Attitude Accessibility

Fazio explained that “The degree of accessibility (i.e., attitude strength) is usually operationalized by measuring the latency of responses to attitudinal questions: the faster the response, the more accessible the attitude is assumed to be.”

The accessibility of an attitude means easy access to mind. Highly accessible attitudes tend to be stronger. Attitude accessibility tells how attitude is accessed from memory. Easy accessible attitudes from memory predict behavior, influence the messages and process them across time. The inner beliefs play a role with regard to when attitudes become accessible. Low self-monitors have more accessible attitudes than high self-monitors.

There are a number of ways to make attitudes accessible:

Deliberately access

Attitudes are brought to mind by deliberate effort, by bringing thoughts about a relevant attitude before taking action. The relevance increases the impact of that attitude on behavior. The consistency between attitude and behavior will decrease when something else runs in mind apart from relevance of the attitude. So when the attitude is not the uppermost thing on the person’s mind, the impact of the attitude on behavior is reduced.

Self-awareness

Important Attitudes will come to mind, when people are highly self-aware about themselves.

Making attitudes accessible automatically

The stronger the link between attitude object and attitude, and the more likely the attitude is accessible whenever that attitude object is encountered. The more often an attitude is brought to mind, by building up constant activation, deliberation, discussion, and action. So the more frequent, the attitude gets reminded, leads to more consistent behavior. Attitudes formed on the basis of considerable issue-relevant thinking, holds true for those built up through cognitive processing, and attitudes that are personally relevant.

People’s judgements and behaviours are influenced by the availability heuristic. According to this heuristic, the easier it is for something to come to mind, the more likely it will affect our behaviour.Effects of attitude can influence or bias perception and judgment of information relevant to the attitude object, a bias that is congruent with the valence of the attitude based on past work.

Thus, people with positive attitudes favour genetically modified food favouring this technology whereas people with negative attitudes may evaluate the same information as evidence against the technology.