The way in which a person views and evaluates something or someone, a predisposition or a tendency to respond positively

An attitude "is a summary evaluation of an object of thought. An attitude object can be anything a person discriminates

KEY CONCEPTS

affective component of

attitude

attitude

attitude–behaviour relation

attitude function

attitudinal ambivalence

behavioural component of

attitude

cognitive component of

attitude

explicit measures of at TFtitude

implicit measures of

attitude

mere exposure effect

MODE model

multicomponent model of

attitude

one-dimensional

perspective of attitudes

self-monitoring

self-perception theory

socially desirable

responding

theory of planned

behaviour

theory of reasoned action

two-dimensional

perspective of attitudes

CHAPTER OUTLINE

The study of attitudes is at the core of social psychology. Attitudes refer to our evaluations of peo-

ple, groups and other types of objects in our social world. Attitudes are an important area of study

because they impact both the way we perceive the world and how we behave. In this chapter, we

introduce the attitude concept. We consider how attitudes are formed and organized and discuss

theories explaining why we hold attitudes. We also address how social psychologists measure atti-

tudes, as well as examining how our attitudes help predict our behaviour.

All of us like some things and dislike others. For instance, we both like the Welsh national rugby

team and dislike liver. A social psychologist would say that we possess a positive attitude towards

the Welsh rugby team and a negative attitude towards liver.

Understanding differences in attitudes across people and un-

covering the reasons why people like and dislike different things

has long interested social psychologists. Indeed, almost 70 years

ago, Gordon Allport (1935, p. 798) asserted that the attitude

concept is ‘the most distinctive and indispensable concept in . . . social psychology’. That statement

remains equally valid today; the study of attitudes remains at the forefront of social psychological

research and theory.

In this chapter, we introduce a number of important issues regarding the attitude concept. First,

we define the term ‘attitude’. We will show that expressing an attitude involves making an evalu-

ative judgement about an attitude object. Second, we devote attention to the content of attitudes.

We will show that attitudes have affective, cognitive and behavioural components. Third, we con-

sider the structure of attitudes. We will show that attitudes can be organized and structured in dif-

ferent ways. Fourth, we consider the psychological functions or needs that are served by attitudes.

We will show that people hold attitudes for a number of reasons. Fifth, we introduce how attitudes

are measured, concentrating on direct and indirect strategies that psychologists have developed

to measure attitudes. We will show that attitudes can be measured in many different ways. Finally,

we review research that has addressed a key question for attitude researchers: under what cir-

cumstances do attitudes predict behaviour? We will show that our attitudes and opinions are quite

WHAT IS AN ATTITUDE?

How can we best define an attitude?

Can we have attitudes about anything?

In their influential book The Psychology of Attitudes, Eagly and

Chaiken (1993, p. 1) define an attitude as ‘a psychological tendency

that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some

degree of favor or disfavor’. Inherent in this definition is the idea

that reporting an attitude involves the expression of an evaluative

judgement about a stimulus object. In other words, reporting an

attitude involves making a decision concerning liking vs. disliking,

approving vs. disapproving or favouring vs. disfavouring a particu-

lar issue, object or person.

An attitude, when conceptualized as an evaluative judgement,

can vary in two important ways. First, attitudes can differ in valence,

or direction. Some attitudes that a person possesses are positive

(like our attitudes towards the Welsh rugby team), others are

negative (like our attitudes towards liver), and yet others are

neutral (like our attitudes towards eating fried foods). Second,

attitudes can differ in strength. For example, while one person

might feel very strongly about the Euro, a second person might

feel much less strongly about the same topic. You will learn more

about different aspects of attitude strength later in this chapter.

