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Content: Specifically, strong attitudes are those that (a) resist change, (b) persist over time, (c) guide information processing, and (d) motivate and direct behavior. Attitude Strength Background
A great deal of evidence attests to the impact of attitudes on a wide array of outcomes. There is evidence, for example, that attitudes can color one’s interpretation of ambiguous stimuli, causing one to perceive the stimuli in attitude-congruent ways. This explains why supporters of two competing political candidates can watch the same political debate and come away equally convinced that their own preferred candidate prevailed. In addition, attitudes can shape people’s perceptions of other people’s attitudes, causing them to overestimate the prevalence of their views. There is also a wealth of evidence that attitudes motivate and guide behavior. For example, people’s attitudes toward recycling are strongly predictive of whether they actually participate in recycling programs, and attitudes toward political candidates are excellent predictors of voting behavior. In these and countless other ways, thoughts and actions are profoundly shaped by attitudes. Attitudes do not always exert such powerful effects, however. In fact, in addition to the impressive findings about the power of attitudes, the attitude literature is also full of an equally impressive set of failures to find any effect of attitudes on thought or behavior.