What is meant by the term 'attitude'?

In very general terms, the term ‘attitude’ is used to describe ‘a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour’ (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993, p. 1). Here, psychological tendency refers to a state of mind that is internal to an individual, whereas ‘evaluating’ refers to cognitive, affective or behavioural responses that result from the attitude. Thus ‘psychological tendency’ might be thought of as a psychological bias that predisposes the individual towards positive or negative evaluative responses.

Attitudes can be used to explain why some people support particular social policies, or ideologies, while others oppose them. A person who favours a particular policy is said to hold a positive attitude towards it, whereas someone who opposes it would hold a negative attitude. Attitudes are not directly observable but can be inferred from observable responses (Mac Corquodal and Meehl, 1948), such as responses to questionnaires or interviewers. Evaluative responses are those that express approval or disapproval, liking or disliking, approach or avoidance, attraction or aversion, and so forth. Evaluative responses and the psychological tendencies that are assumed to underlie them differ not only in terms of direction (positive or negative) but also intensity (a very positive evaluation is likely to have a very different impact on behaviour compared to a slightly positive one). Thus social scientists usually measure attitudes along a bipolar continuum that ranges from extremely positive to extremely negative, and includes a neutral reference point.

Historically, of greatest interest to social science has been study of people’s attitudes towards social policies (for example, siting of nuclear power stations, technology application and development), although attitudes towards relatively abstract or end states of human existence (for example, human equality, sovereignty of nature) have also been of interest, and are normally termed ‘values’. People’s responses and behaviours to events, political situations and products will depend both on their attitudes and values.

The term ‘attitude object’ refers to the entity, object or event about which people make their evaluations. In very broad terms, people who evaluate an attitude object in a favourable way are likely to associate it with positive attributes and are unlikely to associate it with negative attributes. Conversely, people who evaluate an attitude object unfavourably are more likely to associate it with negative attributes than positive ones (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993,p. 11).