Attitude-behavior congruity, mindfulness, and self-focused attention: A behavior-analytic reconstruction.
W R Street
The Behavior Analyst 1994 DOI: 10.1007/bf03392660 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation |
| Key points | Argues that attitude-behavior incongruity is better understood by treating questionnaire answering as behavior under distinctive social conditions rather than as an expression of an enduring disposition, so low agreement with behavior in other settings is expected. Contends that research on mindfulness and self-focused attention shows that discriminative stimuli can yield more predictable agreement between questionnaire-answering behavior and behavior in other settings. |
Abstract
Social psychologists have responded to research reporting low agreement between attitude measures and related behavior with attempts to explain the incongruities and enhance agreement. This article examines attitude-behavior incongruity from a behavior-analytic point of view. Traditional and behavior-analytic views of attitudes and behaviors are compared. In the behavior-analytic view, answering an attitude scale should be considered as behavior displayed by a person under rather unusual social conditions, not as a reflection of an enduring personal disposition. Reasons why questionnaire-answering behavior will not resemble behavior in other functionally different social conditions are reviewed. Special attention is extended to two representative lines of attitude-behavior research: mindfulness and self-focused attention. Discriminative stimuli in both areas of study have produced more predictable agreement between questionnaire-answering behavior and behavior in other settings.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. | 2004 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mechanisms of mindfulness | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |