When it is Embedded, it is Potent: Effects of General Attitude Embeddedness on Formation of Specific Attitudes and Behavioral Intentions

Abstract

Attitude embeddedness, defined as the degree of connectedness of an attitude to other cognitive elements, was operationalized as the number of free associations subjects produced in relation to the attitude issue. Two experiments demonstrated that embeddedness moderated the effects of general attitudes on specific attitudes in situations that were ambiguously related to general attitudes. Highly embedded general attitudes but not low-embedded general attitudes toward capital punishment or the right to die served as a basis for the formation of specific evaluations of situations that were only moderately relevant for the broader issue. A third experiment demonstrated that highly embedded attitudes toward preservation of the environment were more strongly related to behavioral intentions than low-embedded attitudes were.