Structural Consistency and the Deduction of Novel from Existing Attitudes

This experiment examined the reasoning process by which novel attitudes are deduced from existing evaluations. Participants deduced an attitude toward a specific news item (concerning penal reform or sex discrimination) from existing attitudes on more general issues (capital punishment or equal righ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of experimental social psychology Vol. 34; no. 1; pp. 66 - 89
Main Authors Prislin, Radmila, Wood, Wendy, Pool, Gregory J.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published San Diego, CA Elsevier Inc 01.01.1998
Elsevier
Academic Press
Subjects
Attitudes
Behavior. Attitude
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition & reasoning
Experimental psychology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Social psychology
Human
Attitude change
Reasoning
Information processing
Social cognition
Judgment
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Summary:This experiment examined the reasoning process by which novel attitudes are deduced from existing evaluations. Participants deduced an attitude toward a specific news item (concerning penal reform or sex discrimination) from existing attitudes on more general issues (capital punishment or equal rights for women and men, respectively) by spontaneously accessing the general attitude and generating thoughts about the news items that supported their evaluations on the general issue. Furthermore, participants engaged in this reasoning process only when: (a) their general attitudes were structurally consistent and provided a coherent basis for thinking about the new issue, and (b) the news item was framed to be directly relevant to the broader issue.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ISSN:0022-1031
1096-0465
DOI:10.1006/jesp.1997.1343