DONATING YOUR BLOOD? ON THE ROLE OF ASSOCIATIONS, BELIEFS AND MOOD STATES IN DONOR DECISIONS

Decisions about whether or not to donate blood can be based on explicit beliefs (“blood donation is good because it saves lives”), but also on automatic associations (“unpleasant”).  When do people behave based on their explicit beliefs and when do they behave based on their automatic associations?     

Purpose:  To determine if positive versus negative mood states moderate whether automatically activated associations (implicit attitudes) versus explicit beliefs (belief-based attitudes) towards donating blood predicted blood donation behavior.     

Methods:  Two randomized controlled experiments compared the predictive value of implicit and belief-based attitudes in positive versus negative mood states.  Automatically activated and belief-based attitudes were measured with an Implicit Association Test (IAT) and a belief-based measure in accordance with expectancy-value models of attitudes respectively.  In a second session, participants were randomized to either a positive or a negative mood induction procedure (watching a short video clip) and behavior was observed: participants could provide personal contact details on a blood donation interest form.  The amount of contact information provided was our dependent measure.   

Results:  In both studies, participants (104) expressed a more positive mood state in the happy versus sad mood condition.  The attitude-behavior link was qualified by mood.  In a positive mood, automatically activated attitudes were better predictors of behavior than belief-based attitudes, whereas in a negative mood the reverse was true.      The amount of contact information provided was regressed on the attitude (Study 1: IAT-score; Study 2: belief-based attitude), mood condition, and interaction term.  This revealed the predicted Attitude*Mood interaction in both studies.  Simple slope analyses showed that in the happy condition, participants with negative implicit attitudes (IAT-scores) gave less contact information than those with positive implicit attitudes, whereas IAT-scores were unrelated to behavior in the sad condition.  Moreover, in the sad mood condition individuals with negative belief-based attitudes gave less contact information than those with positive belief-based attitudes, whereas belief-based attitudes were unrelated to behavior in the happy condition.     

Conclusion:  Mood moderates whether automatic associations versus explicit beliefs predict health behavior.       Keywords:  Blood Donation, Behavior Regulation, Mood, Attitude-Behavior Consistency, Associative vs. Propositional Processes