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R H Fazio

Publications and source records attributed to R H Fazio.

12 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1997

Considering the best choice: effects of the salience and accessibility of alternatives on attitude--decision consistency.

The authors examined how the presence or absence of specified alternatives influences which alternatives are considered and what choice is made. The accessibility of alternatives as a moderator of the correspondence between attitudes and decisions also was investigated. In Study 1, the accessibility of alternatives was an important determinant of choice when decisions options were unspecified. The results of Studies 2 and 3 suggest that the potential for attitude-decision correspondence is high when (a) the decision context makes the alternatives salient or (b) alternatives are easily accessed from memory.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Accessible attitudes influence categorization of multiply categorizable objects.

Every person or object can be categorized in multiple ways. For example, a person can be categorized (and hence stereotyped) by gender, age, race, or occupation. Earlier research demonstrated that objects toward which people have highly accessible attitudes attract attention when they are present in the visual field. On the basis of that work, the authors hypothesized that categories toward which people have highly accessible attitudes are preferentially applied to multiply categorizable objects. Three experiments, with cued recall and categorization response time as dependent variables, support the hypothesis. Categories toward which people's attitudes had been rendered accessible by an earlier task were more readily produced in response to multiply categorizable objects serving as a cue, or could more quickly be verified as fitting the object. These results demonstrate the power and functional value of accessible attitudes in shaping basic categorization and judgmental processes.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Variability in automatic activation as an unobtrusive measure of racial attitudes: a bona fide pipeline?

The research examines an unobtrusive measure of racial attitudes based on the evaluations that are automatically activated from memory on the presentation of Black versus White faces. Study 1, which concerned the technique's validity, obtained different attitude estimates for Black and White participants and also revealed that the variability among White participants was predictive of other race-related judgments and behavior. Study 2 concerned the lack of correspondence between the unobtrusive estimates and Modern Racism Scale (MRS) scores. The reactivity of the MRS was demonstrated in Study 3. Study 4 observed an interaction between the unobtrusive estimates and an individual difference in motivation to control prejudiced reactions when predicting MRS scores. The theoretical implications of the findings for consideration of automatic and controlled components of racial prejudice are discussed, as is the status of the MRS.

Black or African American↗
PubMed1993

Attitude accessibility as a moderator of autonomic reactivity during decision making.

Attitude functionality was assessed in 2 experiments examining attitude accessibility as a moderator of physiological responses during decision making. In Study 1, experimental Ss but not controls rehearsed attitudes toward novel objects (abstract paintings). Subsequently, all Ss made rapid preference judgments for pairs of the paintings. In Study 2, attitudes were rehearsed by all Ss toward 1 of 2 mutually exclusive sets of abstract paintings. During the subsequent decision-making task, half the Ss made rapid pairwise preference judgments for rehearsed abstract paintings and half for pairs from the unrehearsed set. Autonomic measures were recorded continuously throughout both experiments. As predicted, in both experiments less autonomic reactivity was evident during the criterion pairwise preference task for groups for whom attitude rehearsal was relevant to the criterion task.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

Variability in the likelihood of automatic attitude activation: data reanalysis and commentary on Bargh, Chaiken, Govender, and Pratto (1992)

This commentary addresses J. A. Bargh, S. Chaiken, R. Govender, and F. Pratto's (1992) conclusion that automatic attitude activation depends not on the idiosyncratic strength of the association in memory between an attitude object and an individual's evaluation of the object but on normative considerations constant across individuals. A variety of difficulties with the bases for this conclusion are discussed. Moreover, additional analyses of the J.A. Bargh et al. data reveal the superiority of an idiosyncratic measure of associative strength (a given individual's latency of response to an attitudinal inquiry) in predicting automatic attitude activation over the various normative measures (latency, extremity, ambivalence, polarization, and consensus or consistency) that were examined. These results support the theoretical premise that attitude activation varies as a function of position along an idiosyncratically defined attitude-nonattitude continuum.

Association↗
PubMed1992

On the orienting value of attitudes: attitude accessibility as a determinant of an object's attraction of visual attention.

Four experiments tested the hypothesis that objects toward which individuals hold attitudes that are highly accessible from memory (i.e., attitude-evoking objects) are more likely to attract attention when presented in a visual display than objects involving less accessible attitudes. In Experiments 1 and 2, Ss were more likely to notice and report such attitude-evoking objects. Experiment 3 yielded evidence of incidental attention; Ss noticed attitude-evoking objects even when the task made it beneficial to ignore the objects. Experiment 4 demonstrated that inclusion of attitude-evoking objects as distractor items interfered with Ss' performance of a visual search task. Apparently, attitude-evoking stimuli attract attention automatically. Thus, accessible attitudes provide the functional benefit of orienting an individual's visual attention toward objects with potential hedonic consequences.

