Attitude intensity, importance, and certainty and susceptibility to response effects.

Changes in attitude question form, wording, and context have repeatedly been shown to produce change in responses. It is often assumed that such response effects are less pronounced among individuals whose attitudes are intense, personally important, or held with great certainty. We report the results of 27 experiments conducted in national surveys designed to evaluate this hypothesis. Measures of attitude intensity, importance, and certainty were found not to differentiate individuals who show response effects from those who do not. We discuss possible explanations for these counterintuitive findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)