Formation, representation, and activation of contextualized attitudes

Abstract

The pervasiveness of context effects on evaluative responses has led to conflicting views as to whether evaluations reflect stable attitudinal representations that are directly retrieved from memory or online constructions on the basis of momentarily accessible attributes. The current research expands on this debate by investigating the formation, representation, and activation of contextualized attitudes, with a particular focus on the role of incidental visual cues of the environmental context. Five experiments demonstrated that (1) incidental visual cues tend to be integrated into the representation of attitudeincongruent, but not attitude-congruent, information; (2) these cues are not directly associated with the valence of counterattitudinal experiences, but instead constrain the activation of available information about the attitude object; (3) the modulating function of these cues remains intact even when they become directly associated with an evaluative response; (4) contextualized representations of counterattitudinal information can be activated by contexts that are either perceptually or conceptually similar to the context in which the counterattitudinal experience took place. Implications for context effects and attitude change are discussed.

Generalization versus contextualization in automatic evaluation revisited: A meta-analysis of successful and failed replications.

“…Although many of these studies replicated our initial findings (e.g., Gawronski, Ye, Rydell, & De Houwer, 2014), some of them failed to reproduce the basic effects that served as the foundation for our theory (cf. .…”

Predicting Context-Dependent Cross-Modal Associations with Dimension-Specific Polarity Attributions Part 1 – Brightness and Aggression

“…Context plays a crucial role when constructing the meaning of concepts (e.g., Elliot & Maier, 2012;Gawronski et al, 2014;Mesquita et al, 2010;Schwarz, 2007). Researchers have emphasized the importance of developing mid- Art.…”

“…Studies in cognitive psychology, social cognition, and linguistics convincingly show that taskspecific contexts play a crucial role when constructing meaning and when engaging in conceptual thought (e.g., Barrett, Wilson-Mendenhall, & Barsalou, 2014;Elliot & Maier, 2012;Gawronski, Ye, Rydell, & De Houwer, 2014;Mitchell, Nosek, & Banaji, 2003;Paradis & Willners, 2011;Rothermund & Wentura, 2001Schwarz, 2007;Smith, 1996). Although researchers have repeatedly shown that the meaning of the same concept can vary across different contexts, it has proven difficult to predict when people assign which meaning to a concept.…”

What is cognitive consistency, and why does it matter?

“…The notion that exposure to expectancy-violating information enhances attention has been adopted by Gawronski, Ye, Rydell, and De Houwer (2014) to investigate the integration of incidental context cues into the mental representation of newly acquired information. The basic idea underlying this work is that exposure to expectancy-violating information enhances attention to the momentary context, which leads to an integration of the context into the mental representation of the expectancy-violating information.…”