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Affective-cognitive consistency and thought-induced attitude polarization
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
|December 1, 1985
Summary
Individuals with consistent attitudes polarize more when thinking about their beliefs. High-consistency subjects generated more consistent thoughts and discredited opposing views, strengthening their stance.
Area of Science:
- Social Psychology
- Cognitive Psychology
Background:
- Attitude polarization is influenced by cognitive processes.
- Affective-cognitive consistency plays a role in attitude strength.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how affective-cognitive consistency impacts attitude polarization.
- To examine the role of cognitive elaboration in attitude change.
Main Methods:
- Participants with high/low attitude consistency wrote essays on relevant and distractor topics.
- Content analysis of essays examined cognitive consistency and information processing.
Main Results:
- High-consistency subjects showed greater polarization on the relevant topic after writing the relevant essay.
- High-consistency subjects generated more evaluatively consistent cognitions and discredited inconsistent information.
Conclusions:
- Thought-induced attitude polarization is enhanced by well-developed knowledge structures.
- Individuals with high affective-cognitive consistency assimilate discrepant information more effectively, leading to polarization.