Until now, we have used different examples when describing

our own attitudes. This leads to an important question – can any-

thing be the object of an attitude? Basically, any stimulus that can

be evaluated along a dimension of favourability can be conceptu-

alized as an attitude object. As noted by Eagly and Chaiken (1993),

some attitude objects are abstract concepts (e.g., ‘liberalism’),

others are concrete (e.g., a computer). Furthermore, one’s own

self (e.g., self-esteem) and other individuals (e.g., a particular politi-

cian) can serve as attitude objects, as can social policy issues (e.g.,

capital punishment) and social groups (e.g., people from Canada).

SUMMARY

Reporting an attitude involves the expression of an evalu-

ative judgement about a stimulus object. Attitudes differ in

strength and valence, and any stimulus that can be evalu-

ated along a dimension of favourability can be conceptual-

ized as an attitude object.

THE CONTENT OF

ATTITUDES

Can attitudes be influenced by unconsciously learned emotional

responses to an object?

How do beliefs shape attitudes?

When do people infer (or perceive) their attitudes from their

behaviour?

So far, we have seen that attitudes can be thought of as an overall

evaluation (e.g., like–dislike) of an attitude object. This definitional

perspective has generated a number of conceptual models of the

attitude concept. Historically, one of the most influential models

of attitude has been the multi-

component model (see Eagly

& Chaiken, 1993; Zanna &

Rempel, 1988). According to

this perspective (see Figure

6.1), attitudes are summary

evaluations of an object that

have affective, cognitive and beha-

vioural components. A number of researchers have considered

how these three components contribute to the formation and

expression of attitudes.

The affective component of attitudes

The affective component of

attitudes refers to feelings or

emotions associated with an

attitude object. Affective re-

sponses influence attitudes in

a number of ways. A primary way in which feelings affect attitudes

is due to affective reactions that are aroused in the individual after

exposure to the attitude object. For instance, many people indi-

cate that spiders make them feel scared. These negative affective

responses are likely to produce a negative attitude towards spiders.

Feelings can become associated with attitude objects in several

ways. A number of researchers have used classical conditioning

paradigms to assess how pairing affective information with an

attitude object can produce a positive or negative attitude. For

example, Krosnick, Betz, Jussim and Lynn (1992) conducted a

study in which participants were presented with a series of pictures

of an unfamiliar person. Importantly, each picture was preceded by

an affect-arousing image that was presented at a subliminal level,

that is, at very brief exposure below the threshold necessary for

conscious encoding (see Chapter 4, this volume). For some par-

ticipants, these images were negative (e.g., a bucket of snakes, a

bloody shark), while for other participants these images were pos-

itive (e.g., a pair of kittens, a couple getting married). After seeing

the pictures of the unfamiliar person, participants were asked to

evaluate this individual. As can be seen in Figure 6.2, Krosnick et al.

found that participants who were subliminally presented with the

positive images liked the individual more compared with particip-

ants who were subliminally presented with the negative images.

Not only were participants’ attitudes affected by the subliminal

presentations, so too were their perceptions of the target person’s

personality characteristics and physical attractiveness.

In addition to classical conditioning and subliminal priming,

another way in which affect guides attitudes comes from research

by Zajonc and colleagues (e.g., Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc, 1980;

Murphy & Zajonc, 1993; Zajonc, 1968). These researchers argue

that attitudes are formed on the basis of affective responses that

precede conscious thought.

To test this hypothesis, stud-

ies have examined how the

mere exposure of stimuli can

influence an attitude. In the

mere exposure effect increase in liking for

an object as a result of being repeatedly

exposed to it.

studies, different types of unfamiliar stimuli (e.g., various Chinese

characters) are presented to participants a certain number of times.

They are then shown again to participants along with other, novel

stimuli (e.g., new characters), and participants’ attitudes towards

the familiar and unfamiliar characters are measured. A large num-

ber of studies have revealed that stimuli that have been presented

many times are liked more than stimuli that have not been seen be-

fore. For instance, in one study by Zajonc (1968), participants were

initially shown 12 different Chinese characters. During this expo-

sure phase, each character was shown either 25 times, 10 times,

5 times, twice, once or not at all. Later, participants were asked to

indicate how much they liked each character. The results of this

study are presented in Figure 6.3. As can be seen, participants’

attitudes towards the characters became more positive the more

times the character had been seen at the exposure phase. The mere

exposure phenomenon helps explain why we sometimes come to

like classical music melodies that we hear repeatedly, even when

we are unable to recall the artist who composed the music or any

details of our prior experiences hearing it.

