1st Edition
Attitudes Their Structure, Function and Consequences
The study of likes and dislikes - what social psychologists refer to as "attitudes" - has been a central focus of the field for decades. What are attitudes? How can we study and measure them scientifically? How are they formed and changed? Of what functional value, if any, are they? How do they come to influence our attention, perception, judgments, and behavior? These are among the questions that have spurred social psychological research on attitudes, and they are among the issues addressed in this volume.
The articles reprinted in this collection represent noteworthy developments in the field's understanding of attitudes. Together, the readings provide a representative and broad coverage of the literature, illustrating well what the field has come to learn about the structure, function, and consequences of attitudes.
Preface
Richard E. Petty and Russell H. Fazio
SECTION (A) Conceptualizing Attitudes
READING 1. Attitudes: A New Look at an Old Concept
Mark P. Zanna and John K. Rempel
READING 2. On the Automatic Activation of Attitudes
Russell H. Fazio, David M. Sanbonmatsu, Martha C. Powell, and Frank R. Kardes
SECTION (B) Measurement of Attitudes
READING 3. Attitudes Can Be Measured
L. L. Thurstone
READING 4. Self-Reports: How the Questions Shape the Answers
Norbert Schwarz
READING 5. Electromyographic Activity over Facial Muscle Regions Can Differentiate the Valence and Intensity of Affective Reactions
John T. Cacioppo, Richard E. Petty, Mary E. Losch, and Hai Sook Kim
READING 6. Variability in Automatic Activation as an Unobtrusive Measure of Racial Attitudes: A Bona Fide Pipeline?
Russell H. Fazio, Joni R. Jackson, Bridget C. Dunton, and Carol J. Williams
READING 7. Measuring Individual Differences in Implicit Cognition: The Implicit Association Test
Anthony G. Greenwald, Debbie E. McGhee, and Jordan L.K. Schwartz
SECTION (C) Affective, Cognitive, and Behavioral Bases of Attitudes
READING 8. An Investigation of the Relationship between Beliefs about an Object and the Attitude toward that Object
Martin J. Fishbein
READING 9. Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences
Robert B. Zajonc
READING 10. Affective-Cognitive Consistency and the Effect of Salient Behavioral Information on the Self-Perception of Attitudes
Shelly Chaiken and Mark W. Baldwin
READING 11. Assessing the Structure of Prejudicial Attitudes: The Case of Attitudes toward Homosexuals
Geoffrey Haddock, Mark P. Zanna, and Victoria M. Esses
READING 12. Thinking and Caring about Cognitive Inconsistency: When and for Whom Does Attitudinal Ambivalence Feel Uncomfortable?
Ian R. Newby-Clark, Ian McGregor, and Mark P. Zanna
PART (D) Functions of Attitudes
READING 13. The Functional Approach to the Study of Attitudes
Daniel Katz
READING 14. Appeals to Image and Claims about Quality: Understanding the Psychology of Advertising
Mark Snyder and Kenneth G. DeBono
READING 15. Matching Versus Mismatching Attitude Functions: Implications for Scrutiny of Persuasive Messages
Richard E. Petty and Duane T. Wegener
READING 16. Prejudice as Self-Image Maintenance: Affirming the Self through Derogating Others
Steven Fein and Steven J. Spencer
READING 17. On the Functional Value of Attitudes: The Influence of Accessible Attitudes upon the Ease and Quality of Decision Making
Russell H. Fazio, Jim Blascovich, and Denise M. Driscoll
READING 18. Thinking Too Much: Introspection Can Reduce the Quality of Preferences and Decisions
Timothy D. Wilson and Jonathan W. Schooler
SECTION (E) Impact on Perception and Judgment
READING 19. They Saw a Game: A Case Study
Albert H. Hastorf and Hadley Cantril
READING 20. Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence
Charles G. Gord, Lee Ross, and Mark R. Lepper
READING 21. The Effect of Attitude on the Recall of Personal Histories
Michael Ross, Cathy McFarland, and Garth J.O. Gletcher
READING 22. On the Orienting Value of Attitudes: Attitude Accessibility as a Determinant of an Object’s Attraction of Visual Attention
David R. Roskos-Ewoldsen and Russell H. Fazio
READING 23. Selective Exposure: Voter Information Preferences and the Watergate Affair
Paul D. Sweeney and Kathy L. Gruber
SECTION (F) Impact on Behavior
READING 24. Attitudes versus Actions
Richard T. LaPiere
READING 25. Attitude Prototypes as Determinants of Attitude-Behavior Consistency
Charles G. Lord, Mark R. Lepper, and Diane Mackie
READING 26. Attitudinal and Normative Variables as Predictors of Specific Behaviors
Icek Ajzen and Martin Fishbein
READING 27. Attitude Accessibility as a Moderator of the Attitude-Perception and Attitude-Behavior Relations: An Investigation of the 1984 Presidential Election
Russell H. Fazio and Carol J. Williams
Biography
Russell H. Fazio received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1978. He is currently the Harold E. Burtt Professor of Psychology at Ohio State University. Fazio’s program of research focuses upon attitudes, their formation, accessibility from memory, functional value, and the processes by which they influence attention, judgment, and behavior. He served as editor of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology from 1999 to 2003. He has received numerous honors, including the APA Early Career Award (1983) and the Thomas M. Ostrom Award for Outstanding Contributions to Social Cognition (2006).
Richard E. Petty received his B.A. (with high distinction) from the University of Virginia in 1973, and his Ph.D. in social psychology from Ohio State University in 1977. He is currently Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at Ohio State University. Petty’s work focuses on attitudes, persuasion, and social cognition. He is former editor of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin and author of seven books and over 200 journal articles and chapters. He has received various honors including the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (2001) and the Society for Consumer Psychology (2000).
"Consistent with the editors' proven record of empirical research, they surveyed 13 leading attitudes researchers to help them determine the "essential" readings from the attitudes literature to include in the text. The result is a volume of 27 readings that are a "must have" for anyone interested in attitudes. We are looking forward to Volume 2." - Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, Matthew A. Prosser and Steven M. Smith
