INERTIA IN COGNITIVE PROCESSES: THE ROLE OF ACCUMULATED INFORMATION IN ATTITUDE CHANGE

Research evidence is presented to support a new and simple theory of attitude formation and change. This theory posits that the attitude of any individual converges overtime on the arithmetic mean of the attitude-pertinent information received by the individual. Consequently, the stability of an attitude is dependent on the number of messages out of which that attitude was formed. This formulation also implies that the emotional state or feelings of an individual and the degree of heterogeneity of influences to which he or she was exposed are unrelated to attitude change. Using a multi-stage, multi-time proce-dure, and instruments designed to detect and measure interpersonal influence, data provided by 135 high school students over a six-month interval support these hypoth-eses. While the notion that cognitive processing of information may be too complex and unpredictable to be represented by a few simple quantitative laws or principles remains a suspicion even among some social scientists, the last decade of empirical re