apparent in the
external environment. However, at all other points
along the continuum, an evaluation is available in
memory. Moving along the continuum, the strength
of the association between the evaluation and the object—and hence the accessibility of the attitude—increases. At the upper end of the continuum is a welllearned, strong association—sufficiently strong that
the evaluation is capable of automatic activation
from memory upon mere observation or mention of
the object. Attitude-behavior consistency is expected
to vary as a function of position along this attitude/
non-attitude continuum. Individuals who possess
highly accessible attitudes toward a given product are
expected to be more attitudinally consistent in their
product-selection behavior than are individuals
whose attitudes are relatively less accessible from
memory.
As mentioned earlier, evidence consistent with this
hypothesized moderating role of attitude accessibility
has been obtained in previous research. Most relevant
is a correlational field study by Fazio and Williams
(1986) in which it was found that the relation between
attitudes toward Reagan and self-reported voting behavior in the 1984 presidential election varied as a
function of the accessibility of the attitude. Attitude
accessibility was measured via latency of response to
the attitudinal inquiry. Individuals who were able to
indicate their attitude relatively quickly (the high attitude accessibility group) displayed greater consistency between those attitudes and subsequent voting
behavior than did individuals who responded relatively slowly (the low attitude accessibility group).
In addition to examining the applicability of^ the
model to product-selection behavior, the present research was intended to address an unavoidable shortcoming of the voting behavior study—the self-report
nature of the behavior measure. As in any investigation of choices made within the confines of a voting
booth, Fazio and Williams (1986) were forced to rely
upon participants' reports of how they had voted. The
respondents were telephoned within a day or two of
the election and asked to reveal whether they had
voted and, if so, for whom. Although we do not discern any plausible explanation for how such self-reports might have been biased by both the attitude expressed months earlier and the accessibility of the attitude, the shortcoming of this method of observing
the attitude-to-behavior relation cannot be denied.
The present investigation concerned actual overt behavior. Subjects selected items from a set of products
arranged on a table. These selections, which subjects
took home as "a token of our appreciation" for their
having participated in the study, constituted the behavioral measure.
The present investigation involves, as did the Fazio
and Williams (1986) study, measurement of attitude
accessibility via latency of response to an attitudinal
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inquiry. Hence, it is important to review briefly what
is known about the validity of this measure as an indication of the accessibility of attitudes and their position along the attitude/non-attitude continuum.
First, the latency measure has been found to reflect
what has been postulated to be the conceptual variable that determines the chronic accessibility of an attitude—namely, the strength of the association between the object and the evaluation. A number of experiments have manipulated the strength of this
object-evaluation association by having subjects express their attitudes repeatedly. This research has indicated that such repeated expression enhances the
speed with which individuals respond to later inquiries concerning their attitudes (Fazio et al. 1982; Powell and Fazio 1984).
Second, and more important, the latency measure
provides a good approximation of the likelihood that
the attitude will be activated from memory automatically upon mere observation of the object. It has been
demonstrated that attitude objects preselected on the
basis of an individual's having responded quickly to
an attitudinal inquiry are more likely to activate the
attitude automatically upon subsequent presentation
of the object than are attitudes characterized by relatively slow latencies of response to an attitudinal inquiry (Fazio et al. 1986). Sanbonmatsu and Fazio
(1986) observed the same result in a study specifically
concerned with the automatic activation of attitudes
toward products. Thus, the latency with which one
responds to an attitudinal inquiry is sensitive to the
strength of the object-evaluation association and provides an indication of the likelihood that the attitude
will be activated spontaneously upon one's encountering the object.
Subjects in the present study responded to attitudinal inquiries concerning a large number of products.
