Handbook of Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology: Volume 5 by Irving B. Weiner & Howard A. Tennen & Jerry M. Suls

Author:Irving B. Weiner & Howard A. Tennen & Jerry M. Suls
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2012-10-09T14:00:00+00:00

Attitude Structure

Thus far, we have explained that attitudes summarize beliefs, feelings, and behavior relevant to an attitude object, but we have not considered the underlying structure of these summative judgments. That is, how do our brains organize these representations of positivity and negativity? There are two prominent perspectives on this question: the unidimensional model and the bidimensional model.

Unidimensional Model

The unidimensional perspective regards attitudes as evaluations that express sentiments ranging from extreme unfavorability toward the attitude object to extreme favorability toward the attitude object. This perspective is labeled as unidimensional because it emphasizes a single dimension of evaluation. In other words, the unidimensional perspective assumes that attitudes can take the form of (a) favorability, (b) unfavorability, or (c) neither favorability nor unfavorability. Thus, a person may feel either positively or negatively about the object, but not both at the same time.

The most common measures of attitudes are based on the unidimensional perspective. These measures include bipolar semantic-differential scales, which were mentioned earlier in the discussion of self-report measures of attitudes. These scales are anchored by a negative adjective at one end (e.g., bad) and a positive adjective at the other end (e.g., good). Respondents may be given numerous semantic differential scales, anchored by different adjective pairs (e.g., good versus bad; negative versus positive). To yield an overall index of attitudes, responses are averaged across the scales.

Another common procedure uses Likert-type scales. This technique asks respondents to indicate their agreement or disagreement with several statements expressing varying degrees of favorability or unfavorability toward the attitude object. For example, a measure of attitudes toward the internet might include the items: “The internet gives people access to useful information” and “The internet makes obscene material accessible to everyone.” People respond to each item on a scale from −3 (strongly disagree) to +3 (strongly agree). To yield an overall index of attitudes, responses to the items that imply unfavorability toward the attitude object are reverse-coded (e.g., +3 changes to −3), and responses to all items are averaged.

Bidimensional Model

The bidimensional model rejects the notion that attitudes exist only on a single evaluative continuum from negativity to positivity. Instead, the bidimensional model suggests that attitudes subsume two evaluative tendencies: one that varies in positivity and one that varies in negativity. Consequently, attitudes can take the form of (a) favorability, (b) unfavorability, (c) neither favorability nor unfavorability, or (d) both favorability and unfavorability toward the attitude object.

To measure attitudes from the bidimensional perspective, the positive and negative responses must be assessed separately. Kaplan (1972) suggested that any single semantic differential scale could be “split” to yield separate positive and negative dimensions. For example, researchers could use a semantic differential scale from −3 (very bad) to 0 (neutral) and another semantic differential scale from 0 (neutral) to +3 (very good), rather than use a single semantic differential scale from −3 (very bad) to +3 (very good). In this manner, separate negative and positive dimension scores are obtained. This approach prevents ambiguous neutral responses. That is, in single semantic differential

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