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On the Relationship Between Attitude Involvement and Attitude Accessibility: Toward a Cognitive‐Motivational Model of Political Information Processing
Author(s) -
Lavine Howard,
Borgida Eugene,
Sullivan John L.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
political psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.419
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-9221
pISSN - 0162-895X
DOI - 10.1111/0162-895x.00178
Subject(s) - ambivalence , psychology , attitude , attitude change , social psychology , positive attitude , politics , relevance (law) , cognition , public opinion , information processing , survey data collection , political science , cognitive psychology , statistics , mathematics , neuroscience , law
A model of the relationship between attitude involvement and attitude accessibilitywas developed and tested. The model specifies that attitude involvement leads to selective(biased) issue‐related information‐gathering strategies, which in turn produce extreme andunivalent (unambivalent) attitudes. Finally, attitudes associated with univalent and extremeunderlying structures should occasion relatively little decision conflict and thus should be highlyaccessible. Questionnaire response data gathered in a national telephone survey and from twosamples of undergraduates revealed that both attitude extremity and attitude ambivalence onselected political issues mediated the relationship between attitude involvement and attitudeaccessibility. Some findings indicated that selective processing mediated the relationshipbetween attitude involvement and attitude extremity and ambivalence. Discussion focuses on theprocesses linking involvement to accessibility, the factors that moderate theambivalence‐accessibility relationship, and the relevance of the model to media‐based primingeffects and tothe nature of public opinion and the survey response.