Effects of biased extrapolation on attitude extremity

Abstract

Past research has found that thinking about an attitude object can make positive and negative attitudes more extreme. The current research explored whether a certain type of thought—extrapolating from known to unknown values—would make attitudes and behavioral intentions more extreme than reviewing known values. In three experiments, I found that extrapolating from a social groups known personality traits made positive and negative attitudes and behavioral intentions more extreme than reviewing a social group’s known personality traits. This pattern of results occurred when participants self-generated their own extrapolations (Experiment 1) or rated the likelihood of frequently generated additional traits (Experiment 2). Attitudes were also more extreme after extrapolating to traits high versus low in cognitive relevance to the social group’s known traits, regardless of the positivity or negativity of the extrapolated traits (Experiment 3). In all three experiments, the effect of biased trait extrapolation on attitude extremity was mediated by more extreme associations to the extrapolated social group. The current findings are consistent with attitude construal theories, which suggest attitudes are informed by accessible associations.