318 Attitudes in Social Behavior
(see Tyler & Smith, 1998). Family and close relationships
(see the chapter by Clark & Grote in this volume) are built
upon positive attitudes, encompassing such concepts as love,
trust, caring, and intimacy. Positive attitudes encourage good
communication, which is the basis of effective relationships.
Research on consumer behavior is one of the clearest ex-
amples of the application of social psychological findings on
attitudes (e.g., Cialdini, 1993; Reardon, 1991), with topics
ranging from advertising to purchasing behavior. Finally, re-
search on expectancies (see Olson, Roese, & Zanna, 1996)
has shown that expectancies influence information process-
ing and behavior. One of the principal sources of expectan-
cies is attitudes—we expect good things from positively
evaluated objects and bad things from negatively evaluated
objects. These attitude-induced expectancies can lead to er-
rors in information processing, biased hypothesis-testing, and
self-fulfilling prophesies (see Olson et al., 1996).
CONCLUSIONS
Many issues and questions must be addressed in future re-
search on attitudes in social behavior. One important issue is
the internal structure of attitudes, including the dimensional-
ity of attitudes and the conditions under which different com-
ponents of attitudes are more influential than are other
components. A related issue is the distinction between implicit
attitudes and explicit attitudes (or between implicit and ex-
plicit measures of attitudes), including the question of which
sorts of behavior are best predicted by each type of attitude
(measure). The connections between attitudes and broader
constructs like values and ideologies also need to be clarified.
Turning to a different domain, the role of biological factors in
attitude formation and change seems likely to receive more at-
tention over the next decade. Finally, the connection between
attitudes and behavior will continue to interest social psychol-
ogists, with models of attitude-behavior consistency becom-
ing increasingly complex. For example, prediction may be
improved by simultaneously taking into account attitudes to-
ward all of the different behavioral options in a setting.
In closing, the evidence described in this chapter supports
the importance of the construct of attitude. Because of their
broad evaluative nature, attitudes may potentially reflect di-
verse beliefs, feelings, and behaviors. In addition, these eval-
uations serve a number of attitude functions and vary on
several characteristics (e.g., ambivalence, certainty). Most
important is that attitudes influence a wide variety of impor-
tant social behaviors. Indeed, no matter what the setting, per-
sonal evaluations play a role in information processing and in
behavior. The obsession of popular culture with the concept
of attitude, noted at the outset of this chapter, is comprehen-
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