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This thesis is an empirical and theoretical investigation of choice blindness, in particular in the domain of political attitudes. Choice blindness is a cognitive phenomenon in which people do not notice dramatic mismatches between what they choose and what they get while still offering seemingly introspective arguments to explain their (putative) choice. In four papers, it is demonstrated that the effect also applies to salient political attitudes and evaluations of political candidates. All studies took place in close connection to real elections, and new tools building of the underlying choice blindness methodology has been developed to collect the data. Further, the potential downstream effects are explored, such as influence on voting intentions, and lasting attitude changes. The potential mechanisms behind the effect are also investigated and confabulatory reasoning stands out as an important part in facilitating the observed attitude changes.

1. Introduction -- 2. Method -- 3. Dimensions of attitudes toward the role and status of women -- 4. Social-psychological and personality correlates of attitudes toward the role and status of women -- 5. Attitudes toward the role of women as part of a larger belief system -- 6. Attitude change : 1975-2005 -- 7. Attitudes to divorce -- 8. Attitudes to abortion -- 9. Attitudes to moral issues -- 10. Current attitudes and policy issues.

"Gender Roles in Ireland: Three Decades of Attitude Change documents changing attitudes toward the role of women in Ireland from 1975-2005, a key period of social change in this society. The book presents replicated measures from four separate surveys carried out over three decades. These cover a wide range of gender role attitudes as well as key social issues concerning the role of women in Ireland, including equal pay, equal employment opportunity, maternal employment, contraception etc. Attitudes to abortion, divorce and moral issues are also presented and discussed in the context of people's voting behaviour in national referenda. Taken together, the data available in these studies paint a detailed and complex picture of the evolving role of women in Ireland during a period of rapid social change and key developments in social legislation. The book brings the results up to the present by including new data on current gender role issues from Margret Fine-Davis' latest research"--

In this experiment, an experimental interview with the leader of the Socialists in the Dutch Parliament was delivered via three different media: television, radio, or a newspaper presentation. We showed that the experimental interviews led, in themselves, to attitude change, but no difference was found among the three communication modalities. Moreover, no significant interaction effect was established between the political preference of the subjects (Socialist versus non-Socialist) and communication modality. Our main results do not support the assumption that for a well-known politician presently holding office, television is a less effective medium than radio or newspaper.

The process of thought-induced attitude change was examined by having subjects rate the similarity of adjective descriptions of persons (or groups) with each other and with a hypothetical ideal. Subjects either thought about or were distracted from thinking about a target stimulus for
90 seconds. Following this, subjects related all pairs of descriptions. An analysis of change on similarity ratings revealed that the target stimulus moved toward the ideal while the ideal did not move as a result of thought. Support for other possibilities was not obtained.

AbstractUnderstanding when and why White racial attitudes change is important for understanding their politics. Critically, surveys reveal Whites' views of Black Americans have been changing recently, an important result given conventional wisdom that these are stable orientations. I test four possible explanations for these shifting views: genuine attitude change, social desirability, partisan expressive responding, and changing racial attitude measure performance. Importantly, these explanations produce observationally equivalent survey toplines. To adjudicate between them, I use the measurement equivalence framework and examine how Whites answer the racial resentment measure. Evidence from multigroup confirmatory factor analysis models supports genuine attitude change. Substantively, this suggests these changes may have important political implications. Methodologically, it suggests partisan expressive responding may have limits, indicates social desirability pressures have not changed how Whites answer at least one racial attitude measure, and offers additional validity evidence for the racial resentment measure.

Margret Fine-Davis' book-length examination analyses changing attitudes towards gender roles in the Republic of Ireland. This longitudinal study, of which there are too few, traces attitudinal, leg...

Abstract. This paper proposes to make an inventory of knowledge on the process of vicarious dissonance, describing the possibility of individuals experiencing cognitive dissonance vicariously when they observe a member of their group acting inconsistently with their own attitudes ( Cooper & Hogg, 2007 ). After identifying different factors necessary for or conducive to the development of vicarious dissonance, and after reviewing the nature of vicarious dissonance, this article will explore the reasons why an individual may be compelled to change their attitude under conditions of vicarious dissonance. We will conclude our argument by presenting new findings on this phenomenon in line with several theories. According to the cognitive dissonance theory, the reduction is linked to a decrease in arousal which leads to a decrease in inconsistency. While the social identity theory ( Tajfel & Turner, 1979 ) and self-categorization ( Turner et al., 1987 ) allows us to think of cognitive dissonance as a vicarious process, the uncertainty theory ( Hogg, 2000 , 2007 ) proposes brand new interpretations for answering the question "what are the functions of vicarious dissonance reduction?", at both individual- and group-level.

Measurement of attitudes before and after an educational intervention generally reflects both the impact of the session and the fact that the best predictor of attitudes after the session are attitudes before the session. Statistics currently available provide contradictory information; both measures of association and measures of difference are statistically significant. Current tests of the significance of change either have restrictive assumptions or do not take into account people who do not change. A new measure is proposed which incorporates information on amount and direction of change. Delta is calculated from a contingency table of the pre-and postmeasurements. It ranges from + 1, signifying that everyone changed in one direction to -1, that is, everyone changed in the opposite direction, and becomes 0 when there is perfect correlation in scores or equal change in both directions. Delta is useful in assessing which attitudes have been most influenced by the educational intervention.