Attitudes

Conceptual Overview

The essential element of the attitude construct is its evaluative nature. An attitude is an assignment of a positive or negative evaluation to a given attitude object; the individual's evaluative response (e.g., liking or disliking) to the object indicates the nature of the attitude. Further, the evaluative function of the attitude construct differentiates it from related, but distinct, constructs. For example, moods (or feeling states) are broader than attitudes in that they elicit evaluations that are not limited to a specific object. The tendency to evaluate a particular attitude object in a roughly consistent manner uniquely defines the attitude construct.

Before turning attention to attitude formation, an ongoing debate regarding the conceptualization of the attitude construct is addressed. The literature appears to be divided into two main camps. The first, the attitudinal components view, is driven by the notion that attitudes are multidimensional, consisting of affective, cognitive, and behavioral components (or feeling, thought, and action, respectively). The other conceptualization, adopted here, is the latent process view, which describes attitudes as global evaluations. Both the components and process views see attitudes as eliciting affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses and being shaped by affective, cognitive, and behavioral sources. The latent process view, however, focuses on the cognitive processes whereby an attitude is activated by a stimulus, retrieved from memory, and elicits a response.