About Attitude Certainty—A Disposition Now Seen Much More Often in Journalism

From a post on futurity.com headlined “Why Some People Are More Certain in Their Opinions”:

Some people may be more predisposed to certainty in their opinions than others, new research suggests.

Researchers for years have understood how attitudes held with certainty might predict behavior, but the new research indicates there may be a more general disposition at work that predicts the certainty of newly formed evaluations

The findings in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology could help polling researchers and others interested in studying attitudes gain insights on a variety of matters. . . .

Attitudes are our personal evaluations—of anything. It might be a political issue, other people, food, movies, cars, climate, or even yourself. Each example is a different target that people can evaluate. But these evaluations aren’t the whole story.

Attitude certainty—the extent to which people have a clear idea of, trust in, or belief that their attitudes are correct—is also important.

Attitudes that people are certain of are more likely to predict behavior and are more stable than attitudes people doubt. . . .

Lead author Kenneth DeMarree, an associate professor of psychology at the University at Buffalo, says, “Most of the past research studying the origins of certainty has focused on how people engage with each issue. If an issue is personally important to someone, if they think carefully about it, if it is linked to their morals, they’re likely to be more certain of their opinion on that issue.”. . .

“The general tendency to be certain of one’s attitudes, what we’ve labeled dispositional attitude certainty, is correlated with traits like how much people enjoy thinking or their self-esteem,” says DeMarree. . . .

Is someone certain about the quality of the soup special at the corner diner? Those most certain about that attitude may be more certain about all items on that restaurant’s menu, according to DeMarree. They may also be more likely to act on those attitudes. . . .

Additional coauthors are from Ohio State University, Autonomous University of Madrid, and the University at Buffalo.

Source: University at Buffalo