REASONING AND THE WEIGHTING OF ATTRIBUTES IN ATTITUDE JUDGMENTS

Two experiments examined processes by which analyzing reasons may infl uence attitude judgments. Participants made multiple liking judgments on sets of stimuli that varied along 6 a priori dimensions. In Study 1 , the stimulus set consisted of 64 cartoon faces with 6 binary-valued attributes (e.g., a straight vs. a crooked nose). In Study 2, the stim uli were 60 digitized photographs from a college yearbook that varied along 6 dimensions uncovered through multidimensional scaling. In each experiment, half of the participants were instructed to think about t he reasons why they liked each face before making their liking rating. Participants' multiple liking ratings were then regressed on the dime nsion values to determine how they weighted each dimension in their li king judgments. The results support a process whereby reasoning leads to increased variability and inconsistency in the weighting of stimulu s information. Wilson's model of the disruptive effects of reasoning o n attitude judgments( e.g., T. D. Wilson, D. S. Dunn, D. Kraft, & D. J . Lisle, 1989) is discussed.