Attitude (psychology)

In social psychology, an attitude is an evaluation of an object, ranging from extremely negative to extremely positive. An attitude can belong to both or either a conscious and unconscious mental state. [6] Most contemporary perspectives on attitudes permit that people can also be conflicted or ambivalent toward an object by simultaneously holding both positive and negative attitudes toward the same object. This has led to some discussion of whether an individual can hold multiple attitudes toward the same object.[7] Additionally, attitude can be defined as a set of emotions or beliefs towards a person, place or event.[8] Attitude can have many different variations of characteristics each one unique in different ways. Researchers suggest that some attitudes are inherited via genetic transmission from our parents.[9]Attitude can also be referred to evaluations in terms of a preference for or against an object. This is commonly in terms such as like, dislike, prefer or hate. When individuals express their attitudes such as "I like to go hiking," or "I hate bugs," individuals are expressing the relationship between the object and oneself and this can be identified as either positive or negative. Attitudes are an important part of how we perceive our behaviors and unique characteristics. Likewise, attitudes can have a profound effect on a person's behavior.

An attitude can be a positive or negative evaluation of people, objects, events, activities, and ideas. Several researchers[10] agree that attitude can be described as a settled and unchanging way of thinking, feeling, or observing people, places, events, or objects. It can be about something which is concrete or abstract. However, there is a debate about precise definitions. "In psychotherapy and counseling, the client’s feeling of rejection or disapproval of the therapist or counselor."[11]  When an individual chooses to respond positively to a situation, they tend to assess situations in a more positive manner and they recognize that they cannot change the past. However, decisions made in the future can impact what happens next. These individuals tend to pay attention to the good in situations rather than the bad. As for an individual with a negative attitude they are more likely to respond to a situation negatively and they tend to look back on a problem. They become so engulfed on the problem they cannot move forward from it. These individuals tend to have a hard time finding the good in situations or event, ignore the good, and focus on the bad in people and in situations. Eagly and Chaiken, for example, define an attitude as "a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor."[12] Though it is sometimes common to define an attitude as affect toward an object, affect (i.e., discrete emotions or overall arousal) is generally understood as an evaluative structure used to form an attitude object.[13] Attitude may influence the attention to attitude objects, the use of categories for encoding information and the interpretation, judgement and recall of attitude-relevant information.[14] These influences tend to be more powerful for strong attitudes which are accessible and based on elaborate supportive knowledge structure. The durability and impact of influence depend upon the strength formed from the consistency of heuristics.[14] Attitudes can guide encoding information, attention and behaviors, even if the individual is pursuing unrelated goals.

Attitude is one of Carl Jung's 57 definitions in Chapter XI of Psychological Types. Jung defines attitude as a "readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way".[15] Attitudes often come in pairs, one conscious and the other unconscious. Within this broad definition, Jung defines several attitudes. The attitude-types, extroversion, and introversion are elementary to Jung's theory of types. He also described a duality of individual and social attitudes.

Jung "[conceived] reason as an attitude", and defined rational and irrational as another attitude duality.[15] The rational attitude subdivides into the thinking and feeling psychological functions, each with its attitude. The irrational attitude subdivides into the sensing and intuition psychological functions, each with its attitude. Jung's attitude types are then expanded into four different types of function: Intuiting, Thinking, Sensing, and Feeling.[16]

In addition, Jung discusses the abstract attitude: "Abstraction is contrasted with concretism. By this I mean a peculiarity of thinking and feeling which is the antithesis of abstraction".[15]

There are two opposing sides to Carl Jung's definition of attitude. Carl Jung believed that there were eight functions of attitude, and two attitude types: introversion and extroversion. [17] People who belong to the introverted attitude type tend to focus inwardly. Other traits and characteristics of introversion may include a tendency towards more inner-reflection and enjoying being alone. Extroverted people have a tendency to draw their energy from other people and interact with the world at a much larger rate than introverts. [18]

There is also considerable interest in intra-attitudinal and inter-attitudinal structure,[35] which is how an attitude is made (expectancy and value) and how different attitudes relate to one another. Intra-attitudinal structures are how underlying attitudes are consistent with one another. This connects different attitudes to one another and to more underlying psychological structures, such as values or ideology. Unlike intra-attitudinal structures, inter-attitudinal structures involve the strength of relations of more than one attitude within a network.[10]

