Trends in Cognitive Sciences
ReviewAttitudes as propositional representations
Section snippets
Attitudes: a brief history
From a cognitive perspective, attitudes (see Glossary) can be conceptualized as mental representations that determine how we evaluate stimuli; that is, whether we respond in positive or negative ways to stimuli in our environment (evaluation). Thus, attitudes are assumed to be a crucial driving force behind much of what we do, think, and feel [1]. It is therefore unsurprising that cognitive researchers have spent considerable effort trying to understand the nature of attitudinal
A propositional perspective on attitudes
Rather than thinking of attitudinal representations as associations, they also can be conceived of as propositional representations. For instance, a positive attitude toward a particular brand of coffee (e.g., Brand X) could be seen as a representation that specifies the information ‘Brand X is good’ (Figure 1, Key figure). In contrast to (simple) associative representations, propositional representations can specify information about how concepts are related. For instance, unlike an
Relational information moderates EC
If EC occurs because beliefs about stimulus valence (e.g., Brand X is good) are inferred from beliefs about the relation between stimuli (e.g., Brand X co-occurs with Actor Y, Actor Y likes Brand X), information about the specific relation between stimuli could influence beliefs about stimulus valence and thus the strength and direction of EC effects. In line with this reasoning, EC has been found to depend heavily on information about how a CS and a US are related (see [24,25] for reviews). In
Relational information moderates implicit evaluation
From a propositional perspective, pre-existing propositional representations in memory can be activated under suboptimal conditions and novel propositional representations can be formed as the result of inferences that are made under suboptimal conditions. Both processes can give rise to implicit evaluation [20,21]. For instance, if the belief ‘Brand X is good’ has been entertained in the past, it is represented in memory and can thus be retrieved from memory, also under suboptimal conditions.
Concluding remarks
We hope to have shown that the propositional perspective on attitudes provides a viable and useful alternative to the associative perspective on attitudes. It not only offers a potential explanation for phenomena like EC and implicit evaluation but also inspired many new studies on these phenomena. The results of these studies have drastically changed the way we think about EC and implicit evaluation: rather than being simple phenomena based on an primitive associative mechanism, EC and
Acknowledgments
The preparation of this review was made possible by Methusalem Grant BOF16/MET_V/002 of Ghent University to J.D.H. and grant FWO19/PDS/041 of the Scientific Research Foundation Flanders to P.V.D. We thank Russ Fazio, Eric Mandelbaum, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of the review.
Declaration of interests
No interests are declared.
Glossary
- Association
- a link between nodes in memory via which activation can spread.
- Attitude
- a mental representation that mediates stimulus evaluation; that is, that allows stimuli to evoke evaluative responses.
- Automatic
- an umbrella concept that can refer to the different ways in which conditions are suboptimal for cognitive processing (synonym of implicit).
- Believability
- the extent to which information is considered to be true or false.
- Diagnosticity
- the extent to which information allows conclusions.
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