Attitudes as Attractors

In social psychology, attitudes have been defined as dispositions that are stable over time but also as mental states that are malleable in response to external influences. To solve this paradox, it is proposed that attitudes should be conceptualized as fixed-point attractors for momentary evaluations that fluctuate over time. This conceptualization allows us to distinguish attitudes that are rather stable in a short time frame from momentary evaluations that fluctuate over time due to noise and external influence. To investigate this conceptualization, the mouse paradigm was utilized to assess momentary evaluation. As attitude topics, behaviors that are considered either acceptable or unacceptable by the majority of society were employed. The majority viewpoint (i.e., normative attitude) for each behavior was assumed to function as a stable fixed-point attractor. The results supported this claim. Participants attitudes tended to shift toward the normative behavior-specific attractor over time. When the initial attitudes were congruent with the norm, moreover, participants with multiple attractors showed greater attitude change than did those with a single attractor.