A subset of these products served as the target attitude
objects and subsequently were made available as behavioral alternatives. According to the process
model, these behavioral selections should be a function of the individual's perceptions of the object in
the immediate situation. Is the individual's appraisal
of the object at that particular moment favorable or
unfavorable? An attitude that is highly accessible
from memory and, hence, likely to be activated automatically upon the individual's observation of the object is apt to result in immediate perceptions that are
congruent with the attitude. In contrast, when the attitude is not activated from memory, immediate perceptions are less likely to be influenced by a previously constructed evaluation that is available in
memory. Instead, these immediate appraisals are
likely to be based upon momentarily salient and potentially unrepresentative features (memory-based
and/or stimulus-based) of the object that are not necessarily evaluated in a manner congruent with the attitude. As a result, greater attitude-behavior consis-
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tency is expected when attitudes are highly accessible
than when attitudes are relatively less accessible from
memory.
METHOD
Subjects
One hundred one individuals participated in the
experiment. Sixty-one participated in partial fulfillment of an introductory psychology course requirement. The remaining subjects responded to an ad
placed in the local newspaper and participated in return for monetary payment.
Procedure
Subjects were informed that the experiment concerned a new way of measuring attitudes via a microcomputer. Their initial task involved responding to
each of 100 attitude objects, all of which were familiar
and commonly available products. The subjects were
instructed to press one oftwo keys, labeled "like" and
"dislike," to indicate their feelings about each object.
The subjects were told to "respond as quickly and as
accurately as possible." The presentation was controlled by an Apple 11+ computer. The order in which
the objects were presented was randomized for each
subject. A three-second interval separated each trial.
The subject's response was recorded, along with the
latency of the response (from stimulus onset to response) to the nearest millisecond. To familiarize
subjects with the procedure, subjects performed a series of practice trials involving different products than
those used in the actual experimental list.
Following the computerized task, subjects completed a number of questionnaires, only the first of
which was relevant to the present purposes. The subjects provided a scalar attitudinal rating of each of the
100 objects. These ratings were made on a 1 (extremely bad) to 7 (extremely good) scale.
Behavior Measure
As their final task, subjects were given the opportunity to select five products from a set of 10 alternatives. The 10 products, which had been roughly
equated for perceived value through informal pretesting, were a Snickers candy bar, a small bag of Fritos
corn chips, two boxes of Sun-Maid raisins, a small can
of Star-Kist tuna, a can of Dr. Pepper, a box of
Cracker Jacks, a bag of Planters peanuts, two cans of
V-8 juice, two 5-stick packs of Dentyne gum, and a
Mounds candy bar. The products were arranged in
two rows of five on a table and were covered by a tablecloth.
At the appropriate time, the experimenter removed
the tablecloth and told the subject to choose five of
the items as a "token ofour appreciation" for having
participated. The experimenter unobtrusively recorded the products selected and the order in which
they were selected. The selected items were then
placed in a paper bag for the subject to take home.
RESULTS
The mean latency of response across objects and
subjects was 1.14 seconds. When a subject's dichotomous response during the computerized task was inconsistent with the subsequent scalar rating, it was
considered an error. An error was defined as a subject's responding "like" during the computerized latency task but rating the product more negatively
than the neutral point on the questionnaire scale, or
responding "dislike" during the computer task but
assigning a rating above the neutral point on the scale.
Such errors were infrequent. On the average, subjects
responded inconsistently on 7.3 percent of the 100
trials. The particular datum from any trial on which
an error occurred was omitted from the analysis.
Previous research on attitude accessibility has observed a relation between attitude accessibility, as
measured by latency of response to an attitudinal inquiry, and attitude extremity, as indexed by deviation
of a scalar value from the neutral point of the scale
(Fazio and Williams 1986; Powell and Fazio 1984).
The same relation was evident in the present data set.
Faster response times were associated with more extreme ratings. The within-subject correlation between response latency and attitude extremity
reached a level of significance for 46 percent of the
subjects. The mean correlation across subjects was
-0.18 (/(lOO) = 11.47, p< 0.001). As a result of this
relation, it was necessary that all tests of the hypothesis regarding the moderating role of attitude accessibility be conducted in a manner that did not confound attitude accessibility and attitude extremity.
