Attitude and Attitude Change Attitudes and Attitude Change: A Comparison of Two Studies

The introduction written by Albarracin and Handley (2011) began with a historical foundation for the study of psychological change and then proceeded with a detailed description and logical arguments for the factors that they believe play a role in change. After presenting this logical foundation to the readers the authors presented their argument for the current study, which examined the causal relationship between broad action or inaction goals and changes in attitude. By comparison, the introduction to the study by Frye et al. (2012) was a more straightforward literature review of the causal relationship between memory and attitude. The most notable difference between the two studies was an obvious effort by Frye and colleagues (2012) to minimize difficult language, thereby making their manuscript more readable to researchers interested in, but not actively working in the field.

Study Purposes

The purpose of the study by Albarracin and Handley (2011) is to understand whether broad action or inaction goals (intentions) can influence the strength of attitudes recalled from the past, in response to a future persuasive message. The overall goal of the study was therefore to understand how people adopt attitudes to an expected message and what influence their current state of action or inaction has on this process. Frye et al. (2012) examined a different aspect of psychological change in their study, the influence of memory errors on attitudes. These researchers were also interested in understanding the direction of causality between attitudes and memories.

Research Questions

Albarracin and Handley...

The authors also asked whether goals influenced the speed of attitude recall, resistance to attitude change, and impacted argument scrutiny when presented with a counter-attitude. By comparison, Frye and colleagues (2012) carried out two experiments to address the direction of causality between memories and attitudes and whether memory errors could have an impact on attitudes. The three relationships tested were: (1) memory impact on attitudes, (2) attitude impact on memories, and (3) the impact of memory errors on attitudes. Another variable tested in the study by Frye et al. (2012) was the impact of time on attitude change since the imagined action.
Literature Reviews

Albarracin and Handley (2011) discussed prior research in the introduction to their study, including the findings of Albarracin et al. (2008), Albarracin, Helper, and Tannenbaum (in press), Albarracin, Wang, and Leeper (2009), Gendolla and Silvestrini (2010), Glasman and Albarracin (2006), and Noguchi, Handley, and Albarracin (2010). The finding of these studies were used to describe the relationships between action and inaction goals, the impact of goals on retrieval of past attitudes, and the motor and cognitive definitions of action and inaction. As an introduction to their research aims Frye and colleagues (2012) presented the findings of Bem (1967), Festinger (1957), Lord and Lepper (1999), Zanna and Rempel (1988), McIntyre et al. (2004), and Frye and Lord (2009). The findings from these studies supported the argument that memories of past actions…