Attitude Change

Attitudes consist of our evaluative reactions to the world around us. Whenever we contemplate the people, objects, places, and issues that we encounter (i.e., attitude objects), it is virtually inescapable that we evaluate them, viewing them as good or bad to some degree. When an attitude is positive, we are inclined to approach and engage with the attitude object, but when an attitude is negative, we are inclined to avoid or reject it. In this sense, our attitudes serve as basic guides for navigating daily life by providing a summary, bottom-line assessment of the often multifaceted stimuli with which we interact. In addition to organizing our basic understanding of the world, attitudes have been shown to serve other important psychological functions. Interpersonally shared attitudes provide an important basis for building and strengthening social ties (a social-adjustive function). Publicly voiced attitudes allow the individual to assert and reinforce personal or collective values (a value-expressive function). Attitudes can sometimes also allow individuals to cope effectively with anxiety and threatening realities (an ego-defensive function). Given the significant functions attitudes serve, psychologists have long asserted that understanding the forces that shape and modify attitudes is of central importance in predicting the cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses of individuals. The conditions under which attitudes can be changed, and the mechanisms through which such changes are effected, are increasingly well understood in light of advances in attitude theory and research.

Traditionally, attitude researchers studied these issues in terms of the explicit evaluative judgments individuals make about attitude objects. Such judgments have typically been captured via self-report questionnaires. However, abundant recent research has employed indirect means of assessing attitudinal reactions. For example, researchers have created various categorization tasks that allow for the assessment of evaluative carryover effects, in which the presentation of an attitude object is expected to influence the processing of a subsequently presented stimulus differentially, depending on whether a positive or negative evaluation of the attitude object has been automatically activated. These indirect methods of attitude measurement are often assumed to tap a more implicit kind of evaluation that is not necessarily isomorphic with the explicit evaluative judgments an individual might make. Although controversies continue to characterize scholarly discussions of the implicit attitude construct, there is a general consensus emerging that two types of attitudinal responses can be meaningfully distinguished: explicit, deliberated evaluative judgments versus immediate, automatic affective reactions that are neither deliberate nor logical in their fundamental nature. Automatic affective reactions occur merely by virtue of the activation of stored mental associations involving the attitude object. In contrast, evaluative judgments involve propositional reasoning centering on the validation (or rejection) of assertions about the attitude object. In addressing issues of attitude stability and change, it is important to consider both types of attitudinal response.