An Enumerative Review and a Meta-Analysis of Primed Goal Effects on Organizational Behavior

Changing attitudes does not necessarily involve the same psychological processes as changing behavior, yet social psychology is only just beginning to identify the different mechanisms involved. We contribute to this understanding by showing that the moderators of attitude change are not necessarily the moderators of behavior change. The results of three studies (Ns = 98, 104, 137) employing an ego depletion manipulation indicate that although people are more likely to agree with a persuasive message when executive control is reduced they are not more likely to change their behavior. Rather, under conditions of ego depletion, attitudes became less correlated with behaviors after persuasion. Moreover, in Study 3, we provide an explanation for this phenom- enon: People are more likely to agree with a persuasive message when depleted but are also more likely to fall back on habits that may conflict with their new evaluations. A mini meta-analysis of the data indicated that ego- depletion had a medium effect size on the difference between attitude change and behavior change, N = 339, d = −0.51, 95% CI [−0.72, −0.29]. Jointly, these studies suggest an integrative, resource-based explanation to attitude-behavior discrepancies subsequent to persuasion.

Environmental cues (e.g. achievement-related words and pictures) can prime/activate, in the absence of awareness, a mental representation of importance stored in memory. Chen et al.'s 2021 Applied Psychology: An International Review70, 216–253. (doi:10.1111/apps.12239) meta-analysis revealed a moderate, significant overall effect for the goal priming-organizational behaviour relationship, with three moderators identified: context-specific versus a general prime, prime modality (i.e. visual versus linguistic) and experimental setting (field versus laboratory). An independent researcher found that their finding was negligibly affected by a publication bias. Shanks & Vadillo (2021), Royal Society Open Science8, 210544. (doi:10.1098/rsos.210544) (field: k = 13, N = 683, d = 0.64), questioned Chen et al.'s conclusion regarding the effect size found in field studies (field: k = 8, N = 357, d = 0.68). In this paper, we discussed Shanks & Vadillo's selection of additional field experiments that led to their conclusion of a publication bias. We updated Chen et al.'s meta-analysis to include relevant studies conducted since that study's publication. The present meta-analysis reproduced the original findings in Chen et al. (field: k = 11, N = 534, d = 0.67). The updated findings are consistent with: (i) laboratory findings, (ii) the findings obtained in field experiments on consciously set goals and (iii) goal setting theory (Latham & Locke, 2018 In Handbook of industrial, work & organizational Psychology, vol. 1 (eds D Ones, N Anderson, C Viswesvaran, H Sinangil), pp. 103–124).