A Multiple Pathway Anchoring and Adjustment (MPAA) Model of Attitude Generation and Recruitment

In the traditional view, an attitude is a unified and enduring state of readiness to respond (Eagly and Chaiken 1993). The traditional view assumes a consistently updated (either from ongoing thought processes or salient situational factors) predisposition that serves as a convenient evaluative summary of some object, issue, or person. When confronted by a stimulus (and a need to evaluate it), a stored evaluation comes to mind automatically, guides thought, and helps direct behavior. However, evidence of temporal instability in attitudes, even in response to seemingly insignificant contextual changes, together with increasing reliance on state-based explanations (e.g., altered accessibility of concepts and moods, often as a consequence of priming and framing manipulations), has led to a constructivist challenge to the traditional view of attitudes (Schwarz and Bohner 2001). A second major challenge is posed by a recent conceptualization that questions the bedrock