The Role of Attitude Accessibility in the Attitude-to-Behavior Process

Author(s): Russell H. Fazio, Martha C. Powell, Carol J. Williams

Source: The Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 16, No. 3, (Dec., 1989), pp. 280-288
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2489509
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The Role of Attitude Accessibility in the
Process
Attitude-to-Behavior

RUSSELL H. FAZIO
MARTHAC. 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 inquirywere assessed. Sub-
jects with highly accessible attitudes toward a given product displayed greater atti-
tude-behavior correspondence than did those with relatively less accessible atti-
tudes. Furthermore, subjects with less accessible attitudes displayed more sensi-
tivity to the salience afforded a product by its position in the front row, as opposed
to the back row, than did subjects Withmore 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 researchon consumer behavior (e.g.,
Engel and Blackwell 1982; Kassarjianand Kassarjian
1979). In part, the attention given to the attitude con-
struct stems from the fact that much advertising can
be describedas social influence attempts aimed at cre-
ating positive attitudes toward the product. Indeed,
considerable research has been concerned with un-
derstandingthis 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 posi-
tive attitudes will produce a correspondingchange in
behavior. As a result, consumer research also has
been concerned with understanding the relation be-
tween attitudes and subsequent behavior (e.g., Day
and Deutscher 1982; Ryan and Bonfield 1975; Smith
and Swinyard 1983). It is this attitude-behaviorrela-
tion 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 behaviorin any given situation as a func-
*RussellH. Fazio is Professorof Psychology,and MarthaC. Pow-
ell and CarolJ. Williamsare ResearchAssistants,all in the Depart-
ment of Psychology,Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405.
This article was preparedwhile the first author was supportedby
the National Institute of Mental Health ResearchScientist Devel-
opment AwardMH00452. The researchwas supportedby a grant
from the Ogilvy Center for Research and Development. The au-
thors thank ClarkLeavitt and AlexanderBiel of the Ogilvy Center
for theirhelpfulconsultationwhile the researchwas being designed
and David Sanbonmatsufor his assistancein data collection. Por-
tions of these data werepresentedat the 1986 Association for Con-
sumerResearchAnnual Conferencein Toronto.
280
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 apprais-
als 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 postu-
lated to act as a critical determinant of whether the
attitude-to-behaviorprocess is initiated. Various as-
pects of the model have received empirical support
from both correlational and experimental investiga-
tions 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 researchwas to assess the general-
ity of the model to a consumer behavior domain. The
research focuses upon the relation between attitudes
toward specific products and product-selection be-
havior.
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 et al. 1986) have de-
fined this continuum in terms of the strength of the
association in memory between the object and the in-
dividual'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 ex-
press an attitude, the individual needs to construct
one on the spot. Such constructions presumablywill
involve some assessment of attributes of the object
? JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH * Vol. 16 0 December 1989
ATTITUDE ACCESSIBILITY
that are recalledfrom memory and/or apparentin 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 ob-
ject-and hence the accessibility of the attitude-in-
creases. At the upper end of the continuum is a well-
learned, strong association-sufficiently strong that
the evaluation is capable of automatic activation
from memory upon mere observation or mention of
the object. Attitude-behaviorconsistency 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
hypothesizedmoderatingrole 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-reportedvoting be-
havior 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 relativelyquickly (the high atti-
tude accessibility group) displayed greater consis-
tency between those attitudes and subsequent voting
behavior than did individuals who responded rela-
tively slowly (the low attitude accessibility group).
In addition to examining the applicability of the
model to product-selection behavior, the present re-
searchwas intended to addressan unavoidable short-
coming of the voting behavior study-the self-report
nature of the behavior measure. As in any investiga-
tion of choices made within the confines of a voting
booth, Fazio and Williams (1986) were forced to rely
upon participants'reportsof 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 dis-
cern any plausible explanation for how such self-re-
ports might have been biased by both the attitude ex-
pressed months earlier and the accessibility of the at-
titude, the shortcoming of this method of observing
the attitude-to-behavior relation cannot be denied.
The present investigation concerned actual overt be-
havior. Subjects selected items from a set of products
arrangedon a table. These selections, which subjects
took home as "a token of our appreciation" for their
having participated in the study, constituted the be-
havioralmeasure.
The presentinvestigation involves, as did the Fazio
and Williams (1986) study, measurement of attitude
accessibility via latency of response to an attitudinal
281
inquiry. Hence, it is important to review briefly what
is known about the validity of this measureas an indi-
cation of the accessibility of attitudes and their posi-
tion along the attitude/non-attitude continuum.
