The Relation between Attitudes and Later Behavior Following Dissonance-Produced Attitude Change
The relation between attitudes, following dissonance-produced attitude change, and later behavior was examined. Subjects who freely chose to attempt to attain a difficult goal for minimal external. justification expressed greater commitment to the goal and, subsequently, displayed superior task performance, relative to other subjects. More important, the correlation between expressed commitment and subsequent performance was of greater magnitude among these subjects. The results are discussed in terms of the apparent superior predictive utility of attitudes based upon self-revealing, prior behavior.