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Affective Attitudes Are not Always Faster: The Moderating Role of Extremity

Swarthmore College, rginer1{at}swarthmore.edu

Some models of attitude have speculated that affectively based attitudes are more accessible than cognitively based attitudes. However, there are also reasons to expect that affectively based attitudes may not be generally faster and that any accessibility advantage would hold only at high levels of attitude extremity. Two studies of attitudes with affective and cognitive structural bases examined this possibility. In both studies, no overall effect of attitude basis on extremity emerged, but attitude extremity did moderate the effects of basis. Affectively based attitudes were expressed faster than cognitively based ones only when attitudes were more extreme, and they tended to be expressed more slowly when attitudes were less extreme. These results may have arisen because only strong affect is seen as more diagnostic of true attitude, producing faster responses.

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