First, the latency measure has been found to reflect
what has been postulated to be the conceptual vari-
able that determinesthe chronic accessibility of an at-
titude-namely, the strength of the association be-
tween the object and the evaluation. A number of ex-
periments have manipulated the strength of this
object-evaluation association by having subjects ex-
press their attitudes repeatedly. This researchhas in-
dicated that such repeated expression enhances the
speed with which individuals respond to later inqui-
ries concerning their attitudes (Fazio et al. 1982; Pow-
ell 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 automati-
cally upon mere observation of the object. It has been
demonstratedthat 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 characterizedby rela-
tively slow latencies of response to an attitudinal in-
quiry (Fazio et al. 1986). Sanbonmatsu and Fazio
( 1986) observedthe 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
strengthof the object-evaluation association and pro-
vides an indication of the likelihood that the attitude
will be activated spontaneously upon one's encoun-
tering the object.
Subjectsin the present study responded to attitudi-
nal inquiries concerning a large number of products.
A subset of these products servedas the targetattitude
objects and subsequently were made available as be-
havioral alternatives. According to the process
model, these behavioral selections should be a func-
tion 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 auto-
matically upon the individual's observationof the ob-
ject is apt to result in immediate perceptions that are
congruent with the attitude. In contrast, when the at-
titude is not activated from memory, immediate per-
ceptions are less likely to be influenced by a pre-
viously constructed evaluation that is available in
memory. Instead, these immediate appraisals are
likely to be based upon momentarily salient and po-
tentially unrepresentative features (memory-based
and/or stimulus-based)of the object that are not nec-
essarily evaluated in a manner congruent with the at-
titude. As a result, greater attitude-behavior consis-
282
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 fulfill-
ment of an introductory psychology course require-
ment. The remaining subjects responded to an ad
placed in the local newspaperand participatedin re-
turn for monetary payment.
Procedure
Subjects were informed that the experiment con-
cerned a new way of measuringattitudes via a micro-
computer. Their initial task involved responding to
each of 100 attitude objects, all of which were familiar
and commonly available products. The subjects were
instructedto pressone of two 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 con-
trolled by an Apple II+ computer. The orderin which
the objects were presented was randomized for each
subject. A three-second interval separatedeach trial.
The subject's response was recorded, along with the
latency of the response (from stimulus onset to re-
sponse) to the nearest millisecond. To familiarize
subjects with the procedure, subjects performed a se-
ries of practicetrialsinvolving differentproductsthan
those used in the actual experimental list.
Following the computerized task, subjects com-
pleted a number of questionnaires, only the first of
which was relevant to the present purposes. The sub-
jects provideda scalarattitudinal ratingof each of the
100 objects. These ratings were made on a 1 (ex-
tremely bad) to 7 (extremely good) scale.
Behavior Measure
As their final task, subjectswere given the opportu-
nity to select five products from a set of 10 alterna-
tives. The 10 products, which had been roughly
equated for perceived value throughinformal pretest-
ing, were a Snickers candy bar, a small bag of Fritos
corn chips, two boxes of Sun-Maidraisins, a small can
of Star-Kist tuna, a can of Dr. Pepper, a box of
CrackerJacks, 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 ta-
blecloth.
At the appropriatetime, the experimenterremoved
the tablecloth and told the subject to choose five of
THE JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH
the items as a "token of our appreciation"for having
participated. The experimenter unobtrusively re-
corded 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 dichoto-
mous response during the computerized task was in-
consistent with the subsequent scalar rating, it was
considered an error. An error was defined as a sub-
ject's responding "like" during the computerized la-
tency task but rating the product more 'negatively
than the neutral point on the questionnaire scale, or
responding "dislike" during the computer task but
assigninga ratingabove the neutralpoint on the scale.
Such errorswere infrequent. On the average,subjects
responded inconsistently on 7.3 percent of the 100
trials. The particulardatum from any trial on which
an erroroccurredwas omitted from the analysis.
