On the Congruity Between Internal States and Action

• Published in: Psychological bulletin Vol. 98; no. 1; pp. 3 - 40
• Main Author: Quattrone, George A
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Psychological Association 01-07-1985; American Psychological Association, etc
• Subjects: Affectivity. Emotion; Attitudes; Attribution; Behavior; Biological and medical sciences; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Literature Review; Personality. Affectivity; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Human; Affect affectivity; Behavior
• ISSN: 0033-2909; 1939-1455
• DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.98.1.3

Several authors have argued that in the attributional and dissonance literatures behavioral effects are usually obtained without effects on self-reported "internal states" that supposedly mediated the behavioral effects. This alleged incongruity between action and self-reports conceals an additional argument, namely that attributional and dissonance manipulations have weak effects on self-reports. The argument is inconsistent with more than two decades of research. Experiments without behavioral measures repeatedly show effects on self-reports. This article attempts to resolve the problem of incongruity. Theoretical considerations and empirical evidence are presented which show that (a) self-report effects are significant and congruent with behavior more frequently than previous reviewers indicated; (b) behavior may interfere with inferential processes and thereby erase or prevent from occurring internal state changes that would otherwise be found; and (c) incongruity and other problems are symptomatic of there being no sophisticated theoretical account of how internal states mediate behavior.