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There is considerable controversy about how to conceptualize implicit and explicit attitudes, reflecting substantial speculation about the mechanisms involved in implicit and explicit attitude formation and change. To investigate this issue, the current work examines the processes by which new attitudes are formed and changed and how these attitudes predict behavior. Five experiments support a systems of reasoning approach to implicit and explicit attitude change. Specifically, explicit attitudes were shaped in a manner consistent with fast-changing processes, were affected by explicit processing goals, and uniquely predicted more deliberate behavioral intentions. Conversely, implicit attitudes reflected an associative system characterized by a slower process of repeated pairings between an attitude object and related evaluations, were unaffected by explicit processing goals, uniquely predicted spontaneous behaviors, and were exclusively affected by associative information about the attitude object that was not available for higher order cognition. Keywords: implicit attitudes, explicit attitudes, attitude change

This article explores the relation of age to manifestations and antecedents of attitude strength. Three studies demonstrate that susceptibility to attitude change is greater during early and late adulthood than during middle adulthood. Three additional studies demonstrate that attitude importance, certainty, and perceived quantity of attitude-relevant knowledge are greater in middle adulthood than during early or late adulthood. These antecedents may therefore explain life cycle shifts in susceptibility to change. Susceptibility to change, importance, certainty, and perceived knowledge differ from one another in terms of their correlations with education, gender, and race, challenging the notion that attitude strength is a unitary construct. Evidence that people incorrectly believe that susceptibility to change declines steadily over the life course reinforces the distinction between operative and meta-attitudinal measures of attitude strength.