Previous research on attitude accessibility has ob-
served a relation between attitude accessibility, as
measured by latency of response to an attitudinal in-
quiry, 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 ex-
treme ratings. The within-subject correlation be-
tween response latency and attitude extremity
reached a level of significance for 46 percent of the
subjects. The mean correlation across subjects was
-0.18 (t(100) = I 1.47, p < 0.00). As a result of this
relation, it was necessarythat all tests of the hypothe-
sis regardingthe moderating role of attitude accessi-
bility be conducted in a manner that did not con-
found 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 be-
tween attitude accessibility and extremity, the within-
subjectsanalysis focused upon any two or more target
products for which a given subject had assigned the
same attitude scalarrating. We restrictedourselves to
these attitudinal "ties" to ensure that the role of atti-
tude 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
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 subjectwould either select the productassoci-
ated with the faster response latency before selecting
the other product or select the formerproduct 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. Averagedacross the 100 subjects with
analyzable ties, the proportion of instances confirm-
ing the predictionswas 0.59, significantlygreaterthan
the value of 0.50 expected by chance alone, (t(99)
= 3.09, p < 0.0025).
Between-SubjectsAnalyses
The between-subjectsanalyses involved classifying
subjects into groups of high, moderate, and low atti-
tude accessibility for each product. As in the Fazio
and Williams (1986) study, this group assignmentwas
performedat each and every level of the attitude scale
to avoid confounding attitude scores with attitude ac-
cessibility. 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 prod-
uct 6, 5, and so on were similarly trichotomized. This
classificationprocedurewas performedanew for each
of the 10 targetproducts. In this way, the attitude dis-
tributions for any given product were equivalent in
the high, moderate, and low attitude accessibility
groups.
Unlike the Fazio and Williams (1986) investiga-
tion, however, attitude accessibility was not indexed
simply by raw response latency. Instead, the accessi-
bility 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 standarddeviation 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 fillerproducts(see Fazio forthcoming for a dis-
cussion of indices of baseline speed of responding).
This change was necessitated by the fact that inter-
item correlations among the. 10 response latencies
were substantial (average r = 0.42), whereas inter-
item correlationsin the Fazio and Williams investiga-
tion were quite minimal (average r = 0.19; see Foot-
note 1 of Fazio and Williams 1986).1 The use of raw
IWhy the two studiesdifferedin this regardis not clear. However,
one differencein the attitudeaccessibilitymeasurementprocedures
employed in the two studies is worth noting. The Fazio and Wil-
liams (1986) investigation involved subjects respondingto an au-
283
latency in the present case would have led to the con-
sistent classification of individuals with'tendenciesto
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 firsta score of 5.
The remaining products were assigned intermediate
scores indicative of the order of selection. For each
product, the correlation between attitude and behav-
ior was computed within the high, moderate, and low
accessibility groups. These correlations were ana-
lyzed, 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).2 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 preferredalternative,
then their second most preferreditem, and so on. The
data also were analyzed with behavior coded dichoto-
mously as a function of whether the product was or
was not selected. This analysis also confirmedthe pre-
diction. TJhemean correlations were 0.61, 0.59, and
0.51 in\the>high,moderate, and low attitude accessi-
bility groups, respectively, and, as in the previous
analysis, revealed a linear trend (F( 1,9) = 5.09,
p = 0.051).
Thus, regardlessof how the data are examined, the
findingsconverge upon the notion that attitude acces-
sibility moderatedthe attitude-behaviorrelation. The
more accessible a subject's attitude was toward a
given product, the more likely it was that product se-
lection 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 in-
diotaped statement, the end of which contained the electronic
markerthat initiated the timing. In contrast, the present study in-
volved displayingthe name of an object on a computerscreen, the
onset of which initiated the timing. The time necessaryto readthe
visual display may have enhanced the amount of covariation ob-
served.Readingtime may be a fairlyconstant individualdifference
that formeda component of each responselatency.
2Giventhe small numberof units of analysisinvolved in this sta-
tistical test, i.e., the 10 products,it seemed desirableto also exam-
ine the data nonparametrically.The data were analyzed via the
Page test for orderedalternatives(Page 1963; Seigel and Castellan
1988), which did reveal a significant linear trend. The same was
true of all additionallineartrendsreportedhere.
284
dividual's perceptions of the object in the immediate
situation. A highly accessible attitude is likely to be
activated from memory automatically and is pre-
sumed 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 obser-
vation 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 momen-
tarily salient dimension for objects associated with a
relativelyinaccessible attitude than for objects associ-
ated with a highly accessible attitude was apparentin
a rather surprisingfashion in subjects' selection be-
havior. The 10 products were arrangedin two rows of
five for the subjects' viewing and selection.3 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, Den-
tyne, and tuna), the lower the accessibility of their at-
titudes, the greater the likelihood that subjects se-
lected the product. Indeed, across these products, the
averageproportion of subjectswho selected the prod-
uct 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, respec-
tively). 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
(F(1,9) = 5.96, p < 0.05).4
3Productswerearrangedrandomlyat the beginningof the experi-
ment and then fixed across subjects.As a result, an overall prefer-
ence for front-rowproductsover back-rowproducts(analogousto
a main effect) may reflect either the influence of row status and/
or the productsthemselves. Obviously, no clear inferences can be
drawn from data reflectingan overall preferencefor the products
in one row over the productsin the other row. However, this con-
foundingdoes not affectour ability to examine the degreeto which
the exhibited preferencefor front-rowproductsrelates to the level
of attitude accessibility(conceptually analogous to an interaction
effect).
