EFFECTS OF ATTITUDE DIRECTION, ATTITUDE INTENSITY AND STRUCTURE OF BELIEFS UPON DIFFERENTIATION

Abstract

Concrete and abstract Subjects (Ss) made ratings of positive, negative and neutral instances of the stimulus domains of social beliefs and interpersonal relations toward which they varied in intensity of feeling. Neutral stimuli were better differentiated than either positive or negative stimuli, between which there was no difference. Attitudinal intensity exercised a significant main effect on one measure of differentiation and interacted significantly with concreteness-abstractness on both measures. Concrete Ss differentiated more highly than abstract Ss under low intensity while the reverse was true under high intensity. Thus attitudinal intensity and not direction was found to affect differentiation, in contradiction of both a vigilance and exploration hypothesis. The optimum intensity for differentiation by concrete Ss was much lower than that for abstract Ss.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1968
Accession Number
AD0666290

Entities

People

  • John W. Reich
  • O. J. Harvey
  • Robert S. Wyer

Organizations

  • University of Colorado Boulder

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Analysis Of Variance
  • Classification
  • Colorado
  • Concrete
  • Governments
  • Interpersonal Relations
  • Judgment
  • Materials
  • New York
  • Personality
  • Psychology
  • Ratings
  • Security
  • Social Psychology
  • United States
  • United States Government

Fields of Study

  • Psychology

Readers

  • Brain and Cognitive Science; Experimental Psychology; Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Organizational Psychology.