PIONEER

Born in Poland, Robert Zajonc (b. 1923) completed his PhD

at the University of Michigan (1955). He remained at the

University of Michigan until 1994. Zajonc’s research covered

many areas relevant to the psychology of attitudes. His

work on the mere exposure effect led to the

development of an influential program of

study exploring how affective processes

influence attitudes and actions. This research

led Zajonc to consider the role of uncon-

scious processes in determining preferences

and behaviour.

The cognitive component of

attitudes

The cognitive component of

attitudes refers to beliefs,

thoughts and attributes we

associate with a particular

object. In many cases, a per-

son’s attitude might be based primarily upon a consideration

of the positive and negative attributes about the attitude object.

For example, when one of us recently bought a new car, he de-

voted considerable attention to factors such as different vehicles’

safety records, petrol mileage, resale value and repair costs. In this

example, attitudes towards the different cars were formed via a

conscious consideration of the positive and negative characteristics

of each car. Cognitions have an impact on many types of attitudes.

Within the study of intergroup attitudes (see Chapters 3 and 14,

this volume), stereotypes are usually considered as beliefs about

the attributes possessed by a particular social group. Further,

many studies have revealed that possessing negative stereotypes

about a group of people is associated with having a prejudicial

attitude towards the group (e.g., Esses, Haddock & Zanna, 1993;

Kawakami, Dion & Dovidio, 1998).

Cognitions, in the form of beliefs, are a key part of one ap-

proach to attitudes, which argues that attitudes are derived from

more elementary cognitions about the attitude object. Specifically,

Fishbein and Ajzen’s (1975) expectancy–value approach describes

an attitude towards an object as the sum of ‘expectancy × value’

products. Expectancies are beliefs or subjective probabilities that

the object possesses a certain attribute; these beliefs may range

from 0 to 1 in strength. Values, or evaluations, are ratings of the at-

tributes, normally from −3 to +3. An attitude object will be evalu-

ated positively if it is seen as leading to, or associated with, positive

things and avoiding negative things. Only salient beliefs count

towards the overall attitudes; these are beliefs that a person con-

siders most relevant. We can illustrate the model by computing

a person’s attitude towards the game of golf. This person might

think that golf is (1) a valuable form of exercise, (2) a good way to

see friends and (3) frustrating. Each of these beliefs will have both

an expectancy and a value. For example, exercise might have a

high expectancy (.9) and positive evaluation (+3); seeing friends

might be perceived as having a lower expected outcome (.7)

that is somewhat positive (+2); while frustration is (thankfully!)

somewhat infrequent (.3) but very negative (–3). The individual’s

overall attitude towards golf is computed by summing the

belief–evaluation products (e.g., 2.7 + 1.4 − .9 = 3.2).

The behavioural component of

attitudes

The behavioural component

of attitudes refers to past

behaviours with respect to an

attitude object. For instance,

people might infer that they

have a negative attitude to-

wards nuclear power plants if

they recall having previously

signed a petition against hav-

ing a nuclear power plant built

near their neighbourhood. The idea that people might infer their

attitudes on the basis of their previous actions was developed by

Bem. According to Bem’s (1972) self-perception theory, individuals

do not always have access to their opinions about different objects

(see also Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). Bem argued that this is espe-

cially likely when the person’s attitude is particularly weak or

ambiguous. Many studies have shown results consistent with this

reasoning. For example, Chaiken and Baldwin (1981) asked par-

ticipants to complete a questionnaire containing items that were

framed in a way to remind people of either their pro-environment

behaviours (e.g., picking up the garbage of others) or their