ATTITUDE-BEHAVIOR PROCESSES, STRESS AND MENTAL HEALTH

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The research has the long-term objective of understanding how individuals structure and cope with their social environments. The work centers upon the functional value of attitudes and examines the processes by which attitudes serve to simplify the behavior of mentally healthy individuals. A model concerning attitudes and their activation from memory has been proposed. The model centers upon the strength of the association in memory between the attitude object and one's evaluation of the object Past research has found the strength of this association to determine the likelihood that the attitude will be activated from memory upon the individual's encountering the object, which, in turn, determines the power and functionality of the attitude. Five projects, each involving a series of investigations, are proposed as a continuation of the various lines of theoretical and empirical work that have been pursued during the past grant period. Project I involves further tests of the PI's recently proposed model of the multiple processes by which attitudes can guide behavior. A relatively spontaneous process based upon automatic attitude activation has been contrasted with a more deliberative process, and the conditions that promote one process over the other have been specified. Project II continues efforts to refine the methodology that we have used to assess the automatic activation of attitudes to the point that it can adequately serve as an indirect, unobtrusive measure of an individual's attitude. Project III centers upon the functional value of accessible attitudes. Recent findings from both laboratory experiments and field studies have demonstrated such functionality. Project III involves a continuation of the field research efforts, which examined entering freshmen's adjustment to college life and obtained evidence of the relevance of accessible attitudes to mental health concerns. Project IV addresses an heretofore unexamined issue, namely, the costs of accessible attitudes. It is suggested that accessible attitudes can leave the individual rather closed-minded and impervious to changes that the attitude object might exhibit over time. Project V examines an implication of the attitude model for persuasion. The planned experiments focus upon the efficacy of a particular persuasive strategy for modifying attitudes that are highly accessible from memory and, consequently, typically resistant to counterpersuasion.