Affective asynchrony and the measurement of the affective attitude component

How should the affective component of attitudes be conceptualised and measured? Three studies compared measures based on different conceptualisations. Affective attitudes can be: (1) holistic reactions to objects or responses derived from spontaneous images of the objects; (2) bipolar or unipolar in structure; and finally (3) discrete emotional evaluations (e.g., angry, happy) or more general valenced evaluations (e.g., good, bad). It is recommended that further research with self-reports of the affective component include the holistic, unipolar, discrete emotion (HUE) evaluative measures developed in this paper in combination with a holistic bipolar valenced evaluation measure. Our results also supported a hypothesised affective asynchrony effect. Specifically, an affective measure that required more deliberative thought reduced the correspondence between the affective component and intended behaviours/attitudes. Implications for how the affective component may be represented in memory and the impact of that representation on constructed attitudes are discussed briefly.