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Content: Wicker  (1985, p. 1094) says the mind develops "conceptual
ruts" and this "... human tendency to think recurring thoughts
limits our theories and research." Mills  (1963) said that the abundance  of laboratory  experi-
ments  with  attitudes  made  textbooks  artificial  because  they
depend  mainly  on data  derived  from  supposedly  volunteer
students. In effect,  one  of the  major  sources  of  information
about the nature of prejudice and discrimination comes  from
a selective population where the theoretical orientation of the
researcher assumes that attitudes must change before behavior
does. Behaviorists introduce a variation by saying that changing
attitudes may be a way to change behavior but it is more cost
effective to influence behavior by changing the consequences
(Geller, 1992). That  is,  they focus  on behavior and  eliminate
consideration  of  attitudes  altogether. The  extreme empiricist
stance is that one cannot directly discern mental states; there-
fore they are not relevant for study. The increasing importance
of the cognitive view in psychology has tended to reduce  the
influence of the empiricist behaviorists. While there is some support for being able to predict verbal
attitudes, the correlations are not strong or consistent (Sjoberg,
1982). Wicker (1969) suggested that a "threshold" helps explain
findings where a person may be willing to express negative at-
titudes on paper and not verbally.