ATTITUDE HERITABILITY AND ATTITUDE REINFORCEMENT - A REPLICATION

In a replication of Tesser and Crelia (Personality and Individual Diff erences, 16, 571-577, 1994), 40 subjects provided their attitudes on i tems selected from two inventories of political conservatism. (The her itabilities of these items had been previously estimated.) In a second task, subjects chose among four alternatives on each of 50 trials. Ea ch choice type was systematically followed by either a high or low her itability attitude item showing a response that either agreed or disag reed with the subject. The results yielded more consistent support tha n Tesser and Crelia (1994) for the hypothesis that attitude agreement is more consequential for high than for low heritability attitudes. Co pyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.