On the Pursuit of Desired Attitudes: Wanting a Different Attitude Affects Information Processing and Behavior

Recent work suggests that in addition to actual attitudes, people often have desired attitudes that can vary in their congruence with their actual attitudes. We explored whether desired attitudes motivate goal-congruent outcomes by impacting people’s evaluative responses, over the effects of actual attitudes.  Across four studies, we demonstrated that desired attitudes independently predicted behavioral intentions (Study 1), information seeking (Study 2), information processing (Study 3), and overt behavior (Study 4).  Further, consistent with the idea that desired attitudes reflect attitudinal goals, these effects were strongest among people who reported that they were highly committed to the pursuit of their desired attitudes (Studies 3 and 4).  Last, meta-analyses of the effects of desired attitudes and the desired × commitment to desired attitudes interaction revealed significant evidence for these effects across the four studies. Implications of the results for research on attitudes and persuasion, motivated reasoning, and goal pursuit are discussed.