Department of Psychology.
College of Law.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2021 May;120(5):1117-1145. doi: 10.1037/pspa0000265. Epub 2021 Jan 28.
Psychologists often posit relatively straightforward attitude-behavior links. They also often study cultural arrangements as manifestations of attitudes and values writ large. However, we illustrate some difficulties with scaling up attitude-behavior principles from the individual-level to the cultural-level: Historical attitudes and values can lead to the creation of intermediating institutions, whose value-expressive functions may be at odds with the behavioral outcomes they produce. Through "institutional inversion," institutions may facilitate rather than inhibit stigmatized behavior. Here we examine attitudes and behavior related to debt, contrast historically Protestant versus Catholic places, and show how cultural attitudes against debt may lead to the creation of institutions that increase-rather than decrease-borrowing. Historical antidebt attitudes in Protestant places have led to contemporary households in Protestant cultures now carrying the highest debt loads. We discuss the importance of supply side factors, attitude → institutions → behavior causal chains, and some blind spots that lead to unintended consequences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
心理学家经常假设相对简单的态度-行为联系。他们也经常将文化安排视为态度和价值观的广泛表现。然而，我们说明了将态度-行为原则从个体层面扩展到文化层面所面临的一些困难：历史态度和价值观可能导致中介机构的产生，而这些机构的价值表达功能可能与其产生的行为结果不一致。通过“制度反转”，机构可能会促进而不是抑制污名化的行为。在这里，我们考察了与债务相关的态度和行为，对比了历史上新教和天主教地区的情况，并展示了文化上反对债务的态度如何导致可能增加而不是减少借贷的机构的产生。新教地区的历史反债务态度导致了现在新教文化中的当代家庭背负着最高的债务负担。我们讨论了供应方因素、态度→制度→行为因果关系链以及一些导致意外后果的盲点的重要性。