4The actual analysis was performedon scores for each product
that representedthe proportionof subjectswho selected the prod-
uct if it had been in the front row and the proportionwho did not
select it if the producthad been in the back row. A greaterinfluence
of row statuswould be apparentif these scoresincreasedlinearlyas
THE JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH
Thus, the lower the attitude accessibility, the more
selection behavior was influenced by the relative sa-
lience afforded a product by its positioning. In con-
trast, 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 hy-
pothesis that attitude accessibility exerts a moderat-
ing role upon the attitude-behaviorrelation, 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 interpretedwithin the context of the process
model, the findings suggest that subjects scanned the
set of available alternatives and arrivedat 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 evalua-
tion was activated automatically from memory upon
the subject's observation of the object. That is, obser-
vation of the object automatically activated the atti-
tude 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 sub-
ject's feelings towardthe object in the immediate situ-
ation. If the object-evaluation association for a given
product was weak and, hence, the chronic accessibil-
ity of the attitude was relativelylow, then the immedi-
ate perception was likely to be influenced by momen-
tarily salient thoughts or features of the object. The
data suggest that the perception of such objects was
affectedby the greatersalience affordedan object po-
sitioned in the front row as opposed to the back row.
Other momentarily salient factors that might have
operatedinclude product attributesthat were recalled
accessibilitydecreased,which, as reported,they did (mean propor-
tions of 0.52, 0.56, and 0.60 forthe high, moderate,and low accessi-
bility groups).For ease of understanding,the data are presentedin
the text in terms of row effects,i.e., the differencein the proportion
of subjectswho selected front-rowversusback-rowproducts.
Additionalanalyseson the frequencywith which a given product
was selected revealed that level of attitude accessibility was inde-
pendent of the specificproductsthat were positioned in each row.
The data did not displayany appreciabledeviationsfrom the over-
all linear trend that was apparentfor the front-row(X2(8) = 4.15, p
> 0.25) or back-rowproducts(X2(8) = 1.34, p > 0.25).
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 re-
called 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 auto-
matic activation.
Product Positioning and the
Consideration Set
The differential influence of row status as a func-
tion of attitude accessibility is clearly evident from
the data. The precise mechanisms through which this
influence occurred is less clear. One possibility con-
cerns the potential influence of salient positioning on
the likelihood that a given alternative will receive
much consideration in the selection process. Con-
sumer 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.,
Bakeret al. 1986; Howardand Sheth 1969). Although
the present investigation did not involve the collec-
tion 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 inclu-
sion or exclusion from the consideration set.
For ease of discussion, imagine two individuals,
one of whom (A) holds highly accessible attitudes to-
ward 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 ac-
cessible attitude because the affective associate to the
object will be activated automatically from memory
upon observation of the object. Indeed, some very re-
cent researchindicates 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 acces-
sible attitudes. Roskos-Ewoldsen and Fazio (1989)
found support for this hypothesis in two investiga-
tions, one of which involved the measurement of atti-
tude accessibility via response latency (as in the pres-
ent study) and one of which involved the experimen-
tal manipulation of attitude accessibility.
Thus, these data suggestthat our hypothetical indi-
vidual A will quickly and easily notice those products
concerningwhich accessible attitudes are held even if
those items are positioned in the relatively disadvan-
tageous back row (see Alba and Hutchinson 1987 for
285
a related discussion of the likelihood of product de-
tection). Any productswithin this subset that are neg-
atively valued will be quickly rejected from inclusion
in the consideration set. In other words, the percep-
tion or appraisalof the product in the immediate situ-
ation, determined as it is by the negative attitude acti-
vated from memory, will lead to its rejection. In con-
trast, those products that are both positively valued
and characterized by high attitude accessibility are
likely to be included in individual A's considera-
tion 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 affordedthem
by their position in the front row are more likely to
be included in the consideration set than are those po-
sitioned 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 investi-
gation.
