The content, structure, and function of death penalty attitudes

This program of research explored the content, structure, and function of attitudes toward capital punishment. The thematic content of death penalty attitudes was found to vary greatly across attitude groups (support, undecided, and opposed). Independent of group membership, death penalty attitudes were found to primarily serve the private identity function of value-expression while, as a whole, the attitude was found to serve multiple functions including utilitarian, public identity, self-esteem maintenance, and knowledge. Structurally, the level of integrative complexity in attitude expressions was found to have a curvilinear relationship to group membership with undecided subjects exhibiting higher integrative complexity than the two polar groups. Additionally, the research focused on making comparisons of various attitude assessment techniques (agree-disagree belief scales, content analysis, and importance rating scales) in terms of their utility in measuring attitude functions. Finally, the results are discussed in the context of developing a more general understanding of the nature of complex social attitudes