Readings in attitude change

Both the scattered nature and the accelerating growth of the attitude change literature make it difficult for the interested reader to obtain an overview of the field. This compilation of readings is designed to help surmount these obstacles by providing a handy source of empirical articles concerned with the social psychological factors and processes that influence attitude change. It is intended for use in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in which direct exposure to the experimental literature is desired.
The readings also include introductory and concluding chapters written especially for this volume. The introductory chapter provides an orientation to various conceptions of attitudes and summaries of most of the major theories of attitude formation and change. The final chapter assesses the current status of the field and notes what we believe are likely to be future theoretical and research trends.
The introductory chapter may be used in several ways, depending on the level of the students' backgrounds. For students with previous exposure to attitude theory, the chapter can provide a review before they undertake the empirical work on attitude change. For an introductory course in attitudes, we suggest that the chapter be assigned twice : prior to and after assignment of the empirical articles. A second reading—after an initial introduction and subsequent exposure to lecture material and the selected articles—should aid the understanding of the relevance and limitations of these theories to empirical problems and will set the stage for considering our evaluation of the field in the concluding chapter.
The selection of articles was guided by many considerations. We wanted to give broad coverage to the many variables that influence attitude change. Yet, research endeavors tend to become concentrated on certain variables to the exclusion of others. When theoretical controversies develop and contradictory findings are obtained, attention becomes directed toward one problem area to the neglect of other interesting phenomena.