Despite the central place that the study of attitudes has long held in social psycho logical research, the last decade or so has been relatively quiet as far as the de velopment of attitude theory has been concerned. If one looks back to the Yale studies on communication and persuasion in the 1950s, followed by the massive literature derived from cognitive dissonance theory and its alternatives, there may be a temptation to think that the well of researchable questions has run almost dry. The purpose of this book is to convince the reader that this is not the case. On the contrary, a new look at the concept of attitude offers the prospect of as rich and varied a range of questions as ever before. The term "new look" is an old one in social psychology. It was used 30 to 40 years ago as the designation for the school of thought which held that "basic" psychological processes such as perception, cognition, learning, and memory could be influenced by attitudes, motives, and values. There are still lessons to be learned from that period, and the new "new look" that is now emerging incorporates some of these same themes, albeit in the context of changing issues and emphases.

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I. Value, Relativity, and Polarization.- 1. Value Judgments: Toward a Relational Theory of Happiness.- Overview of the Theory.- Formal Statement of the Theory.- Applications.- Conclusion.- 2. Psychological Perspective in Attitude Research.- Some Principles of Absolute Judgment.- The Perspective Model of Attitudes.- Judgments on Congeneric Attitude Scales.- Some Abiguous Findings.- Conclusions.- 3. Accentuation Theory, Polarization, and the Judgment of Attitude Statements.- Judgment of Attitude Statements and the Effect of Judges' Attitudes.- Anchoring and Contrast.- Interpretations of the Contrast Effect.- Assimilation and Polarization.- Accentuation Theory-Basic Principles.- Applying Accentuation Theory to the Judgment of Attitude Statements.- Connotations of Judgmental Language-A Neglected Variable.- Categorization, Congruity, and Appropriateness.- Conclusions.- 4. The Polarizing Effects of Affective Intensity.- Affect and Attitudes.- Effects of Affective Intensity.- Implications for the Study of Affect and Cognition.- II. Intergroup Attitudes.- 5. Attributing Attitudes to Members of Groups.- Balance and Functional Theories.- Some Data Analyses.- Interpretation.- Attributing Preferences to the Public.- An Attributional Theory of Experiences and Resource Allocation in.- Social Movement Organizations.- Conclusion.- 6. Stereotyping and Sampling Biases in Intergroup Perception.- Internal Mechanisms that Constrain the Perception of Social Groups.- Social Forces that Constrain the Sampling of Events for In-Group and Out-Group Members.- Overview.- 7. Language and Intergroup Attitudes.- Assessment Procedures.- Findings from Speaker Evaluation Research.- Mechanisms and Determinants.- Framework for Extending Research on Language Attitudes.- An Intergroup Model of Language Attitudes.- Conclusions.- III. Salience, Schematic Processing, and Attitude Change.- 8. Dimensional Salience, Judgment, and Attitudes.- Dimensional Salience.- Dimensional Salience, Preference, and Judgment.- Expectancy-Value Models and Salience.- Attitudes and Salience: Some Empirical Findings.- Salience and Attitude Change.- Conclusions.- 9. Attitudes and Attitude Change: Mindlessness-Mindfulness Perspective.- What Is an Attitude?.- Gestalt and Field Theoretical Influences.- A Reconceptualization of Attitude.- The Theory of Mindfulness-Mindlessness.- Implications of Mindfulness-Mindlessness Theory for the Study of.- Attitudes.- Attitude Change.- Implications for Producing Attitude Change.- Mindfulness-Mindlessness Theory and the Attribution of Attitudes to Others.- Summary.- 10. Schematic Bases of Belief Change.- Schemas Resist Change.- Features of Schemas that Can Change.- When Will Incongruent Information Receive Attention?.- Models of Schema Change.- Characteristics of Schemas that Lead to or Resist Change.- Characteristics of Data.- A Comment on the Relationship Between Schema Change and Attitude Change.- Summary and Conclusions.- Author Index.