The Attitude Accessibility Measure
Our interpretation of the attitude-behaviorconsis-
tency data rests on the validity of response latency to
an attitudinal inquiry as a measure of the chronic ac-
cessibility of the attitude. As indicated earlier, evi-
dence regardingsuch validity is provided by previous
research (Fazio et al. 1986) demonstrating that this
measure relates to the likelihood of automatic activa-
tion 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 attitu-
dinal evaluation upon their presentation.
Although we can be confident that the latency mea-
sure 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 di-
mensions are naturallyassociated with attitude acces-
sibility may have contributed to the differences that
were observed with respect to attitude-behaviorcon-
sistency. For example, familiarity may moderate the
attitude-behaviorrelation. Because the present corre-
lational 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
moderatinginfluences of attitude accessibility and fa-
miliarity cannot be ascertainedfrom the present data.
286
However, two counterpoints should be noted. First,
experimentalwork in which attitude accessibility was
manipulated directly, by varyingthe number of times
that subjects expressed their attitudes, has indicated
a causal impact of attitude accessibility upon both at-
titude-behaviorconsistency (Fazio et al. 1982, Exper-
iment 4) and attitude-judgment consistency (Hous-
ton 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 ac-
cessibility and attitude-behaviorconsistency 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 fo-
cusing upon attitude accessibility as opposed to some
other strength-relateddimension 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-pro-
cessing 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 strengthof an attitude may be associated with atti-
tude accessibility and, hence, with our classification
of subjects in the present study, the construct of atti-
tude accessibility has clear implications with respect
to the basic mechanisms involved in the production
of attitude-consistentbehavior.
Indeed, it has been postulated that various identi-
fied moderatorsof the attitude-behaviorrelation may
exert their impact because they reflect the strength of
the object-evaluation association and, hence, the ac-
cessibility 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 accessi-
ble from memory (Fazio et al. 1982, 1983) than atti-
tudes based upon indirect experience. Similar evi-
dence has been obtained with respect to the moderat-
ing 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 atti-
tude-behaviorrelation. If so, the construct of attitude
accessibility and the process model may provide a
conceptual frameworkfor integratingthis set of mod-
erators and for understandinghow and why they in-
fluence attitude-behaviorconsistency.
THE JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH
Affect Referral
The attitude-behavior process model bears some
similarity to Wright's (1975) theoretical statements
regardingwhat he terms affect referral.Affect referral
is a decision-making strategyin 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 referralstrategythat he mentions is
one that our model obviously endorses. Indeed, the
model can be viewed as specifying the mechanism un-
derlying, and the conditions necessaryfor, such affect
referral. Position along the attitude/non-attitude
continuum dictates the extent to which an affect re-
ferral strategyis 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 mem-
ory and influence, if not completely determine, the
individual's appraisalof the object in the immediate
situation. The sparserthe immediate environment is
with respect to the availability of new information
about the attitude object, the less critical the selective
processingcomponent of our model becomes. In a sit-
uation 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 Wrightappearsto
mean by his affect referralstrategy. With a highly ac-
cessible attitude, the immediate appraisal is more
likely to be congruent with the attitude stored in
memory than it is when a relatively inaccessible atti-
tude is involved. Active construction of an immediate
appraisalis not necessary.
In contrast, the selective processing component as-
sumes more importance in an environment that is in-
formation rich. When the situation makes new infor-
mation about the object available (as in the Fazio and
Williams voting behavior study or in an ongoing so-
cial interaction), interpretations of this information
will be colored by an activated attitude. As a conse-
quence of what is potentially extensive selective pro-
cessing in this case, immediate appraisals are more
likely to be congruent with attitudes among individu-
als 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 ei-
ther case, the attitude-behaviorprocess model points
to the importance of correspondencebetween percep-
tions of the object in the immediate situation and atti-
tudes towardthe object. Such correspondenceis more
likely when the attitude involves a strong object-eval-
uation association and is capable of automatic activa-
ATTITUDE ACCESSIBILITY
tion from memory upon mere observation of the ob-
ject.
Final Implications
The findingsfrom the present investigation, as well
as our discussion of them, attest to the relevance of
the attitude-behaviorprocess 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 behav-
ior. A major implication of this finding concerns the
role of advertisingas a social influence agent intended
to promote the desired consumer behavior. Appar-
ently, inducing a positive attitude towardthe brandis
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 atti-
tude is highly accessible from memory. Thus, if the
goal of advertisingis to influence purchase behavior,
then one needs to be concerned not only with the va-
lence of the resultingattitude but also with its accessi-
bility from memory (see Herr and Fazio 1988 for a
more general discussion of this issue). How social in-
fluence 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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