The Nature of Attitude Accessibility and Attitude Confidence: A Triangulated Experiment

In this article, I introduce and test the notion that attitude accessibility and attitude confidence are distinct psychological constructs, exerting independent influences on attitude-behavior consistency. I argue that in deliberative decisionmaking situations, attitude confidence is a more influential moderator of attitude-behavior consistency than attitude accessibility. Support for these propositions is provided by the results of an experiment that empirically triangulates the constructs and examines their influence on the attitude-behavior relationship. Specific implications of the approach and the results for advertising strategy are discussed.