ABSTRACT
When you put that chocolate bar in your cart standing in line in the grocery store, when you chase away the honey bee circling over your ham sandwich, or when you mimic the attractive other’s nonverbal behavior, you reveal your preferences, as the economists say. In the language of psychologists, who are more confident in their ability to measure mental states, you express a “tendency to evaluate an object,” or attitude (Eagly & Chaiken, 2007). Despite their differences in theoretical orientation, economists and psychologists would agree that attitudes cause behaviors. Indeed, when attitudes and behaviors are measured appropriately (Ajzen & Fishbein, 2005; Jaccard & Blanton, 2005), they are typically highly correlated, allowing for predictions as to what people will do or decide based on attitudinal measures, which Louis Thurstone (1954) used to call the “obverse psychophysical problem.” That is, perhaps, unless their attitudes are ambivalent.
