Assessment of Attitudes and Predispositions

Attitudes and dispositions are emotional reactions. They are primarily affective (feeling) components of human perception, rather than cognitive (thinking) or behavioral (doing) in nature. Attitudes and dispositions, also known as predispositions, are important to those working with educational technologies because they influence the acceptance and use of technologies.

Attitudes usually refer to the emotional state inside one individual at a single point in time (e.g., “He has a bad attitude”), while dispositions reflect trajectories or tendencies that will extend into the future (e.g., “She loves music”). Attitudes indicate human states while dispositions reflect human traits. Attitudes toward technologies are typically assessed with the assumption that they are good indicators of longer term emotional states, and therefore, detailed distinctions between the terms attitude and disposition are not ...