Talk Is Cheap

Sociological Methods and Research - Tập 43 Số 2 - Trang 178-209 - 2014
Colin Jerolmack1, Shamus Khan2
11New York University, New York, NY, USA
2Department of Sociology, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

Tóm tắt

This article examines the methodological implications of the fact that what people say is often a poor predictor of what they do. We argue that many interview and survey researchers routinely conflate self-reports with behavior and assume a consistency between attitudes and action. We call this erroneous inference of situated behavior from verbal accounts the attitudinal fallacy. Though interviewing and ethnography are often lumped together as “qualitative methods,” by juxtaposing studies of “culture in action” based on verbal accounts with ethnographic investigations, we show that the latter routinely attempts to explain the “attitude–behavior problem” while the former regularly ignores it. Because meaning and action are collectively negotiated and context-dependent, we contend that self-reports of attitudes and behaviors are of limited value in explaining what people actually do because they are overly individualistic and abstracted from lived experience.

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Sociological Methods and Research

Tập 43 Số 2

178-209

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