Both within-subject and between-subject analyses
were conducted. In both cases, the analysis that was
performed examined the impact of accessibility as
measured by response latency while considering
equivalent attitude scores.
Within-Subjects Analysis
To overcome the naturally existing relation between attitude accessibility and extremity, the withinsubjects analysis focused upon any two or more target
products for which a given subject had assigned the
same attitude scalar rating. We restricted ourselves to
these attitudinal "ties" to ensure that the role of attitude accessibility was examined in a manner that was
independent of attitude scores. For each subject, the
proportion of ties for which the subject's behavior
concurred with a prediction based upon the subject's
response latencies was determined. According to the
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ATTITUDE ACCESSIBILITY
hypothesis, subjects with highly accessible attitudes
should behave more consistently than those with less
accessible attitudes. Thus, for any ties at positions
more positive than the neutral point, we predicted
that the subject would either select the product associated with the faster response latency before selecting
the other product or select the former product and not
the latter. The prediction was reversed for any ties at
attitudinal positions more negative than the neutral
point. Any ties at the neutral point were not included
in the analysis. Averaged across the 100 subjects with
analyzable ties, the proportion of instances confirming the predictions was 0.59, significantly greater than
the value of 0.50 expected by chance alone, (/(99)
= 3.09, ;;< 0.0025).
Between-Subjects Analyses
The between-subjects analyses involved classifying
subjects into groups of high, moderate, and low attitude accessibility for each product. As in the Fazio
and Williams (1986) study, this group assignment was
performed at each and every level of the attitude scale
to avoid confounding attitude scores with attitude accessibility. For example, the subsample of subjects
who had assigned a rating of 7 (extremely good) to a
given target product were trichotomized on the basis
of their accessibility scores into high, moderate, and
low groups. The subsamples who had rated the product 6, 5, and so on were similarly trichotomized. This
classification procedure was performed anew for each
of the 10 target products. In this way, the attitude distributions for any given product were equivalent in
the high, moderate, and low attitude accessibility
groups.
Unlike the Fazio and Williams (1986) investigation, however, attitude accessibility was not indexed
simply by raw response latency. Instead, the accessibility measure employed for classification purposes
was the z-score of a given subject's response latency
for a given target product relative to that subject's
mean and standard deviation of the latencies for the
90 filler products. This within-subject z-score serves
to place a given subject's latency of response to a
given object within his or her distribution of latencies
for the filler products (see Fazio forthcoming for a discussion of indices of baseline speed of responding).
This change was necessitated by the fact that interitem correlations among the 10 response latencies
were substantial (average r = 0.42), whereas interitem correlations in the Fazio and Williams investigation were quite minimal (average r = 0.19; see Footnote 1 of Fazio and Williams 1986).' The use of raw
'Why the two studies differed in this regard is not clear. However,
one difference in the attitude accessibility measurement procedures
employed in the two studies is worth noting. The Fazio and Williams (1986) investigation involved subjects responding to an au-
latency in the present case would have led to the consistent classification of individuals with tendencies to
respond quickly to any inquiry as high accessibility
subjects.
In one of the analyses that was conducted, behavior
was coded on a 0 to 5 scale, with products that were
not selected by a given subject being assigned a score
of 0 and the product that was selected first a score of 5.
The remaining products were assigned intermediate
scores indicative of the order of selection. For each
product, the correlation between attitude and behavior was computed within the high, moderate, and low
accessibility groups. These correlations were analyzed, following a Fisher's r-to-z transformation, via
an a priori polynomial contrast examining whether
they displayed a significant linear trend as a function
of level of attitude accessibility. This prediction was
confirmed (F( 1,9) = 8.01, p < 0.02).^ Averaged across
the 10 products, the mean correlations (following a
retransformation of the average zs back to rs) were
0.62, 0.54, and 0.50 for the high, moderate, and low
attitude accessibility groups, respectively.
