Internal versus External Informational Sources: Causes and Consequences for Attitude Certainty and Attitude-Behavior Consistency

Abstract : Drawing upon different literatures, one establishing certainty as a central construct in understanding attitude-behavior consistency, the other documenting how people differ in their sensitivity to external vs. internal information, we propose that relying on external vs. internal factors lead to two distinct certainty foci: an "external" one and an "internal" one. In addition, we show that people with chronic or momentary sensitivity to external (internal) factors displayed greater attitude-behavior consistency when the sources of their certainty were external (internal).