ABSTRACT
A s these quotes attest, early infl uential social psychologists viewed atti-tudes and the social contexts in which attitudes are formed, changed, and expressed as inextricably linked. Despite this, surprisingly little attention has been directed toward the interplay of attitudes with social context. The social psychological study of attitudes almost universally adopts a conceptualization of attitudes as intraindividual cognitive structures-as individual cognitive representations that are acquired and possessed by individuals and which, to a great extent, are a part of human individuality (Bohner & Wanke, 2002; Eagly & Chaiken, 1993; Fazio & Olson, 2003; Maio & Haddock, in press). What is missing or underemphasized in all this is that our attitudes are rarely idiosyncratic-more often than not they are grounded in the groups we belong to and they serve to defi ne and proclaim who we are in terms of our relationships to others who are members of the same or different groups.