An influential model of attitude is the multi-component model, where attitudes are evaluations of an object that have affective (relating to moods and feelings), behavioral, and cognitive components (the ABC model).[36] The affective component of attitudes refers to feelings or emotions linked to an attitude object. Affective responses influence attitudes in a number of ways. For example, many people are afraid or scared of spiders. So this negative affective response is likely to cause someone to have a negative attitude towards spiders. The behavioral component of attitudes refers to the way an attitude influences how a person acts or behaves. The cognitive component of attitudes refers to the beliefs, thoughts, and attributes that a person associates with an object. Many times a person's attitude might be based on the negative and positive attributes they associate with an object. As a result of assigning negative or positive attributes to a person, place, or object, individuals may behave negatively or positively towards them.[37]

The MODE [38](motivation and opportunity as determinants of the attitude-behavior relation) model was developed by Fazio. The MODE model, in short is a theory of attitude evaluation that attempts to predict and explain behavioral outcomes of attitudes. When both are present, behavior will be deliberate. When one is absent, impact on behavior will be spontaneous. A person's attitude can be measured explicitly and implicitly. The model suggests whether attitude activation occurs and, therefore, whether selective perception occurs depends on attitude accessibility. More accessible attitudes are more likely to be activated in a behavioral situation and, therefore, are more likely to influence perceptions and behavior[39]

Explicit measures are attitudes at the conscious level, that are deliberately formed and easy to self-report. Implicit measures are attitudes that are at an unconscious level, that are involuntarily formed and which a person is typically unaware of.[40] Both explicit and implicit attitudes can shape an individual's behavior.[41] Implicit attitudes, however, are most likely to affect behavior when the demands are steep and an individual feels stressed or distracted.[42]

People adopt attitudes that are rewarding and that help them avoid punishment. In other words, any attitude that is adopted in a person's own self-interest is considered to serve a utilitarian function. For example, a person who has a condo would pay property taxes. If that leads to an attitude that "increases in property taxes are bad", then the attitude is serving a utilitarian function.

Several studies have shown that knowledge increases are associated with heightened attitudes that influence behavior.[46] The framework for knowledge is based on significant values and general principles. Attitudes achieve this goal by making things fit together and make sense. As a result, people can maintain a sense of stability and meaning within their worldview. For example:

1. I believe that I am a good person.
2. I believe that good things happen to good people.
3. Something bad happens to Bob.
4. So, I believe Bob must not be a good person.

When a person is relying on a single dimension of knowledge and that dimension is not directly related to their behavior goal, that person might conclude that the attitude is wrong.[46]

This function involves psychoanalytic principles where people use defense mechanisms to protect themselves from psychological harm. Mechanisms include denial, repression, projection, and rationalization.

The ego-defensive notion correlates with Downward Comparison Theory, which argues that derogating a less fortunate other increases a person's own subjective well-being. A person is more likely to use the ego-defensive function when they suffer a frustration or misfortune.

Identity and social approval are established by central values that reveal who we are and what we stand for. Individuals define and interpret situations based on their central values. An example would be attitudes toward a controversial political issue.

Emotion is a common component in persuasion, social influence, and attitude change. Much of attitude research emphasized the importance of affective or emotion components. Emotion works hand-in-hand with the cognitive, or thought, process about an issue or situation. Emotional appeals are commonly found in advertising, health campaigns and political messages. Recent examples include no-smoking health campaigns and political campaign advertising emphasizing the fear of terrorism. Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of cognitive, affective and cognitive components. Attitudes are part of the brain's associative networks, the spider-like structures residing in long-term memory that consist of affective and cognitive nodes.