The analysis involved the scoring of behavior as a
function of order of selection and, thus, assumes that
subjects chose first their most preferred alternative,
then their second most preferred item, and so on. The
data also were analyzed with behavior coded dichotomously as a function of whether the product was or
was not selected. This analysis also confirmed the prediction. The mean correlations were 0.61, 0.59, and
0.51 in the high, moderate, and low attitude accessibility groups, respectively, and, as in the previous
analysis, revealed a linear trend (F(l,9) = 5.09,
p = 0.051).
Thus, regardless of how the data are examined, the
findings converge upon the notion that attitude accessibility moderated the attitude-behavior relation. The
more accessible a subject's attitude was toward a
given product, the more likely it was that product selection behavior was consistent with that attitude.
Position EfFects
As was mentioned earlier, the attitude-to-behavior
process model views behavior as a function of the indiotaped statement, the end of which contained the electronic
marker that initiated the timing. In contrast, the present study involved displaying the name of an object on a computer screen, the
onset of which initiated the timing. The time necessary to read the
visual display may have enhanced the amount of covariation observed. Reading time may be a fairly constant individual difference
that formed a component of each response latency.
^Given the small number of units of analysis involved in this statistical test, i.e., the 10 products, it seemed desirable to also examine the data nonparametrically. The data were analyzed via the
Page test for ordered alternatives (Page 1963; Seigel and Castellan
1988), which did reveal a significant linear trend. The same was
true of all additional linear trends reported here.
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dividual's perceptions of the object in the immediate
situation. A highly accessible attitude is likely to be
activated from memory automatically and is presumed to determine this immediate perception of the
object. In contrast, an attitude that is relatively low in
accessibility is less likely to be activated upon observation of the object. As a result of low accessibility,
the immediate perception is likely to be influenced by
momentarily salient features of the object.
This hypothesized greater influence of a momentarily salient dimension for objects associated with a
relatively inaccessible attitude than for objects associated with a highly accessible attitude was apparent in
a rather surprising fashion in subjects' selection behavior. The 10 products were arranged in two rows of
five for the subjects' viewing and selection.' On the
assumption that the products positioned in the front
row were more salient than those in the back row, we
suggest that the selection of a given product will be
more influenced by row status if the attitude is low in
accessibility than if its accessibility is high. The data
revealed precisely this pattern. Among the products
in the front row (Snickers, Mounds, peanuts, Dentyne, and tuna), the lower the accessibility of their attitudes, the greater the likelihood that subjects selected the product. Indeed, across these products, the
average proportion of subjects who selected the product was 0.55, 0.59, and 0.59 in the high, moderate,
and low accessibility groups. For products in the back
row, the reverse was true. The lower the accessibility
of the attitude, the less likely subjects were to select
the product (average proportions of 0.50, 0.46, and
0.40 for the high, moderate, and low groups, respectively). The row effects—the difference between the
mean proportion of subjects who selected a product
positioned in the front row and the mean proportion
who selected an alternative that had been positioned
in the back row—were 0.05, 0.13, and 0.19 for the
high, moderate, and low attitude accessibility groups,
respectively. Analysis of these data indicated that the
row effects constituted a significant linear trend
) = 5.96,/? < 0.05)."
^Products were arranged randomly at the beginning of the experiment and then fixed across subjects. As a result, an overall preference for front-row products over back-row products (analogous to
a main effect) may reflect either the influence of row status and/
or the products themselves. Obviously, no clear inferences can be
drawn from data reflecting an overall preference for the products
in one row over the products in the other row. However, this confounding does not affect our ability to examine the degree to which
the exhibited preference for front-row products relates to the level
of attitude accessibility (conceptually analogous to an interaction
effect).
•"The actual analysis was performed on scores for each product
that represented the proportion of subjects who selected the product if it had been in the front row and the proportion who did not
select it if the product had been in the back row. A greater influence
of row status would be apparent if these scores increased linearly as
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Thus, the lower the attitude accessibility, the more
selection behavior was influenced by the relative salience afforded a product by its positioning. In contrast, the linear trends presented earlier with respect
to attitude-behavior correlations suggest that the
greater the attitude accessibility, the more selection
behavior was influenced by the attitude.
