Spontaneous Attitude Formation

It is suggested that individuals spontaneously form attitudes when they perceive a cue that implies that it might be functional to know how one feels about the attitude object in the future. A response-time measure was employed to examine the impact of two such cues—an expectation of future questioning about the attitude objects (Experiment 1) and an expectation of future interaction with the attitude objects (Experiment 2). The latency with which subjects responded to inquiries about their attitudes served as the dependent measure. By comparing latencies in the cue conditions to latencies in a condition in which subjects were forced to form attitudes by the need to complete a traditional attitude scale and to latencies in a condition in which subjects were not so forced and did not receive a cue, it was possible to discern that attitude formation had occurred in response to the functional cues. The implications of these findings for a functional view of attitudes are discussed, along with the advantages of the response-time methodology for addressing the issue of spontaneous construct formation.