The article used for analysis is devoted to defining the role of attitude in human behavior. Attitude is characterized by scientists as a kind of manifestation of the subjective assessment of the affective sense. Attitude is usually considered to determine people’s actions and decisions. Being in a relationship with behavior, attitude manifests itself in such a way that the investigative relationship of attitude with human behavior remains incompletely defined. The article proposes a study of a specific focus group consisting of traveling subjects in order to reveal the mutual influence of their general attitude and their behavior and decision-making. The article initially uses several modeling methods in order to determine this correlation. The novelty of the research is the application of the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance in practical research.
The authors’ model makes use of the found discrepancies between behavior and attitudes over time. The authors’ field-based scientific method involves polling a sample of a group of Dutch tourists, creating research that groups the results and reinterprets them through a person-centered computational model (Kroesen et al., 2017). As a result of interpreting the data in terms of subjectively attributable mismatch in attitude and behavior, the effect of behavior on attitude appears to be greater than vice versa. People with this mismatch turn out to be less stable in building their attitude than those with stability in this aspect. That is because these people have to constantly adjust their attitudes to behavior and decision-making. The scientific method of research is expressed in finding a hypothesis, which is then objectively assessed before finding its confirmation. In this case, an unpopular hypothesis about the effect of behavior on attitudes is tested, which is confirmed through the study of cases of discrepancy between thinking and actions.
The research I would like to plan and implement would focus on the impact of pop music on audiences. The prospective study takes as a focus group a group of on-demand respondents who claim to listen to and actively follow the pop music scene. In the course of the survey, their psychological attitude to the phenomenon and the degree of its influence on their lives are clarified. Pop music is a cultural phenomenon that represents a kind of environment for the respondents, and therefore is able to model their behavior. At the same time, pop music is able to influence the attitude towards the world and the perception of reality, which is directly related to behavior.
The study would use statistical modeling as a scientific approach, defining, on a positive-negative scale, respondents’ attitudes toward hypothetical situations taken from the lyrics of popular songs. Then, the survey would establish whether there is a match between the situations from the pop songs and the real life stories of the respondents. The listeners are offered a number of generalized situations and solutions with which they must establish their real relationship on a scale from 1 to 5. Thus, it would be possible to find out how much involvement in music as a cultural environment constructs human behavior as a system of constant choice in one favor or another. The study uses statistical calculations to establish a hypothesis about the existence of a relationship, which is subsequently confirmed or refuted. The study also aims to establish whether pop music offers positive or negative reinforcement for respondents, in the case of establishing a direct relationship between music and such aspects of the psyche as attitude and behavior. As a result of the study, the presence of a connection between music as a direct and indirect influence and human behavior is established.
Reference
Kroesen, M., Handy, S., Chorus, C. (2017). Do attitudes cause behavior or vice versa? An alternative conceptualization of the attitude-behavior relationship in travel behavior modeling. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 101, pp. 190-202. Web.