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The paper tests the contingent consistency hypothesis that social pressures reinforce the effect of attitude on behavior. The attitudes and behaviors pertain to marihuana use; the contingent effects tested are those of parents and peers. The data derive from a large-scale two-wave panel sample of high school students. By decomposing the sample according to the adolescents' specific position in the developmental continuum from marihuana nonuse to initiation to continued use, we identified the conditions under which the hypothesis is supported. No contingent effects appeared over time. Reinforcement of the effect of attitude by social pressures characterized adolescents in the second survey who had shifted from being nonusers to becoming frequent users over the six-month follow-up interval. By contrast, group norms did not interact with attitude to affect simple initiation to marihuana use or continuing marihuana use. Peer-related norms had the greatest interactive impact; parental norms had very little impact. Decomposition of a cohort according to stages of participation in a behavioral sequence made it possible to specify when in that sequence contingent consistency is most likely to appear.
Andrews et al. (Sun,) studied this question.
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