Knowledge and affect as determinants of information processing, attitude stability, and behavior

Abstract

This study presents a model for categorizing attitudes on the basis of their cognitive and affective components and tests the model in a topic area of applied interest: college students and AIDS risk. The study examined the moderating effects of knowledge and affect on information processing, attitude stability, and attitude-behavior relations relevent to AIDS risk. It was predicted that biased information processing, highly stable attitudes, and strong attitude-behavior relations would predominate when both knowledge and affect were high. Results generally confirmed the predictions. Subjects with high levels of knowledge and affect responded in line with their own opinions by exhibiting differential agreement, positivity, and negativity toward competing risk estimates. These subjects' attitudes were generally more stable over a three week period and were more strongly related to relevant behaviors such as condom use and maintaining monogamous relationships. The results obtained were not due to other individual differences such as verbal intelligence, need for cognition, extraversion, neuroticism, stress reaction, or social closeness.