Several investigators have also found that messages can be used to make attitudes more relevant to particular functions. La France and Boster (2001) found that the attitude functions in their study changed to become more experiential schematic and less experiential specific after exposure to a message that targeted the attitudes associated with the functions they measured. Hullett (2004) found that messages explicitly linking a particular attitude to a value can increase the value-relevance of a particular attitude. Theories integrating both the effects of functions on message processing and the effects of messages on the function(s) served by attitudes would formalize functional attitude theory and provide a degree of specificity and theoretical precision that would move it beyond being a mere approach to understanding attitudes.
Practical Challenges
Functional attitude theories suggest that in order to persuade someone, influencing agents must plot the cognitive structure of an attitude, determine the function(s) that the attitude serves, and tailor a message accordingly. The theory and technology necessary to perform these tasks effectively remain elusive. Cognitive structure is difficult to access; mapping it will prove more challenging. Advances in the technology of tailoring messages to the individual (Maibach, Maxfield, Ladin, & Slater, 1996) require that targets respond to lengthy questionnaires. Despite these difficulties, targeted research projects have the potential to enhance understanding of these features of the persuasion process.
Targeting functions provides a more precise means of tailoring messages to targets than previous approaches. Miller and Steinberg (1975) argue that to adapt a message to an audience one can use information about them that exists along a continuum ranging from broad cultural-level knowledge to individuating information about the target. A recent review of the tailoring research (Hawkins, Kreuter, Resnicow, Fishbein, & Dijkstra, 2008) suggests that the ideal way to tailor to the audience is to use individuating information and calls for more research on the processes involved that can make tailoring more effective. Research using attitude functions to tailor messages allows message targeting at more individuated level information.
The majority of the experiments that identify attitude functions as a means of tailoring persuasive messages examine attitude formation (e.g. Snyder & Debono, 1985). A small number have examined attitude change (e.g., Lavine & Snyder, 1996). None, however, have pursued attitude functions as a means of making attitudes more resistant to suasory appeals. Maio and Olson (1995) report that value-expressive attitudes have stronger value-attitude links than do attitudes that serve other functions (cf., Blankenship & Wegener, 2008). It may be that particular functions confer stronger resistance than others, for example, Katz (1960) suggested that ego-defensive attitudes may be particularly resistant to change because these functions are tied to one’s sense of self-esteem, which people are strongly motivated to protect. Research exploring the functions most likely to produce resistance, or the conditions under which any given function is most likely to result in decreased yielding, coupled with the means of changing those functions has the potential to provide a unique means of increasing resistance to persuasion.
Conclusion
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A logically coherent, comprehensive, and empirically predictive functional attitude theory remains one of the unfulfilled goals of early persuasion research. Although the theoretical and technical hurdles can be daunting, substantial conceptual and empirical progress has been made in the last two decades. Sustaining and building on these recent successes is pivotal if the promise of Smith and colleagues’ (1956) seminal work and Katz’s (1960) work is to be realized, and the study of the functional theory of attitudes is to become a linchpin of persuasion theory. Future advances of this sort would fulfill Plato’s recommendation that orators adapt their messages to the soul of their listener.
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CHAPTER 8
Reasoned Action Theory
Persuasion as Belief-Based Behavior Change
Marco Yzer
Introduction
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Almost 50 years after its inception, reasoned action theory continues to serve as a foundation for persuasion research. The popularity of the theory lies in its direct applicability to the question of how exposure to persuasive information leads to behavior change. Despite its wide use and long history, reasoned action is a dynamic theory with a number of unresolved issues. As this chapter will show, some of these issues reflect misconceptions of theoretical propositions or misuse of research recommendations, whereas others indicate opportunities for theoretical advancement.
Reasoned action theory explains behavior by identifying the primary determinants of behavior and the sources of these determinant variables, and by organizing the relations between these variables. The theory is marked by a sequence of reformulations that build on one another in a developmental fashion. These are the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985), and the integrative model of behavioral prediction (Fishbein, 2000). The theory’s current formulation, graphically displayed in Figure 8.1., is described as the reasoned action approach to explaining and changing behavior (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010). In this chapter I use the term reasoned action theory to refer to the current formulation of the theory and to propositions that apply to all formulations of the theory.
The objectives of this chapter are to make clear how reasoned action theory contributes to a better understanding of persuasion processes and outcomes, and to identify accomplishments of and opportunities for research in the reasoned action tradition. Because of its relevance for persuasion scholarship, I will first highlight the reasoned action hypothesis that behavior change originates from beliefs about the behavior. Next I will discuss key propositions within the historical context in which they were developed, issues related to conceptualization and operationalization of the theory’s components, and opportunities for future research. The range of issues included in this review addresses the decades-long time frame during which persuasion scholars have explicitly used core reasoned action concepts. The research I review here is illustrative rather than exhaustive, by necessity, as few other behavioral theories have generated more research.
Figure 8.1 Components of Reasoned Action Theory and Their Relations
The Reasoned Action Perspective on Persuasion
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Bel
iefs that people hold about a behavior play a central role in reasoned action explanations of behavior. In Fishbein and Ajzen’s (2010) words, “human social behavior follows reasonably and often spontaneously from the information or beliefs people possess about the behavior under consideration. These beliefs originate in a variety of sources, such as personal experience, formal education, radio, newspapers, TV, the Internet and other media, and interactions with family and friends. … No matter how beliefs associated with a given behavior are acquired, they serve to guide the decision to perform or not perform the behavior in question” (p. 20).
When people act on beliefs that they have formed about a behavior, they engage in a reasoned, but not necessarily rational process. For example, someone suffering from paranoid personality disorder may lock the door of his office because he believes that his colleagues are conspiring against him. This person acts in a reasoned manner on a belief, even though others would deem his belief irrational. Regardless whether beliefs are irrational, incorrect (because based on false information), or motivationally biased, once beliefs are formed they are the cognitive basis from which behavior reasonably follows (Blank & Hennessy, 2012; Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010).
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