DO PEOPLE REALLY DISTINGUISH BETWEEN BEHAVIORAL AND NORMATIVE BELIEFS

Several theories (e.g. Ajzen, 1988; Fishbein BE Ajzen, 1975; Triandis, 1980) imply that people distinguish between beliefs about the consequ ences of performing a behaviour and beliefs about the opinions of impo rtant others toward performing that behaviour. In order to test this, subjects were presented with 'behavioural' or 'normative' items that w ere relevant to the performance of a behaviour. Experimental group sub jects in two experiments were asked to decide, on the basis of these i tems, whether or not they would perform the behaviour. Control group s ubjects were given other processing objectives; these were different i n the two experiments. All subjects were asked ro recall the items. Ac cording to the distinction between behavioural and normative beliefs, experimental group subjects' recall protocols should be clustered by b elief type, but this should not be true for control group subjects. Fi ndings from two experiments were consistent with predictions. Finally, a third experiment, in which subjects wrote down beliefs chat were no r presented by an experimenter, further supported a distinction betwee n these two types of beliefs.