ABSTRACT
The concepts of attitude extremity, importance, and intensity are becoming of increasing theoretical import in the attitude literature. Two individuals may hold identical attitudes towards an object, yet their behavior or reactions to persuasive communications about that object may be quite different. Concepts such as attitude extremity, importance, and intensity, as well as affective ambivalence, cognitive ambivalence, belief heterogeneity, involvement, cognitive elaboration, emotional commitment, salience, accessibility, belief polarization, vested interest, value relevance, hot versus cold cognitions, and affective-cognitive consistency are all variables that have been studied under the general rubric of “attitude strength” to explain why individuals with similar evaluations of an attitude object behave differently with respect to that object.
