Reading focus
Syllabus: How Do Attitudes Form and Change?
Distinguish an evaluation's extremity from its importance, stability, and consequences.
Why you’re reading it. Define what a stronger attitude would mean before judging an intervention.
A question to consider. How could two equally favorable library ratings imply different predictions about persistence, response to criticism, and attendance?
Why this reading
Two people can report equally favorable opinions while differing in how much those opinions matter. This review examines personal importance as one source of durable and consequential attitudes.
Before you read
Extremity is how positive or negative an evaluation is. Importance is the significance attached to it. Stability concerns persistence over time; resistance concerns response to a challenge. These properties need not be interchangeable.
Read for
- Use Table 1 to distinguish strength-related features from one another.
- Separate proposed causes of importance from its consequences.
- Compare experimental evidence with associations and note the review's unanswered mechanism questions.
Consider afterwards
- Two people choose the same survey response, but only one organizes activities around the issue. Which additional attitude properties and practical constraints would you examine?
Editorial context
Despite its broad title, this is a selective review centered on attitude importance, especially research since 1995. Its application arguments are not themselves intervention tests. An important attitude is not necessarily accurate, beneficial, or sufficient to overcome barriers to action.