Attitude and the pyschology of judgment

Abstract

Traditional attitude research has confused the issue of the consistency of attitude-relevant responses with that of their accuracy as indicators of attitude. My argument here is that these issues are quite distinct. I have proposed that such response consistency can result from separate responses sharing contiguous learning histories and from external pressures for social accountability. Neither kind of consistency entails that we view the responses thereby produced as more or less accurate or ‘sincere’ reflections of any internal state.