ABSTRACT
Motivational themes have long been prominent in attitude theory and research. Among the most important and enduring of these themes is the idea that attitudes reflect motives to defend values and other positive states. This principle has emerged repeatedly in research on persuasion and attitudinal selectivity, and predictions based on it have enjoyed some success. In this chapter, I first comment briefly on motivational analyses of attitudes and then examine two efforts to develop theory pertaining to defensive processes: the concepts of value-relevant involvement (Johnson & Eagly, 1989) and defence motivation (Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989). Finally, some of the applications of these concepts in research on attitudinal selectivity and persuasion are considered.
