Attitudes and Attitude Change

Reviews the major lines of research in attitude change: attitude-behavior consistency, persuasion, and cognitive dissonance. Theoretical models began to address in the 1980's the mediation of consistency between attitudes and behaviors. A methodological perspective introduces the intentions model and emphasizes the importance of measurement correspondence. The mediational perspective emphasizes the dynamics of attitudes and behaviors and examines mediating personality factors. Persuasion research continues to be dominated by the cognitive response perspective; the current literature is almost devoid of mention of affect, emotion, or arousal. Research in dissonance theory has often focused on attitude change. Two areas of ongoing research reaffirm the interplay among cognitive, psychophysiological, and social psychology. The 1st area integrates concerns of cognitive and social psychology, employing attitude as an independent variable while examining consequences for social information processing. The 2nd area is social psychophysiology, which relates bodily response to attitude measurement and attitude change. It is suggested that the pendulum will swing back toward motivational work on attitude change in the future. (41/2 p ref)