Which Comes First?

An interesting phenomena discovered by social scientist was a revelation that, at first, seemed counter-intuitive. It was commonly believed that to know a person’s attitude on certain subjects and situations was to be able to reliably predict their actions. To know “John” hated ice cream would allow you to predict how John would behave when offered ice cream, right?

Well, what the experts were astonished to find was that attitudes do not account for actions very well at all. In fact, the general rule discovered was that attitude accounts for 10% of the variance of behaviour, meaning you are still uncertain what an individual will do 9 out of 10 times.

With a title like that, where am I going, you ask? Hang on…

Now, what I find the most interesting is, in fact, behaviour generally leads to attitude change - completely fascinating. Once John eats ice cream, even after proffessing abhorrence for the stuff, John is very likely to change his feelings about ice cream. A simple example, one that could be eplained different ways, but this phenomenon is a proven relationship; behaviour causes attitudes.

So, if action feeds attitude, can laws change your own ardent view point? Can your strongly and deeply held belief actually be circumvented by legislation? Results from the laboratory and history resoundingly say yes.

[via Canadian Steele]