Attitude Accessibility as a Function of Repeated Attitudinal Expression

Abstract

The accessibility of attitudes from memory was examined as a function of the strength of the association between the attitude object and the evaluation. The strength of the object-evaluation association was manipulated by varying the number of times (zero, one, three, or six) that subjects expressed their attitudes toward a given issue on an attitude survey. Accessibility was operationalized as the latency of response to an attitudinal inquiry. A quadratic relation between number of expressions and latency was observed, such that initial expressions decreased response latency more than did subsequent expressions. The nature of the experiment also permitted a correlational examination of the relation between attitude extremity and attitude accessibility. A significant but not very substantial correlation was found. The results are discussed in terms of their implications both for the process by which attitudes guide behavior and/or attitude measurement practices.