A Multiple Pathway Anchoring and Adjustment (MPAA) Model of Attitude Generation and Recruitment

Abstract

The Multiple Pathway Anchoring and Adjustment (MPAA) model integrates prior research on attitude formation, accessibility, strength, and attitude-behavior relationships and responds to key challenges to the traditional view of attitudes as enduring predispositions that guide behavior. The MPAA model emphasizes multiple pathways to attitude formation, including outside-in (object-centered) and inside-out (person-centered) pathways. The model also provides a nonoverlapping cognitions rationale for the coexistence of competing attitudes. The MPAA model introduces two subjective assessment criteria (representational and functional sufficiency) to explain how an anchoring and adjustment process functions to permit attitudes to guide behavior.