Although attitudes are very useful, helping people act quickly and affiliate with important identities, we don’t always have the attitudes we’d like.
Research in my lab finds that people frequently want attitudes that differ from their current ones. These discrepancies can arise for a range of reasons, are uncomfortable (DeMarree et al., 2014) and can guide information seeking, information processing, and behavior (DeMarree et al., 2017). Although change attempts are sometimes successful (Vaughan-Johnston et al., 2023), discrepancies often persist (Wheeler & DeMarree, 2019).
Ongoing projects seek to examine people’s lay theories of self-directed attitude change and to identify the conditions under which people are most likely to pursue their desired attitudes.