Attitude-Behavior Consistency For Stigmatized Behaviour

Uses omnivorism and vegetarianism as examples of “non-stigmatized and stigmatized” behavior, respectively, and provides a comparison with smoking.

Studies behaviors that people engage in despite knowing that others disapprove of the behavior.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures implicit social cognition, including attitudes, stereotypes and self concept.

Experiment 1 dealt with smokers’ implicit attitudes toward smoking (not addressed herein).

Experiment 2 examined implicit and explicit attitudes toward vegetarianism, considered to be a nonstigmatized behavior.

Vegetarians identified more with, had more favorable attitudes toward non-meat proteins, while omnivores identified with, and had more favorable attitudes toward meat.

Vegetarians preferred other protein to white meat and omnivores preferred white meat to other proteins.

In sum, vegetarians and omnivores both showed cognitive consistency between self identification, attitudes, and behavior at the implicit and explicitly levels.

The implicit and explicit attitudes of vegetarians and omnivores were moderately or strongly related.