Attitudes, Situations, and Behavior

Empirical tests of the BPM in the context of consumers’ attitudes have involved the prediction of consumers’ verbal responses to descriptions of consumer situations representative of each of the eight feasible categories of environmental contingencies shown in Figure 5.3. The range of verbal responses is suggested by Mehrabian and Russell’s (1974a) verbal measures of the three affective reposes to environments which they argue are exhaustive: pleasure, arousal and dominance. An array of consumer situations (Foxall, 2004b, 1990) was subjected to the judgment of panels of consumers and market research executives who successfully allocated each to the theoretical contingencies (Foxall, 1999b). Mehrabian and Russell (1974a) propose that physical and social stimuli in the environment directly influence the emotional state of an individual and as a result shape the behaviors he or she enacts within that environment. Pleasure, Arousal, and Dominance are the three emotional variables which summarise the emotion-eliciting qualities of environments and mediate a variety of approach-avoidance behaviors such as preference, exploration, affiliation and work performance.