Attitude-behavior gap

The attitude-behavior gap, or value-behavior gap, is the difference between one’s values, beliefs, and attitudes and one’s actual behavior.

Example

The expectation that giving people accurate information about the cruelty of factory farming will change their attitudes is somewhat overstated. Because of the attitude-behavior gap, providing information does not readily change behavior.

The attitude-behavior gap and cognitive dissonance

In How to create a vegan world, Tobias Leenaert advises that, rather than condemning the inconsistency between knowledge and behavior as hypocrisy, it is more productive to consider what prevents people from changing their behavior.

According to Leenaert, the gap between knowledge and behavior causes cognitive dissonance, which people resolve in the following ways.

• A very small minority change their behavior and become vegan.
• The majority change their beliefs to continue eating meat (the animals must have died painlessly, they were raised to be eaten anyway, animals feel less pain, etc.).
• The rest isolate themselves from uncomfortable truths (“Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know”).

Persuasion strategies

Leenaert says that changing behavior first often leads to a corresponding change in attitude. Humans are adept at finding reasons to justify what they already do, but less adept at acting in accordance with rationally derived reasons (R. Abelson).

Wearing seat belts and not smoking in public places are good examples. Many people opposed these ideas before legislation, but after legislation forced behavioral changes, attitudes naturally began to change too. Many once opposed even smoking bans in hospitals or university lecture halls; public attitudes have now changed so much that it is hard to believe such people existed. According to Hoffman et al., p. 142, 25% of people who reduce meat consumption for health reasons later also adopt ethical reasons. Hamilton, p. 160, and Cooney 2014, pp. 74–75, describe similar findings.

For this reason, Leenaert says we should accept any reason that serves the goal. Health, environment, or anything else: if it moves people toward veganism, we should embrace it. Attaching our message to values people already pursue is a smarter strategy than persuading them to adopt new values. Once behavior changes, changing attitudes afterward is easier.