Richard E. Petty

Russell H. Fazio

Pablo Brinol

This book tackles a subject that has captured the imagination of many researchers in the field: attitudes. Although the field has always recognized that people’s attitudes could be assessed in different ways, from direct self-reports to disguised observations of behavior, the past decade has shown several new approaches to attitude measurement. Despite the fact that there is no monolithic point of view with respect to implicit attitudes or measures, this book proves informative in capturing the exciting developments that have taken place over the past decade in the study of attitudes, and point the way for future exploration. Although researchers in the field have long used physiological measures, more sophisticated approaches have now been developed that rely on brain imaging techniques to examine evaluative processes. This book addresses all of these new techniques, as well as the new wave of implicit measures and the contribution they have made to understanding attitudes and attitude change. This volume will be an essential resource for students and researchers in social psychology with an interest in the core topic of attitudes.

Insights from the New Implicit Measures

Attitudes

Jon A. Krosnick

Social psychologists have long recognized the possibility that attitudes might differ from one another in terms of their strength, but only recently had the profound implications of this view been explored. Yet because investigators in the area were pursuing interesting but independent programs of research exploring different aspects of strength, there was little articulation of assumptions underlying the work, and little effort to establish a common research agenda. The goals of this book are to highlight these assumptions, to review the discoveries this work has produced, and to suggest directions for future work in the area. The chapter authors include individuals who have made significant contributions to the published literature and represent a diversity of perspectives on the topic. In addition to providing an overview of the broad area of attitude strength, particular chapters deal in depth with specific features of attitudes related to strength and integrate the diverse bodies of relevant theory and empirical evidence. The book will be of interest to graduate students initiating work on attitudes as well as to longstanding scholars in the field. Because of the many potential directions for application of work on attitude strength to amelioration of social problems, the book will be valuable to scholars in various applied disciplines such as political science, marketing, sociology, public opinion, and others studying attitudinal phenomena.

Richard E. Petty

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