On the orienting value of attitudes: attitude accessibility as a determinant of an object's attraction of visual attention.
Four experiments tested the hypothesis that objects toward which individuals hold attitudes that are highly accessible from memory (i.e., attitude-evoking objects) are more likely to attract attention when presented in a visual display than objects involving less accessible attitudes. In Experiments 1 and 2, Ss were more likely to notice and report such attitude-evoking objects. Experiment 3 yielded evidence of incidental attention; Ss noticed attitude-evoking objects even when the task made it beneficial to ignore the objects. Experiment 4 demonstrated that inclusion of attitude-evoking objects as distractor items interfered with Ss' performance of a visual search task. Apparently, attitude-evoking stimuli attract attention automatically. Thus, accessible attitudes provide the functional benefit of orienting an individual's visual attention toward objects with potential hedonic consequences.
Roskos-Ewoldsen
D R
DR
University of Alabama.
Fazio
R H
RH
D001288:Attention; D001290:Attitude; D003657:Decision Making; D005556:Form Perception; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011930:Reaction Time; D014794:Visual Fields