DISCUSSION
The Role of Attitude Accessibility
The present findings are consistent with the hypothesis that attitude accessibility exerts a moderating role upon the attitude-behavior relation, just as is
postulated by the process model. The more accessible
the attitude, the more predictive it was of subsequent
behavior. Furthermore, this evidence was obtained in
a situation involving actual behavior as opposed to
self-reports of behavior. Subjects chose, took home,
and presumably consumed the products. Thus, the
data are very consistent with the attitude-to-behavior
process model.
When interpreted within the context of the process
model, the findings suggest that subjects scanned the
set of available alternatives and arrived at immediate
perceptions of each (or at least some subset) of the
products. In the case of objects for which a strong
evaluative associate existed in memory, this evaluation was activated automatically from memory upon
the subject's observation of the object. That is, observation of the object automatically activated the attitude from memory if the chronic accessibility of the
attitude, as estimated by a relatively fast latency of
response to an earlier attitudinal inquiry, was high.
Such activated attitudes strongly determined the subject's feelings toward the object in the immediate situation. If the object-evaluation association for a given
product was weak and, hence, the chronic accessibility of the attitude was relatively low, then the immediate perception was likely to be influenced by momentarily salient thoughts or features of the object. The
data suggest that the perception of such objects was
affected by the greater salience afforded an object positioned in the front row as opposed to the back row.
Other momentarily salient factors that might have
operated include product attributes that were recalled
accessibility decreased, which, as reported, they did (mean proportions of 0.52,0.56, and 0.60 for the high, moderate, and low accessibility groups). For ease of understanding, the data are presented in
the text in terms of row effects, i.e., the difference in the proportion
of subjects who selected front-row versus back-row products.
Additional analyses on the frequency with which a given product
was selected revealed that level of attitude accessibility was independent of the specific products that were positioned in each row.
The data did not display any appreciable deviations from the overall linear trend that was apparent for the front-row (x^(8) = 4.15, p
> 0.25) or back-row products (x^(8) = 1.34, p > 0.25).
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ATTITUDE ACCESSIBILITY
from memory, how thirsty or hungry the subject was,
how recently the subject had eaten a particular food
(e.g., a candy bar), what snack foods the subject recalled as having stored at home, and the like. In any
case, such factors appear to exert a greater influence
when the individual's attitude toward a given object
is unlikely to have been activated automatically upon
observation of the object than when the attitude is
highly accessible from memory and capable of automatic activation.
Product Positioning and the
Consideration Set
The differential influence of row status as a function of attitude accessibility is clearly evident from
the data. The precise mechanisms through which this
influence occurred is less clear. One possibility concerns the potential influence of salient positioning on
the likelihood that a given alternative will receive
much consideration in the selection process. Consumer behavior researchers have distinguished the
"evoked" or "consideration" set—those alternatives
that are actually considered for potential selection—
from the pool of alternatives that are available (e.g..
Baker etai. 1986; Howard and Sheth 1969). Although
the present investigation did not involve the collection of any data relevant to the question of which
items constituted an individual's consideration set,
the observed influence of both attitude accessibility
and position may have operated at the level of inclusion or exclusion from the consideration set.
For ease of discussion, imagine two individuals,
one of whom (A) holds highly accessible attitudes toward some subset of the 10 alternatives and one of
whom (B) does not have highly accessible attitudes
toward any of the alternatives. When scanning the
items, individual A may especially notice, and attend
to, those products toward which s/he has a highly accessible attitude because the affective associate to the
object will be activated automatically from memory
upon observation of the object. Indeed, some very recent research indicates that objects toward which an
individual holds highly accessible attitudes, be they
positively or negatively valenced, are more likely to
be noticed when presented in the visual field than are
objects toward which the individual holds less accessible attitudes. Roskos-Ewoldsen and Fazio (1989)
found support for this hypothesis in two investigations, one of which involved the measurement of attitude accessibility via response latency (as in the present study) and one of which involved the experimental manipulation of attitude accessibility.