Attention↗
PubMed1990

The role of attitudes in memory-based decision making.

Frequently, considerable knowledge of the attributes of decision alternatives is available in memory so as to permit a thoughtful and deliberate choice. However, in many instances, individuals neglect to use such knowledge and instead rely on "attitude-based" strategy to make a memory-based decision. The findings from two experiments suggest that as to the motivation to make a correct decision or the opportunity to use the available attribute knowledge decreases, the likelihood that attitudes will guide a memory-based decision increases. The findings illustrate the functional role attitudes play in guiding decisions and behavior. By providing a ready means of evaluating choice alternatives, attitudes enable an individual to make a decision relatively quickly and effortlessly.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

On the automatic activation of attitudes.

We hypothesized that attitudes characterized by a strong association between the attitude object and an evaluation of that object are capable of being activated from memory automatically upon mere presentation of the attitude object. We used a priming procedure to examine the extent to which the mere presentation of an attitude object would facilitate the latency with which subjects could indicate whether a subsequently presented target adjective had a positive or a negative connotation. Across three experiments, facilitation was observed on trials involving evaluatively congruent primes (attitude objects) and targets, provided that the attitude object possessed a strong evaluative association. In Experiments 1 and 2, preexperimentally strong and weak associations were identified via a measurement procedure. In Experiment 3, the strength of the object-evaluation association was manipulated. The results indicated that attitudes can be automatically activated and that the strength of the object-evaluation association determines the likelihood of such automatic activation. The implications of these findings for a variety of issues regarding attitudes--including their functional value, stability, effects on later behavior, and measurement--are discussed.

Arousal↗
PubMed1986

Attitude accessibility as a moderator of the attitude-perception and attitude-behavior relations: an investigation of the 1984 presidential election.

It was hypothesized that the extent to which individuals' attitudes guide their subsequent perceptions of and behavior toward the attitude object is a function of the accessibility of those attitudes from memory. A field investigation concerning the 1984 presidential election was conducted as a test of these hypotheses. Attitudes toward each of the two candidates, Reagan and Mondale, and the accessibility of those attitudes, as indicated by the latency of response to the attitudinal inquiry, were measured for a large sample of townspeople months before the election. Judgments of the performance of the candidates during the televised debates served as the measure of subsequent perceptions, and voting served as the measure of subsequent behavior. As predicted, both the attitude-perception and the attitude-behavior relations were moderated by attitude accessibility. The implications of these findings for theoretical models of the processes by which attitudes guide behavior, along with their practical implications for survey research, are discussed.

Association↗
PubMed1986

Detecting and identifying change: additions versus deletions.

The recognition of changes in the features of objects was examined as a function of the nature of the change (additions, deletions, no change). In two experiments we assessed both detection (noticing whether the stimulus had changed) and identification (specifying the exact nature of the change). Both detection and identification were expected to depend upon the subject's awareness of the subsequent recognition tasks while the original stimuli were encoded. In Experiment 1, subjects were not aware of subsequent detection and identification tasks while they initially viewed study slides of the to-be-changed stimuli. During the subsequent presentation of the test stimuli, detection and identification were superior for additions. On the other hand, in Experiment 2 when subjects were aware of the subsequent recognition tasks while viewing each study slide, a detection advantage for deletions obtained. Identification performance depended upon a further factor, whether the features of a stimulus were codable. Only in codable stimuli were deletions easier to identify than additions. The differences between the two experiments in detecting and identifying additions versus deletions are consistent with Tversky's (1977) research that stresses the importance of specifying which representation (the study stimulus or the test stimulus) is the subject of comparison in the comparative judgment.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1984

Attitude accessibility following a self-perception process.

Self-perception processes have been postulated to occur only to the extent that initial attitudes are weak. The present research asked whether the outcome of such a process is a strengthening of the attitude in question. Two experiments investigated the accessibility of attitudes from memory following self-inference from behavior. Experiment 1 examined the consequence for attitude accessibility of reviewing and considering previously performed religious behaviors that were recent and primarily unmanded versus distant in time and "manded" in nature. Experiment 2 involved the performance of a new behavior that was either required or freely chosen. In each case, control subjects either did not review prior behaviors or did not perform a new behavior. In both experiments, attitude accessibility, as measured by the latency of response to attitudinal inquiries, was enhanced by the consideration or performance of unmanded behavior, but not by manded behavior. The relevance of this finding to issues regarding attitude-behavior consistency and attitudinal persistence is discussed.

Adult↗