Distinguishing the cognitive and behavioral consequences of attitude importance and certainty: A new approach to testing the common-factor hypothesis

Some published factor analyses have suggested that attitude importance and certainty are distinct psychological constructs, but other factor analytic investigations have suggested they are largely redundant reflections of a more general underlying construct. This latter sort of finding has led investigators to average measures of importance and certainty together into a composite index and then explore its cognitive and behavioral consequences. In this paper, we report three studies gauging the underlying structure of these strength-related attitude attributes by assessing whether they in fact relate in the same ways to information processing and action tendencies. We found that importance and certainty both independently predicted the likelihood that a person attempted to persuade others to adopt his or her attitude. Importance (but not certainty) was associated with the tendency to seek out information that would enable people to use their attitudes in a subsequent judgment and only importance predicted whether or not they turned out to vote in an election to express their attitudes. Certainty (but not importance) was related to the tendency to find more than one political candidate acceptable. And importance and certainty interacted to predict the frequency with which people performed attitude-expressive behaviors. All this suggests that importance and certainty have distinct effects on thinking and behavior and supports the maintenance of conceptual and empirical distinctions between them in social psychological theory building.     

When resistance is futile: consequences of failed counterarguing for attitude certainty

This research tests the notion that attitudes after a failed attempt to counterargue may be stronger than attitudes after undirected thinking. Specifically, failed counterarguing may be accompanied by unique metacognitions that serve to strengthen the attitude. The present research examines this issue by giving participants a very strong message and instructing them to counterargue or simply think about the message. Across several experiments, attitudes were as favorable when individuals were trying to counterargue as when they were simply thinking, indicating that counterarguing failed to instill any extra resistance. However, attitudes were held with greater certainty following failed counterarguing compared with following undirected thinking. Furthermore, attitudes following failed counterarguing were more predictive of subsequent behavioral intentions. The metacognitions that follow failed counterarguing are addressed.     

Unpacking attitude certainty: attitude clarity and attitude correctness

Attitude certainty has been the subject of considerable attention in the attitudes and persuasion literature. The present research identifies 2 aspects of attitude certainty and provides evidence for the distinctness of the constructs. Specifically, it is proposed that attitude certainty can be conceptualized, and empirically separated, in terms of attitude clarity (the subjective sense that one knows what one's attitude is) and attitude correctness (the subjective sense that one's attitude is correct or valid). Experiment 1 uses factor analysis and correlational data to provide evidence for viewing attitude clarity and attitude correctness as separate constructs. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrate that attitude clarity and attitude correctness can have distinct antecedents (repeated expression and consensus feedback, respectively). Experiment 4 reveals that these constructs each play an independent role in persuasion and resistance situations. As clarity and correctness increase, attitudes become more resistant to counterattitudinal persuasive messages. These findings are discussed in relation to the existing attitude strength literature.     

A new look at selective exposure

The relevance of the personality dimension “repression-sensitization” (D. Byrne in B. A. Maher (Ed.), Progress in experimental personality research, Vol. 1, NY: Academic Press, 1964, pp. 169–219) to selective exposure processes was investigated. Experimental repressors (who typically employ “avoidance” strategies in dealing with threatening stimuli) and experimental sensitizers (who generally “approach” threatening stimuli) were allowed to choose and keep one of two pairs of painting reproductions, each pair containing one positively and one negatively valued painting. After the decision, which experimental subjects believed terminated the experiment, subjects were allowed to inspect the alternatives ad libitum for 75 sec. Eye gaze during this period was unobtrusively videotaped. Compared to their matched controls, who were simply asked to inspect the paintings in order to decide which ones they liked best, experimental repressors inspected paintings that were consonant with their choices and avoided looking at paintings that were dissonant with their decisions. Experimental sensitizers did not manifest such postdecisional selective exposure. The implications of these results for past and future research on dissonance-produced selective exposure were discussed.     

Sex comparisons on causal attributions: Another look at the null hypothesis

Eighty-two subjects (49 women, 33 men) solved a difficult or easy set of anagrams, after which they indicated their subjective level of performance, provided causal attributions, and stated expectations for future performance. Sex comparisons were conducted on each element in the attribution model. Results indicated no sex differences on subjective evaluation of success, on causal dimensions, on expectations for future performance, or on performance on a final set of anagrams.     

A new look at Copernicus and Kant

Continental Philosophy Review -     

A new look at time and eternity

In his Systematic Theology, Vol. III, Wolfhart Pannenberg argues that God as eternal comprehends the different moments of time simultaneously and orders them to constitute a whole or totality. The author contends that this approach to time and eternity might solve the logical tension between the classical notion of divine sovereignty and the common sense belief in creaturely spontaneity/human freedom. For, if the existence of the events constituting a temporal sequence is primarily due to the spontaneous decisions of creatures, and if their being ordered into a totality or meaningful whole is primarily due to the superordinate activity of God, then both God and creatures play indispensable but nevertheless distinct roles in the cosmic process.     

Contemporary justice research: A new look at familiar questions

Research on organizational justice has flourished in the last 30 years. During that time, researchers have generally sought to answer three questions: (1) Why do people care about justice? (2) What affects justice judgments? and (3) What outcomes are associated with justice judgments? The papers in this special issue of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes on organizational justice reflect how these three questions are explored in contemporary justice research. This introduction to the special issue considers how the papers represent trends and developments in current justice research. Several themes are identified: the role of justice in a broader model of group engagement, the empirical examination of justice as a moral virtue, the effect of social context on justice judgments, and the darker reactions to injustice. Thus, the special issue provides insight not only to familiar justice questions but also to the evolution of the field and its future direction.     

A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface

The present model outlines the mechanisms underlying habitual control of responding and the ways in which habits interface with goals. Habits emerge from the gradual learning of associations between responses and the features of performance contexts that have historically covaried with them (e.g., physical settings, preceding actions). Once a habit is formed, perception of contexts triggers the associated response without a mediating goal. Nonetheless, habits interface with goals. Constraining this interface, habit associations accrue slowly and do not shift appreciably with current goal states or infrequent counterhabitual responses. Given these constraints, goals can (a) direct habits by motivating repetition that leads to habit formation and by promoting exposure to cues that trigger habits, (b) be inferred from habits, and (c) interact with habits in ways that preserve the learned habit associations. Finally, the authors outline the implications of the model for habit change, especially for the self-regulation of habit cuing.