Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

 THE LINK BETWEEN ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR 
Not surprisingly, attitudes infl uence behavior. The strength of the link between par-
ticular attitudes and behavior varies, of course, but generally people strive for con-
sistency between their attitudes and their behavior. Furthermore, people hold fairly 
consistent attitudes. For instance, you would probably not hold the attitude that 
vated, bored, or distracted, the nature of the message becomes less 
important, and peripheral factors become more critical (see Figure 1). 
Although both central route and peripheral route processing lead 
to attitude change, central route processing generally leads to 
stronger, more lasting attitude change. 
Are some people more likely than others to use central route 
processing rather than peripheral route processing? The answer is 
yes. People who have a high need for cognition, a person’s habitual 
level of thoughtfulness and cognitive activity, are more likely to 
employ central route processing. Consider the statements shown 
in Figure 2. People who agree with the fi rst two statements and 
disagree with the rest have a relatively high need for cognition 
(Cacioppo et al., 1996; Dai & Wang, 2007). 
People who have a high need for cognition enjoy thinking, 
philosophizing, and refl ecting on the world. Consequently, they 
tend to refl ect more on persuasive messages by using central route 
processing, and they are likely to be persuaded by complex, logical, 
and detailed messages. In contrast, those who have a low need for 
cognition become impatient when forced to spend too much time thinking about an 
issue. Consequently, they usually use peripheral route processing and are persuaded 
by factors other than the quality and detail of messages (Dollinger, 2003; VanOver-
walle & Siebler, 2005). (Also see the PsychWork box.)
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