Examined the structure of beliefs of 60 undergraduates about abortion and welfare. Ss indicated their agreement with statements about the issues and sorted the statements into groups based on their similarity. The main study examined which belief structures were apparent when 128 undergraduates answered attitude questions based on the statements in the scaling studies. Ss were timed as they answered attitude questions about abortion and welfare; responses to agree/disagree items were faster when an item followed another item from the same topical cluster. It is argued that attitudes are structures in long-term memory that encompass linked beliefs about an issue, that the retrieval of beliefs is a component of the process of responding to attitude items, and that retrieving beliefs relevant to one question can activate linked beliefs and thereby facilitate answers to related questions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)