The Pervasive Effects of Vested Interest on Attitude–Criterion Consistency in Political Judgment

Abstract

The vested interest construct suggests that people act in attitudinally consistent ways on important issues of high hedonic relevance. Accordingly, vested individuals should endorse policies consistent with their attitudes. Symbolic politics holds self-interest unrelated to attitude and thus of little use. Three secondary analyses of national election data assessed the predictive utility of vested interest on policy-related issues. Consistent with expectations, Analysis 1 found vested interest to be unrelated to policy endorsement. However, Analysis 2 disclosed that vested interest significantly moderated attitude-endorsement consistency on beliefs regarding busing, health insurance, and government-guaranteed living standards. Analysis 3 investigated vested interest effects across three national election surveys and six policy issues. Without exception, vested interest significantly moderated the relationship between attitudes and policy endorsement. These results, obtained across a broad range of topics and respondents, suggest that vested interest is an important moderator of consistency between attitudes and policy endorsement. © 2001 Elsevier Science (USA) Coinciding with the development of dual process models of attitude change in social psychology is the complementary consideration of the effect of personal relevance on the behavioral expression of attitudes and on attitude-criterion consistency (Chaiken, 1987;Converse, 1964Converse, , 1970Crano, 1995Crano, , 1997aJohnson & Eagly, 1989;Miller, 1999;Petty & Cacioppo, 1990;Sears & Funk, 1991). From Hovland's time onward, involvement has played a consequential role in theories of attitude (Crano, 2000;Hovland, Janis, & Kelley, 1953). Today's models emphasize these constructs in developing hypotheses regarding the likelihood that a persuasive message will be elaborated and that resultant attitudes will guide future behaviors and policy endorsements (Petty & Krosnick, 1995). Although the precise function of involvement in the attitude-criterion equation is not yet specified, most social psychologists contend that such constructs play a central role in attitude change and attitude-criterion consistency.Two qualities distinguish vested interest from other concepts related to personal involvement. First, vested interest requires that the attitude object be hedonically relevant (Crano, 1995;Sivacek & Crano, 1982). Second, only objects considered important, or consequential, are deemed of high vested interest. Hedonic relevance is concerned with the perceived consequences of the attitude object for the daily life of the respondent 1 An attitude object may be considered important but not hedonically relevant (e.g., a major earthquake in a far-off country) or hedonically relevant but not particularly important. To the extent that either prerequisite is not present, the predictive power of the construct will be diminished. Support for the concept of self-or vested interest in political research can be traced to the pioneering efforts of Muzafir Sherif in his work on...

Consumers’ evaluation of allocation policies for scarce health care services: Vested interest activation trumps spatial and temporal distance

“…Our finding is in line with vested interest theory that shows that, when vested interest is high, contextual manipulations of persuasion processes-such as congruency effects-often become less influential, and attitude-behavior correspondence increases (Crano 1995;Crano and Prislin 1995;Lehman and Crano 2002). But, we also show that, within a context where individual and collective outcomes are traded off (a potentially high vested interest context), vested interest is only activated for consumers that have recent experience.…”

“…According to vested interest theory, contextual manipulations of persuasion processes become less influential, and attitude-behavior correspondence often increases when vested interest is high (Crano 1995;Crano and Prislin 1995;Lehman and Crano 2002). We propose that an individual's recent personal experience with a scarce service resource can trigger the activation of a high vested interest mindset by increasing a consumer's ability to assess the pros and cons of a particular behavior (stake), a consumer's likelihood to be aware of the effects of an action upon oneself (salience) and a consumer's assessment of the chances that a specific event will take place (certainty) (Crano 1995;Morwitz 1997).…”

“…The activation of such a high vested interest (internal) mindset is expected to overrule a CLT-based congruency (situationally induced) mindset because consumers with high vested interest are more likely to expend cognitive effort and produce issuerelevant thoughts (Crano 1995;Crano and Prislin 1995;Lehman and Crano 2002). Compared to consumers without recent experience, we expect consumers with recent experience to pay less or no attention to heuristic cues such as the value of fit and the resulting fluency and ease-of-comprehension triggered by the congruency between the allocation policy's focal outcome construal, and spatial and temporal distance.…”

“…In contrast, these consumers are more likely to use their attitudes as a basis for their decision (cf. striving for an attitude-behavior consistency when vested interest is high ;Crano 1995;Crano and Prislin 1995;Lehman and Crano 2002) and to activate concrete, egocentric ("not in my backyard") thoughts. Such thoughts tend to be more tangible and directly experienced (cf.…”

“…Vested interest theory predicates that participants with a high vested interest mindset have well-established and consistent preferences for personal (i.e., individual) consequences (e.g., Lehman and Crano 2002). Consequently, we expect them to expend more cognitive effort and produce issue-relevant thoughts (Crano 1995;Crano and Prislin 1995;Lehman and Crano 2002) and to be more likely to activate concrete, egocentric ("not in my backyard") thoughts that overrule the CLT-based congruency effect. We hypothesize that this results in a more positive evaluation of an allocation policy that focuses on individual rather than collective outcomes, regardless of the temporal or spatial distance.…”