Meta-judgmental versus operative indexes of psychological attributes: The case of measures of attitude strength

Meta-attitudes are impressions of properties of one's attitudes. This article distinguishes between meta-attitudinal indexes of attitude strength and operative indexes that are derived from the judgment process or its outcomes. Measures of both types were tested against criteria of attitude pliability and stability. The results revealed that the meta-attitudinal and operative measures formed distinct clusters and that the operative index accounted for unique variance in the criteria, whereas the meta-attitudinal one did not. The author argues that operative measures of strength provide a relatively nonreactive means of assessing properties of strength that can be unconscious, whereas meta-attitudinal measures are particularly susceptible to extraneous influences that can undermine their validity. The one advantage of meta-attitudinal measures is their semantic specificity.