Whereas actual attitudes represent people's evaluations of specific objects as being good or bad, desired attitudes represent the attitude positions that people wish they held. Previous work has established that desired attitudes can have psychological consequences, but has not yet tested the extent to which desired attitudes can predict actual attitude change. In five datasets involving a variety of populations and procedural variations, we explored how political and moral factors motivate people to form desired attitudes distinct from their actual attitudes. These desired attitudes then predicted actual attitude change occurring after the formation of the desired attitudes, even though participants received no new information about the object. The present work demonstrates an additional value of the desired attitude construct: its ability to anticipate how people's attitudes will shift in the future.

实际态度代表人们对特定对象的好坏评价，而期望态度代表人们希望他们持有的态度立场。以前的工作已经确定期望的态度会产生心理后果，但尚未测试期望的态度可以在多大程度上预测实际的态度变化。在涉及各种人群和程序变化的五个数据集中，我们探讨了政治和道德因素如何促使人们形成与其实际态度不同的理想态度。这些期望态度随后预测了在期望态度形成后发生的实际态度变化，即使参与者没有收到关于该对象的新信息。目前的工作证明了期望态度结构的附加价值：它能够预测人们未来的态度将如何转变。