Transcript

People may hold different outlooks toward life, depending on their attached associations to something. For example, someone might be in a negative mood: it’s raining outside, and she relates that to being sad. When she turns on the television, she sees a bunch of players, expressing happiness: they are about to win a coveted title as team.

Both of these situations describe attitudes—a set of emotions, beliefs, and behaviors that result from a positive or negative evaluation of a person, place, object, or event. Here, the attitudes are explicit—consciously known and outwardly stated.

Luckily, the interactions between peoples’ attitudes and how they act upon them can be reciprocal. That is, attitudes can affect actions—the happy football team knows that they’re joyful and will continue to win more games—and actions may impact attitudes—the woman can do her workout routine indoors to feel optimistic again.

However, sometimes, individuals aren’t aware of their true attitudes or want to admit to them, especially if they are socially unacceptable or controversial, as is the case with racial biases and sexuality, for example. Such evaluations are considered implicit—they are not verbally or overtly expressed; they occur outside of conscious awareness and control.

Even so, people may express unprejudiced views but still harbor negative attitudes. Fortunately, resources exist to examine the pervasiveness and strength of implicit attitudes and bring them into conscious awareness!

Abstract

Attitude is our evaluation of a person, an idea, or an object. We have attitudes for many things ranging from products that we might pick up in the supermarket to people around the world to political policies. Typically, attitudes are favorable or unfavorable: positive or negative (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). And, they have three components: an affective component (feelings), a behavioral component (the effect of the attitude on behavior), and a cognitive component (belief and knowledge; Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960).

Think Positively.

For example, you may hold a positive attitude toward recycling. This attitude should result in positive feelings toward recycling (such as “It makes me feel good to recycle.” or “I enjoy knowing that I make a small difference in reducing the amount of waste that ends up in landfills.”). Certainly, this attitude should be reflected in our behavior: You actually recycle as often as you can. Finally, this attitude will be reflected in favorable thoughts (e.g., “Recycling is good for the environment.” or “Recycling is the responsible thing to do.”).

Our attitudes and beliefs are not only influenced by external forces, but also by internal influences that we control. Like our behavior, our attitudes and thoughts are not always changed by situational pressures, but they can be consciously changed by our own free will. 

 

This text is adapted from OpenStax, Psychology. OpenStax CNX.