Attitudes are at the center of our social lives. How much you like your coworkers, whether you support sustainability initiatives, your political preferences, and even how much you despise Desperate Housewives…those are all attitudes that can guide who we become friends with, what we buy, and how we vote.
Our research aims to understand those attitudes by looking at how confident people are in them, how moral they see the issues, how emotional their reactions are, and how conflicted they feel. Those qualities help predict whether people end up changing their opinions or whether they hang onto them for dear life.
We also look at the kinds of pressures that get put on people’s attitudes. Are we more likely to budge when someone appeals to our sense of morality? Do we see charities in a new light when they make just the right pitch? How much influence do our peers have on our own beliefs and opinions?