Document Type
Research Paper
Abstract
The catastrophe theory of attitudes (Harton &Latane, 2000) predicts that important attitudes will be more extreme than less important attitudes. It also predicts that, though important attitudes will tend to be stable, when they do change, this change will occur suddenly. We tested these predictions in a sample of 56 UNI Introduction to Psychology students. Student completed a demographics form, the Quick Discrimination Index (Ponterotto, Burkard, & Rieger, 1995), and the Social Attitudes Scale (Rambo, 1972). Then student read seven "news summaries" about a recent conflict in the country of "Montagstan" and rated how they would feel about the refugees going to Germany (low importance condition) or settling in their own comm unity (high importance condition). Important attitudes were more extreme, however the ineffectiveness of our importance manipulation prevented us from fully testing the catastrophe theory of attitudes.
Publication Date
2000
Journal Title
Conference Proceedings: Undergraduate Social Science Research Conference
Volume
4
Issue
1
First Page
90
Last Page
94
Copyright
©2000 by the University of Northern Iowa
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Publisher
University of Northern Iowa
City
Cedar Falls, IA
Recommended Citation
Gansen, Teresa; Shaw, Jennifer; and Harton, Helen C.
(2000)
"Attitudes Toward Montagistani Refugees as a Function of Relevance, Time, and Information,"
Conference Proceedings: Undergraduate Social Science Research Conference: Vol. 4:
Iss.
1, Article 14.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/csbsproceedings/vol4/iss1/14
