ABSTRACT

Thought handling may affect the subsequent use of thoughts in evaluative judgements. Thus, a person’s attitudes are more influenced by thoughts about the attitude object when the person has saved (versus deleted) a representation of these thoughts. We examined if thought handling would affect not only focal attitude change but also lateral attitude change. Students (N = 200) listed positive thoughts about a focal object and later either saved or deleted a representation of their thoughts. Then their explicit and implicit attitudes towards the focal object, a lateral (= related) object and an unrelated object were assessed. Results showed that explicit focal attitudes were affected more by thoughts in the save conditions than in the delete conditions. These effects generalized to explicit lateral attitudes but not to explicit unrelated attitudes. Thought (handling) effects on implicit attitudes were generally weak. We discuss the results in terms of a self-validation approach and the lateral attitude change model.

摘要

思想处理可能会影响思想在评估判断中的后续使用。因此，当一个人保存（而不是删除）这些想法的表示时，一个人的态度会更多地受到关于态度对象的想法的影响。我们研究了思想处理是否会不仅影响焦点姿势变化而且还会影响横向姿势变化。学生（N= 200）列出了有关焦点对象的积极想法，后来又保存或删除了他们的想法的表示。然后评估他们对焦点对象，横向（=相关）对象和无关对象的显式和隐式态度。结果表明，在保存条件下，明确的焦点态度受思想的影响要大于在删除条件下的思想。这些影响普遍适用于明确的侧向姿态，而不适用于明确的无关姿态。思想（处理）对内隐态度的影响通常较弱。我们根据自我验证方法和横向姿态变化模型来讨论结果。