Outcome-relevant involvement concerns those behaviors which hold direct personal consequences at a premium for the individual and as a result, corresponds most closely to vested interest.
[6] The way people view vested interest as distinct from ego involvement, is a construct that has been the topic of social psychological research for many years.
[7] In a study conducted by John Sivacek and William D. Crano,[8] they prove the aforementioned statement that ego involvement and vested interest are indeed separate.
The more emotionally connected people are to an idea, concept, or value, minor differences in beliefs can be viewed as significantly large and perhaps make harsh judgments or have stronger reactions.
Ego-involvement, as it pertains to vested interest, is relative to Social Judgment Theory in that the concept of one's identity is the primary focus of efforts in continued involvement.
[9] Sherif et al., suggest the question was answered by Beck and Nebergall[10] in 1967 who stated that individuals with little to no options have corresponding vested interest indicating low ego involvement.
Although an individual in America may consider this objectively important, because of the low probability of personal consequence – i.e., vested interest – his resultant behavior may not be indicative of his attitude towards the epidemic.
In other words, since the issue is of little hedonic relevance to the perceiver, the amount of vested interest is low, and is therefore unlikely to produce attitude-consistent actions.
Tragic circumstances halfway around the world or shocking behaviors by members of a culture different from the perceiver, will most likely never result in attitude change.
Due to the nature of politics, voters come to conclusions about one candidate over another based on perceived attitude importance (object) on these policies rather than vocal support alone placing a high value on this concept as it pertains to vested interest.
Two differences exist between vested interest and outcome relevant involvement where attitude objects remain highly important.
Stake refers to the perceived personal consequence of an attitude that is directly related to the intensity of vested interest and influences components that contribute to attitude-behavior consistency.
[1] Referring to the concept of vested interest as it relates to attitude-behavior consistency, stake is an individual's macro involvement in a particular situation where the consequence is salient.
[14] In a situation where stake is operationalized using certainly and immediacy, one found the likely effect of this was behavior relative to the immediate consequence, positive or negative.
Linking this discovery to vested interest, the research concluded that the salience effect was heightened when the attitude had important personal outcomes for someone.
Additionally, salience can be described as the most recent and accessible memory associated with a specific object (i.e. idea) in which an individual has developed their own unique attitude.
[17] If the consequences of an attitude consistent act are uncertain, attitude-consistent action is not likely to occur, due to the fact that vested interest will be reduced.
If the person assumes that the link between living near a prison and being a victim of a violent crime is minimal, then health and safety promoting behaviors consistent with this negative attitude are not likely.
In other words, if a person living near the prison in the previous example perceives the possibility of a jailbreak could occur at a much later time in life, he may act in manner that is not consistent.
Vested interest such as organ donation, for example, make life and death salient which brings about the concept of immediacy to decide not necessarily to act.
Self-efficacy in regards to vested interest, is the amount that an individual believes that they are capable of performing an action associated with an attitude or advocated position.
Although 80% of the subjects were opposed to the referendum, their respective levels of vested interest clearly indicated that the strength of their attitudes significantly affected their resultant behaviors.
[8] These results support Crano's theory of vested interest and reinforce the implications and considerations of stake, salience, certainty, immediacy, and self-efficacy discussed above.
[8] Crano conducted another study to prove that vested interest may affect people's belief that a majority of a population will support their attitude on an issue.
Under the guise of a public opinion survey, Crano[20] created high and low vested interest groups by identifying whether upper- or lower-classmen would pay a surcharge to subsidize lost funding from the government.
Crano found that vested interest influenced assumed consensus and students believed that a majority of the university's population would support their plight even though only half would be affected.
[1] Dale Miller and Rebecca Ratner[21] conducted this study utilizing 81 male and female students at the University of Yale.
[21] Barbara Lehman and William Crano conducted a study regarding the persuasive effects of vested interest on attitude concerning political judgment which was published in 2001.
[12] These findings, set in 1976, show a significant relationship between vested interest and aligned values associated with electoral candidates which can be either perceived or marketed.
[12] Vested interest appears to affect people's tendency to overestimate the extent to which others agree with their beliefs, a bias known variously as the false-consensus or assumed-consensus effect.