Aiming at discovering social roots of social duality of attitude and practice in different area of life in Iran, the present research seeks to analyze one of the most pathological aspects of such duality, which is the rising trend of coronary heart diseases in the health area. We attempt to answer the following question: “Why the strong tendency to prevent health (social attitude) contradicts the observed behavior, which is based on high fat consumption and its redoubling within the past thirty years (social practice)”?
This study uses Merton’s theory of sociological ambivalence. According to Merton’s theory, the ambivalence factor should be discovered in the contradictory norms. However, in order to reveal the roots of the research problem and to explain it, the main aim is to develop the primary hypothesis gained from Merton’s theory. The findings, based on guidance of the grounded theory, through comparative analysis of situations and views of 91 coronary heart patients and healthy individuals, indicate that social roots of social duality of attitude and practice in the area of health is more comparable to the concept of “high fat consumption hegemony in transition:. Nonetheless, “high fat consumption hegemony” is the main obstacle in linking healthy attitude and practice
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