ABSTRACT
Gordon Allport’s (1935) oft-cited statement that “the concept of attitude … is the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary American social psychology” (p. 798) has reverberated in the proliferation of attitude research over the years. Indeed, the scientific study of attitudes has been the most popular and voluminous topic of research in all of social psychology (for reviews see, e.g., Ajzen & Fishbein, 1975; Albarracín, Johnson, & Zanna, 2005; Eagly & Chaiken, 1993; Krosnick & Petty, 1995; McGuire, 1968; Petty & Wegener, 1998, among others). A search for the term “attitude” on PSYCInfo yields a staggering 390,308 results, as compared with the results for terms such as “cognition” (132,490 results), “motivation” (124,454 results), and “decision” (155,889 results).