Thus, these data suggest that our hypothetical individual A will quickly and easily notice those products
concerning which accessible attitudes are held even if
those items are positioned in the relatively disadvantageous back row (see Alba and Hutchinson 1987 for
a related discussion of the likelihood of product detection). Any products within this subset that are negatively valued will be quickly rejected from inclusion
in the consideration set. In other words, the perception or appraisal of the product in the immediate situation, determined as it is by the negative attitude activated from memory, will lead to its rejection. In contrast, those products that are both positively valued
and characterized by high attitude accessibility are
likely to be included in individual A's consideration set.
Construction of the consideration set may proceed
quite differently for our hypothetical individual B.
Lacking highly accessible attitudes, this individual's
attention is unlikely to be attitudinally guided. Those
products enjoying the relative salience afforded them
by their position in the front row are more likely to
be included in the consideration set than are those positioned in the back row. Thus, the probabilities that
individual B will select a front-row product over a
back-row product may be enhanced. Obviously, the
role of attitude accessibility and product salience in
defining the consideration set merits further investigation.
The Attitude Accessibility Measure
Our interpretation of the attitude-behavior consistency data rests on the validity of response latency to
an attitudinal inquiry as a measure of the chronic accessibility of the attitude. As indicated earlier, evidence regarding such validity is provided by previous
research (Fazio et al. 1986) demonstrating that this
measure relates to the likelihood of automatic activation of the attitude upon exposure to the object.
Those objects for which an individual could respond
relatively quickly to a direct attitudinal query also
were likely to activate the attitude from memory
upon their mere presentation. In contrast, objects for
which response latencies to an inquiry were slow
showed little evidence of producing automatic attitudinal evaluation upon their presentation.
Although we can be confident that the latency measure reflects the chronic accessibility of the attitude,
it must be recognized that the present investigation
is correlational in nature. Attitude accessibility was
measured and not manipulated. Thus, whatever dimensions are naturally associated with attitude accessibility may have contributed to the differences that
were observed with respect to attitude-behavior consistency. For example, familiarity may moderate the
attitude-behavior relation. Because the present correlational investigation involved the measurement of
attitude accessibility and because objects with which
individuals are familiar are likely to be ones toward
which they have accessible attitudes, the distinct
moderating influences of attitude accessibility and familiarity cannot be ascertained from the present data.
286
However, two counterpoints should be noted. First,
experimental work in which attitude accessibility was
manipulated directly, by varying the number of times
that subjects expressed their attitudes, has indicated
a causal impact of attitude accessibility upon both attitude-behavior consistency (Fazio etai. 1982, Experiment 4) and attitude-judgment consistency (Houston and Fazio 1989). Although further experimental
research is undoubtedly needed to isolate the causal
influence of attitude accessibility, this finding does
bolster our confidence that the present results are not
due solely to the common dependence of attitude accessibility and attitude-behavior consistency on some
third variable, such as familiarity.
Second, we should note, as did Fazio and Williams
(1986), what we view as the primary advantage of focusing upon attitude accessibility as opposed to some
other strength-related dimension of attitude, such as
confidence in one's attitude (e.g., Fazio and Zanna
1978), the manner of attitude formation (e.g., Fazio
and Zanna 1981), affective-cognitive consistency
(e.g., Norman 1975), or amount of information about
the attitude object (e.g., Davidson et al. 1985). Unlike
other indicants of attitude strength, the construct of
attitude accessibility operates at an information-processing level of analysis. As a result, it is much more
clearly relevant to the issue of the process by which
attitudes guide behavior. Although other indicants of
the strength of an attitude may be associated with attitude accessibility and, hence, with our classification
of subjects in the present study, the construct of attitude accessibility has clear implications with respect
to the basic mechanisms involved in the production
of attitude-consistent behavior.
