Affect and Cognition in Attitude Formation toward Familiar and Unfamiliar Attitude Objects.

ABSTRACT: At large attitudes are built on earlier experience with the attitude object. If earlier experiences are not available, as is the case for unfamiliar attitude objects such as new technologies, no stored evaluations exist. Yet, people are still somehow able to construct attitudes on the spot. Depending on the familiarity of the attitude object, attitudes may find their basis more in affect or cognition. The current paper investigates differences in reliance on affect or cognition in attitude formation toward familiar and unfamiliar realistic attitude objects. In addition, individual differences in reliance on affect (high faith in intuition) or cognition (high need for cognition) are taken into account. In an experimental survey among Dutch consumers (N = 1870), we show that, for unfamiliar

SUBMITTER: van Giesen RI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4627771 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature