Predicting and Changing Behavior: The Reasoned Action Approach by Martin Fishbein & Icek Ajzen

Author:Martin Fishbein & Icek Ajzen
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2011-02-13T14:00:00+00:00

Fazio’s Mode Model

The most sophisticated attempt to deal with the processes whereby general attitudes may influence performance of specific behaviors can be found in Fazio’s (1986; 1990a; 1995; Fazio & Towles-Schwen, 1999) MODE model. A schematic representation of the model is shown in Figure 8.1. Building on past work concerning the effects of attitudes on perceptions and judgments (see Eagly, 1998, for a review), the model assumes that general attitudes can influence or bias perception and judgments of information relevant to the attitude object, a bias that is presumed to be congruent with the valence of the attitude. However, for this bias to occur the attitude must first be “activated.” Consistent with the logic of other dual-mode processing theories (see Chaiken & Trope, 1999), the MODE model posits that attitudes can be activated in one of two ways: in a controlled or deliberative fashion and in an automatic or spontaneous fashion. The acronym MODE is used to suggest that “motivation and opportunity act as determi-nants of spontaneous versus deliberative attitude-to-behavior processes” (Fazio, 1995, p. 257). When people are sufficiently motivated and have the cognitive capacity to do so, they can retrieve or construct their attitudes toward an object in an effortful manner. When motivation or cognitive capacity is low, attitudes can become available only if they are automatically activated. According to the MODE model, such automatic or spontaneous activation is reserved for strong attitudes. Specifically, within the MODE framework, attitude is defined as a learned association in memory between an object and a positive or negative evaluation of that object, and attitude strength is equivalent to the strength of this association (Fazio, 1990a). Thus, automatic attitude activation occurs when a strong link has been established in memory between the attitude object and a positive or negative evaluation. The degree of accessibility (i.e., attitude strength) is usually operationalized by measuring the latency of responses to attitudinal questions: the faster the response, the more accessible, and thus the stronger, the attitude is assumed to be (e.g., Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986; Fazio & Williams, 1986; see also Fazio, 1990a). The stronger the attitude, the more likely it is that it will be automatically activated, be chronically accessible from memory, and hence be available to guide behavior.

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