ABSTRACT
Early pessimism about the idea that attitudes guide behaviour was nourished in an article by LaPiere (1934). This author went on an extensive tour across the USA in the company of a Chinese couple. Given the prejudice against Asians that prevailed in the United States of the 1930s, LaPiere had expected that his Chinese travel companions would often be refused service by hotels or restaurants. To his surprise, however, this happened in only one of the 251 establishments
they visited. What is even more astonishing is the result of a mail survey that LaPiere conducted six months later. He wrote to all the hotels and restaurants visited, asking if they would accept `` members of the Chinese race'' as guests. In total contrast to their prior behaviour, now 118 (92%) of the 128 places who returned the questionnaire responded that they would not serve Chinese customers. LaPiere concluded from this enormous discrepancy between stated attitude and overt behaviour that questionnaire responses are not valid indicators of a person's true attitude. He suggested that the use of questionnaire measures of attitude, as they measure merely `` symbolic'' responses, should be limited to issues that remain symbolic, for example predicting voting behaviour from political attitude surveys.
