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Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Prologue -- Chapter 1 What is an attitude and why is it important? -- What is an attitude? -- Why do people have attitudes? -- Organisation of knowledge, and regulating approach and avoidance -- Higher psychological needs -- Inter-individual differences and multiple functions -- Research applying attitude functions -- Why study attitudes? -- Overview of the book -- Chapter summary -- Exercises -- Further reading -- PART I GATEWAYS TO OUR ATTITUDES -- Chapter 2 Asking for attitudes: not that simple after all -- The concept of measurement

Surveys often ask respondents how information or events changed their attitudes. Does [information X] make you more or less supportive of [policy Y]? Does [scandal X] make you more or less likely to vote for [politician Y]? We show that this type of question (the change format) exhibits poor measurement properties, in large part because subjects engage in response substitution. When asked how their attitudes changed, people often report the level of their attitudes rather than the change in them. As an alternative, we propose the counterfactual format, which asks subjects what their attitude would have been in the counterfactual world in which they did not know the treatment information. Using a series of experiments embedded in four studies, we show that the counterfactual format greatly reduces bias relative to the change format.

Human beings have a unique ability to create elaborate predispositions and evaluations based on their social experiences. The concept of attitudes is central to understanding how experience gives rise to these predispositions, and psychologists have spent the best part of the past 100 years trying to understand the intricacies of this process. Yet, despite decades of research, we still do not fully understand how attitudes are created, maintained and changed. The main objective of this book is to review and integrate some of the most recent, cutting-edge developments in research on attitudes and attitude change, presenting the work of eminent scholars in this field. Chapters in this book deal with such intriguing questions as: What role do associative processes play in the formation of attitudes? How do attitudes function as global and local action guides? What is the function of implicit evaluations, and vicarious experiences in producing attitude change? Are implicit associations a useful way to measure attitudes? What role does affect play in attitude formation and change? What role do social interaction processes play in persuasion, and how does persuasion work in real-life settings? The book is essential reading for students and researchers in social psychology, as well as practitioners in every field where understanding and changing attitudes is important, such as clinical, counseling, organizational, marketing, forensic, and developmental psychology.