Abstract
Recent research has suggested that some persons more strongly link attitudes with behavioral criteria than others. Specifically, research indicates that some persons rely more extensively on a “principle of evaluative consistency” (persons low in construct differentiation) and that some people place greater reliance on internal cues, such as attitudes, in guiding their behavioral choices (persons low in self-monitoring) than others. This investigation considered these individual differences as it examined the influence an external prescription of attitude relevance had on persons' attitude-behavioral intention relations. Results indicated that the external prescription of relevance greatly enhanced attitude behavioral intention consistency only for individuals who were both low in construct differentiation and high in self-monitoring. It is hypothesized that these results obtain because such individuals rely on a principle of evaluative consistency, but apply it only when the situation prescribes such consistency.
