ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the influence of the feelings of evaluative tension on health risk related behaviors, such as alcohol use and safe sex behavior. It investigates whether young people who feel greater evaluative conflict toward the use of alcohol and the practice of safe sex are guided by their attitudes to a lesser extent than those young people who feel less evaluative tension. As long as antidrug campaigns produce extreme attitudes against drugs and alcohol, these attitudes are likely to influence and guide behavior, and the concern of evaluative tension attenuating these attitudes is rendered moot. The relationship between safe sex attitudes and evaluative tension is quite different from that involving attitudes toward the use of alcohol. The results of the safe sex data provided support for the hypothesis that, indeed, evaluative tension influences the relationship of attitudes on behavior. Research provided evidence that changing beliefs was not sufficient to change behavior.
