This article uses survey data from Tunisia to examine some of the ways that individual attitudes change in a developing society. At the same time, it is addressed to some inadequacies of modernisation theory, attempting both to understand better the impact of social change on attitudes, and to delineate the nature and consequences of different kinds of modernisation experiences. Modernisation studies usually treat lifestyle variations produced by social change as uni-dimensional so far as their effect on attitudes is concerned. The present study argues that lifestyles do not always change in an integrated fashion, and in particular that acculturation and socio-economic status, two basic dimensions of individual life circumstances in developing societies, often and increasingly vary independently of one another. It then demonstrates with data from Tunisia that measures of acculturation and socio-economic status bear independent and dissimilar relationships to many attitudes known to be associated with social change, and thereafter discusses the implications of these relationships for modernisation and political development. The focus of the analysis is on general theoretical issues.