Indeed, it has been postulated that various identified moderators of the attitude-behavior relation may
exert their impact because they reflect the strength of
the object-evaluation association and, hence, the accessibility of the attitude (Fazio 1986). This has been
demonstrated with respect to one such moderator—
the manner of attitude formation. Attitudes based
upon direct behavioral experience with the object
have been found to be both more predictive of later
behavior (Fazio and Zanna 1981) and more accessible from memory (Fazio et al. 1982, 1983) than attitudes based upon indirect experience. Similar evidence has been obtained with respect to the moderating variables of personal importance of the attitude
issue (Krosnick forthcoming) and of individual
differences in self-monitoring tendencies (Kardes et
al. 1986). The same may hold true for other variables
that have been identified as moderators of the attitude-behavior relation. If so, the construct of attitude
accessibility and the process model may provide a
conceptual framework for integrating this set of moderators and for understanding how and why they influence attitude-behavior consistency.
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Affect Referral
The attitude-behavior process model bears some
similarity to Wright's (1975) theoretical statements
regarding what he terms affect referral. Affect referral
is a decision-making strategy in which the individual
avoids reviewing any specific attribute information
concerning the alternatives, but instead relies upon
previously formed, global affective judgments of the
alternatives. Although Wright did not detail any
mechanisms or process by which such affect referral
occurs, the affect referral strategy that he mentions is
one that our model obviously endorses. Indeed, the
model can be viewed as specifying the mechanism underlying, and the conditions necessary for, such affect
referral. Position along the attitude/non-attitude
continuum dictates the extent to which an affect referral strategy is possible. A strong object-evaluation
association in memory and, hence, a highly accessible
attitude is a prerequisite for such affect referral. In
such a case, the attitude will be activated from memory and influence, if not completely determine, the
individual's appraisal of the object in the immediate
situation. The sparser the immediate environment is
with respect to the availability of new information
about the attitude object, the less critical the selective
processing component ofour model becomes. In a situation in which no new information is presented (as
in the present investigation), the selective processing
amounts to an effortless application of the attitude
stored in memory as one's appraisal of the object in
the immediate situation—much as Wright appears to
mean by his affect referral strategy. With a highly accessible attitude, the immediate appraisal is more
likely to be congruent with the attitude stored in
memory than it is when a relatively inaccessible attitude is involved. Active construction of an immediate
appraisal is not necessary.
In contrast, the selective processing component assumes more importance in an environment that is information rich. When the situation makes new information about the object available (as in the Fazio and
Williams voting behavior study or in an ongoing social interaction), interpretations of this information
will be colored by an activated attitude. As a consequence of what is potentially extensive selective processing in this case, immediate appraisals are more
likely to be congruent with attitudes among individuals whose attitudes are highly accessible than among
individuals whose attitudes are not. Thus, the extent
of selective processing depends upon the degree to
which the situation provides new information. In either case, the attitude-behavior process model points
to the importance of correspondence between perceptions of the object in the immediate situation and attitudes toward the object. Such correspondence is more
likely when the attitude involves a strong object-evaluation association and is capable of automatic activa-
ATTITUDE ACCESSIBILITY
tion from memory upon mere observation of the object.
Final Implications
The findings from the present investigation, as well
as our discussion of them, attest to the relevance of
the attitude-behavior process model to the consumer
behavior domain. The accessibility of an attitude
from memory does appear to moderate the extent to
which that attitude guides product selection behavior. A major implication of this finding concerns the
role of advertising as a social influence agent intended
to promote the desired consumer behavior. Apparently, inducing a positive attitude toward the brand is
not in and of itself sufficient to have much influence
upon consumer behavior. The general suggestion
offered by the model and the present findings is that
the desired behavior is most likely to occur if the attitude is highly accessible from memory. Thus, if the
goal of advertising is to influence purchase behavior,
then one needs to be concerned not only with the valence of the resulting attitude but also with its accessibility from memory (see Herr and Fazio 1988 for a
more general discussion of this issue). How social influence attempts can be designed to accomplish this
end constitutes an important challenge for the future.
[Received August 1988. Revised May 1989.]
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