ABSTRACT
How do people decide if they favor a particular politician or social policy issue? Using political attitudes, common sense would dictate that individuals should like politicians about whom they associate positive attributes and dislike politicians about whom they associate negative attributes. Common sense would further dictate that an individual who thinks of eight positive traits about a politician should subsequently report a more favorable attitude than an individual who thinks of only two positive traits. However, is the judgment process always that straightforward? As attested both by other chapters in this volume and research investigating the role of subjective experiences on social judgments (e.g., Haddock, Rothman, Reber, & Schwarz, 1999; Haddock, Rothman, & Schwarz, 1996; Schwarz, 1998; Schwarz et al., 1991; Wänke, Bless, & Biller, 1996), the answer to this question is not as simple as one might expect. Rather than relying upon the amount of accessed information in deriving social judgments, research has demonstrated that under many circumstances, individuals rely upon the subjective ease with which accessed information is retrieved from memory. Applying this “ease of retrieval” perspective to the example discussed above, a respondent who retrieved eight positive attributes about a politician might subsequently report having a more negative attitude compared to a respondent who retrieved only two positive attributes—if the former individual had a difficult time retrieving eight positive attributes.
