The importance of being selective: weighing the role of attribute importance in attitudinal judgment

This chapter focuses on attitudes that are associated with deliberate information processing and explores the attributes or belief structure underlying individual attitudes. The chapter discusses dual-process models of attitude change. Attitudes and decisions differ in importance. Attitudes about trivial issues and most decisions in familiar situations tend to be based on impulse, habit, or rule, without much reflection. Probably many attitudes and everyday decisions are of this nature. However, more important attitudes and decisions are presumably based on more careful and deliberate information processing. Answering questions about these attitudes is expected to be preceded by several steps, including the selection of beliefs or attributes that are of relevance, assessing these attributes, and integrating these assessments into an overall evaluative judgment, preference, or choice. The most notable exception concerns work on dual-process models of attitude change. The chapter concludes with attribute importance and its relation to attitude ambivalence and attitude strength.