Attitudes, Personality and Behavior (2nd Edition)

Editorial Reviews. About the Author. Icek Aizen is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (USA). He has published.
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Any item with "FREE Shipping" label on the search and the product detail page is eligible and contributes to your free shipping order minimum. You can get the remaining amount to reach the Free shipping threshold by adding any eligible item to your cart. Why do people say one thing and do another? Why do people behave inconsistently from one situation to another? How do people translate their beliefs and feelings into actions?

This thoroughly revised and updated edition describes why and how beliefs, attitudes and personality traits influence human. This thoroughly revised and updated edition describes why and how beliefs, attitudes and personality traits influence human behaviour. Building on the strengths of the previous edition, it covers recent developments in existing theories and details new theoretical approaches to the attitude-behaviour relationships.

These novel developments provide insight into the predictability - and unpredictability - of human behaviour. As McGuire points out, this mediational principle in itself does not allow one to make any confident predictions, only to call our attention to the complexity of the undertaking. And complex it has proven. Typically only about five or ten percent of the total variance in buyer behavior has been accounted for by personality construct measures. But as Kassarjian concludes his review of research in personality and consumer behavior, to expect the influence of personality variables to account for a large portion of the variance is most certainly asking too much.

He lays a good deal of this blame at the feet of the many other interrelated influences on the consumer decision process. Other explanations for this low accountability have been offered. Nakanishi finds that both Kassarjian and Jacoby attribute this uncertain predictive ability to either the lack of a proper hypothesis to test or sloppy adaptation of an otherwise clinical measurement of personality.

Returning to Engel et al.


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He therefore feels role tends to be more useful than personality in predicting and influencing human behavior. Yet one of the four roles he finds important to the marketing communicator family decision making unit, those of husband or wife Engel et al. They offer the example of wives who have a strong need for love and affection generally having less influence in purchasing decisions. One seems to be traveling on a Moebius Strip. A more rational explanation is perhaps to be found in Rosenblatt and Miller While many researchers evaluate response to some social event e.

Personality becomes confounded with the message or source: And there are scale problems other than those of the personality measurement instrument. As discussed below, in addition to confounding in communications, there may be confounding in attitude and behavior.

Catalog Record: Attitudes, personality and behavior | Hathi Trust Digital Library

Beyond any possible problems in research design, however it is the purpose of this paper to discount many of the explanations offered above, and to suggest that the reasons for the low accountability and conflicting results to date of research in personality and behavior are: Personality implies a whole , not a string of independent personality traits. Why should it be surprising that a single personality trait, which may co-vary in a multitude of ways with other traits, fails to contribute on its own much to the prediction of a specific consumer behavior such as a brand or product choice.

It makes far better sense to consider a profile of personality, one that reflects the interactions of various personality traits. As McGuire has pointed out, any chronic personality trait that tends to make an individual extremely resistant say or extremely receptive to a particular influence probably becomes embedded over time in a matrix of other traits that serve as correctives in moving the person towards an intermediate level of behavior. Sparks and Tucker , after noting essentially weak or spotty relationships between specific personality traits and the use of particular products, went on to demonstrate significant relationships between profiles of these same traits and bundles of various product usage.

Building on these results Alpert studied the relationship between personality structure and product attributes. Although he cited a few limitations, he none-the-less found strong relationships in matching personality profiles of product attributes' determinance. It seems that at least some support is developing for believing that the use of personality profiles, rather than specific personality traits are more helpful indicators of consumer behavior.

In seeking an appropriate instrument for personality measurement, initially an adaptation of Edward's EPPS was used. Fifty of the original paired statements ware retained after a great deal of testing, providing measures of nine personality traits. At issue was a need to provide an instrument that would not be overly taxing within the context of an otherwise long interview, and one which would enjoy a high level of participation on the part of subjects.

An early application in a study of banking behavior provided a very interesting set of profiles contrasting those who have savings accounts but no checking account vs.

As detailed in Figure 1 below, one sees that the two groups exhibit almost completely opposite personality profiles. The importance of this finding was critical to the development of advertising copy: Quite the contrary of course would apply to the checker who doesn't save; they would be ,uninterested in any soft-selling copy.

Attitudes, personality, and behavior / Icek Ajzen - Details - Trove

As Engel et al. Here is an example of a strong relationship between personality, expressed as a profile rather than a specific trait, and consumer banking behavior. Understanding this relationship resulted in more effective advertising strategy.


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    8. Attention is now turned to an examination of personality expressed as a profile as a common denominator among consumers who tend to hold similar attitudes toward a product-market, and in relating them, through these commonly held attitudes to specific behavior as shown in Figure 2. Personality is considered a determinant of behavior, but only through an underlying attitudinal construct. Personality relates to commonly held attitudes and perceived behavioral orientations, and it is these factors that mediate specific behavior. Being able to describe a target market group in terms of their gross personality characteristics, which are in turn known to be good discriminators of a particular attitude or disposition, will provide a much clearer picture of whom one is dealing with for purposes of developing advertising and marketing strategies directed toward them.

    This connection with attitudinal disposition is important from a strategic viewpoint, for it is attitude that the marketer or advertiser seeks to exploit, change or modify in effecting positive behavior i. However, it must be recognized that even given the above chain, intervening factors may effect behavior contrary to that predicted by a given attitudinal disposition.

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    As an example, 'Imagine the man who hates lawn work, but finds himself with an unruly hedge on his hands. He may reluctantly purchase a hedge trimmer even though his personality profile matches that of a non-owner of lawn and garden tools. This fact of ownership does not make him a good prospect for additional lawn and garden tools. The intervening factors of an overgrown hedge and complaining neighbors effected his behavior. Please select Ok if you would like to proceed with this request anyway.

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