Attitudes and Nonattitudes in the Belief Systems of Mass Publics

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Abstract
In opinion polls and experiments on attitude change the assumption is usually made that the respondents and Ss possess relatively stable and meaningful attitudes. Recently, however, this assumption has been the source of considerable controversy. Some theorists, notably Converse, have argued that large portions of the mass public do not have stable and coherent attitudes but, rather, can best be characterized as having “nonattitudes.” To test these contentions, measures of attitudes toward seven current political issues were obtained from two groups of middle-aged men and women respondents who differed in college attendance. Two measures of the attitudes were obtained at a nine- to 11-month interval. Both college (N = 56) and noncollege (N = 59) respondents showed high stability over time in their attitude responses. However, while the college group showed a significant degree of constraint (intercorrelation) among their responses, the noncollege group did not. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for survey researchers interpreting the attitudes of mass publics and for attitude change theorists attempting to generalize the results of laboratory experiments to the general population.