ACCESSIBILITY OF EFFECTIVE VERSUS COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF ATTITUDES

Four studies investigated differences in accessibility of affective an d cognitive components of attitudes. Accessibility was measured by res ponse times on bipolar semantic differential evaluative adjectives (e. g. 'positive-negative') in response to how one felt and thought, respe ctively, about an attitude object. The evaluative items were accompani ed by affective and cognitive context items, which were not analysed, but were meant to promote the retrieval of affective and cognitive eva luations respectively. Responses to affective evaluations were given f aster than responses to cognitive evaluations, suggesting that affect- based evaluations are more accessible in memory than cognition-based e valuations. The results were obtained in two attitude domains, i.e. br and names and countries. The results support the validity of a two-com ponent affect-cognition model of attitude. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.