Political Attitudes as Social Categories: A New Look at Selective Memory

It is proposed that social attitudes are used to categorize people in much the same manner as race and gender are used. As a means of defining social identity, attitude categories likely facilitate the processing of category-relevant information. Two competing models are advanced. The selectivity hypothesis asserts a tendency to remember confirming rather than disconfirming statements about in-group and out-group attitude members. The bipolar hypothesis argues that attitude labels serve to organize and enhance memory for both confirming and disconfirming information. Subjects, divided into pro, anti, and neutral on abortion, formed impressions of pro- and antitarget groups by reading favorable, unfavorable, and nonvalence items about them. Subjects were later asked to recognize the items and their associated attitude categories. Signal-detection analysis of the results supported the bipolar model: Category members recognized more favorable and unfavorable information than did neutrals. Neutrals' performance was attributable to item-category confusion, not to item inattention.