From beliefs to behavior: Clarifying the roles of attitudes and context

Abstract

Two commentaries by Tormala and Rucker and by Critcher and Galak offer complementary perspectives on our target article,Changing BeliefsversusChanging Behavior. Tormala and Rucker emphasize attitudes as proximal determinants of behavior, underscoring the importance of attitude strength and measurement compatibility. Critcher and Galak propose a contextual continuum of decision making that situates belief influence within unprompted, opportunity-based, and prompted behavioral contexts, illustrating how contextual factors shape the recruitment of beliefs for specific actions. In this response, we clarify the relations among beliefs, attitudes, and context; address the misconception that our model overemphasizes inferential reasoning; and extend the framework to integrate evaluative and contextual determinants of behavior. This synthesis offers a comprehensive account in which attitudes function as inferential products of belief processing, while contexts determine when and how these processes are activated.