Associates: Dr. Nicholas Souchon
Students: Colin Foad, Paul Hanel, Eleni Lemonaki, Carey Wallace

The study of attitudes is at the core of social psychology. Attitudes refer to our evaluations of issues, people, groups and other types of objects in our social world. For example, a person might like the Welsh national rugby team and dislike liver.  Research on the psychology of attitudes examines diverse questions.  These pertain to how people form their attitudes, change or maintain their attitudes in response to persuasive messages, or use their attitudes in the selection of behavior.  These questions are often investigated in issues of practical importance, including a number of issues where attitudes are important for understanding behavior change (e.g., healthy eating, sustainable behavior).

All of these issues have a bearing on values, because values are often expressed in more specific attitudes. A person might like apples because they are healthy; she might favor a carbon tax because she wants to protect the environment, or might like tax cuts because she sees it as promoting personal wealth. In all of these examples, an important consideration is the connection between a specific issue or behaviour and the social values that are held dear, such as health, protecting the environment, and wealth.

To social psychologists, these attitudes, values, and their interconnections are a product of complex forces. Cultural, social, political, and environmental factors are vital, and there are relevant vagaries in the way we hold values. Our aim is to arrive at a better understanding of the ways in which our mental representations of values, and their connections to our attitudes, are influenced by the social and cultural environment. By understanding these processes, we can also learn more about how values and attitudes shape behaviour.