Being Is Not Believing: Exploring Subjective and Objective Measures of Attitudinal Properties
At least since Thurstone (1928), attitude researchers have acknowledge that simply characterizing an attitude with a single numerical value reflecting the placement of an attitude object on an underlying evaluative continuum is insufficient to fully capture the complexities of the attitude construct. Thus, researchers have sought to identify and measure a variety of other properties of attitudes in an effort to better predict and understand how attitudes function. Such properties include the informational bases of attitudes, the functions attitudes serve, and determinants of the underlying strength of attitudes. When assessing these properties, researchers have adopted two distinct strategies: a subjective measurement approach or an objective measurement approach. The present talk begins by reviewing some of the underlying assumptions of these two measurement approaches and then discusses two traditional theoretical perspectives for how objective and subjective measures designed to assess the same attitudinal property should be viewed. Next, an alternative perspective on this issue is proposed and evidence relevant to evaluating it is reviewed. The perspective is then illustrated in more detail in the context of a set of recent studies exploring subjective and objective measures of the property of attitude extremity.