Attitude Strength

Attitude strength refers to the extent to which an attitude is consequential. Compared to weak attitudes, strong attitudes are more likely to remain stable over time, resist influence, affect thought, and guide behavior.

Researchers have identified several attributes related to attitude strength. Several frequently studied attributes are well suited for survey research because they can be assessed directly using a single self-report survey item. For example, attitude extremity can be conceptualized as the absolute value of an attitude score reported on a bipolar scale that is centered at zero and ranges from strongly negative to strongly positive. Attitude importance is the significance people perceive a given attitude to have for them. Attitude certainty refers to how sure or how confident people are that their attitude is valid. Each of these attributes can be measured with straightforward questions, such as, To what extent is your attitude about X positive or negative?; How important is X to you personally?; and How certain are you about your attitude about X? Recent research suggests that attitude strength also is related to the extent that individuals subjectively associate an attitude with their personal moral convictions.

Other attributes can be assessed directly, with self-report survey items, or indirectly, with survey measures that allow researchers to infer the level of the attribute without relying on people's ability to introspect. For example, knowledge is the amount of information people associate with an attitude. Knowledge often is assessed by quizzes or by asking people to recall and list facts or experiences they relate to the attitude object. In a similar way, ambivalence, or the extent that people feel conflicted about a target, can be measured by asking people to list both positive and negative thoughts about the attitude object.

Most attitude strength research has assessed the association between attributes and characteristics of strong attitudes. Much less is known about how strength-related attributes relate to each other. Existing evidence, however, suggests that attitude attributes are best conceptualized as distinct constructs rather than as indicators of a single latent construct. Correlations between attributes typically range from low to only moderately positive.

Moreover, attributes often have different antecedents and consequences. For example, attitude importance, but not attitude certainty, about political policies has been found to predict whether people voted in the 1996 U.S. presidential election. In contrast, attitude certainty, but not attitude importance, has been found to predict whether people were willing to accept a nonpreferred candidate in the election.