By activating an affective or emotion node, attitude change may be possible, though affective and cognitive components tend to be intertwined. One may be able to change their attitudes with attitude correctness, which varies with the level of confidence they have in their attitude validity and accuracy. In general, the higher the confidence level, the more the person believes others around them should share the same attitude. As we learn other people share those attitudes and how socially acceptable, they are, the importance of attitude correctness becomes even more apparent.[56] Our attitudes can greatly impact our behavior and the manner of how we treat those around us. In primarily affective networks, it is more difficult to produce cognitive counterarguments in the resistance to persuasion and attitude change. The idea of attitude clarity refers to a feeling of security or uncertainty about a particular attitude, a feeling strengthened by the act of reporting one's particular attitude towards an issue or thing, which will make that attitude more crystallized.[56]

Affective forecasting, otherwise known as intuition or the prediction of emotion, also impacts attitude change. Research suggests that predicting emotions is an important component of decision making, in addition to the cognitive processes. How a person feels about an outcome may override purely cognitive rationales.

In terms of research methodology, the challenge for researchers is measuring emotion and subsequent impacts on attitude. Various models and measurement tools have been constructed to obtain emotion and attitude information. Measures may include the use of physiological cues like facial expressions, vocal changes, and other body rate measures. For instance, fear is associated with raised eyebrows, increased heart rate and increase body tension.[57] Other methods include concept or network mapping and using primes or word cues in the era.

Any discrete emotion can be used in a persuasive appeal; this may include jealousy, disgust, indignation, fear, blue, disturbed, haunted, and anger. Fear is one of the most studied emotional appeals in communication and social influence research.

Important consequences of fear appeals and other emotional appeals include the possibility of reactance which may lead to either message rejections or source rejection and the absence of attitude change. As the EPPM suggests, there is an optimal emotion level in motivating attitude change. If there is not enough motivation, an attitude will not change; if the emotional appeal is overdone, the motivation can be paralyzed thereby preventing attitude change.

Emotions perceived as negative or containing threat are often studied more than perceived positive emotions like humor. Though the inner-workings of humor are not agreed upon, humor appeals may work by creating incongruities in the mind. Recent research has looked at the impact of humor on the processing of political messages. While evidence is inconclusive, there appears to be potential for targeted attitude change is receivers with low political message involvement.

Important factors that influence the impact of emotional appeals include self-efficacy, attitude accessibility, issue involvement, and message/source features. Self efficacy is a person's perception of their agency or ability to deal with a situation. It is an important variable in emotional appeal messages because it dictates a person's ability to deal with both the emotion and the situation. For example, if a person is not self-efficacious about their ability to impact the global environment, they are not likely to change their attitude or behavior about global warming.

Dillard in 1994[57] suggested that message features such as source non-verbal communication, message content, and receiver differences can impact the emotion impact of fear appeals. The characteristics of a message are important because one message can elicit different levels of emotion for different people. Thus, in terms of emotional appeals messages, one size does not fit all.

Attitude accessibility refers to the activation of an attitude from memory in other words, how readily available is an attitude about an object, issue, or situation. Issue involvement is the relevance and salience of an issue or situation to an individual. Issue involvement has been correlated with both attitude access and attitude strength. Past studies conclude accessible attitudes are more resistant to change.

The theory of reasoned action (TRA) is a model for the prediction of behavioral intention, spanning predictions of attitude and predictions of behavior. The subsequent separation of behavioral intention from behavior allows for explanation of limiting factors on attitudinal influence.[60] The theory of reasoned action was developed by Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen,[22][58] derived from previous research that started out as the theory of attitude, which led to the study of attitude and behavior. The theory was "born largely out of frustration with traditional attitude–behavior research, much of which found weak correlations between attitude measures and performance of volitional behaviors".[61]

The theory of planned behavior suggests that behaviors are primarily influenced by the attitude and other intentions. The theory of planned behavior was proposed by Icek Ajzen in 1985 through his article "From intentions to actions: A theory of planned behavior."[62] The theory was developed from the theory of reasoned action, which was proposed by Martin Fishbein together with Icek Ajzen in 1975. The theory of reasoned action was in turn grounded in various theories of attitude such as learning theories, expectancy-value theories, consistency theories, and attribution theory. According to the theory of reasoned action, if people evaluate the suggested behavior as positive (attitude), and if they think their significant others want them to perform the behavior (subjective norm), this results in a higher intention (motivation) and they are more likely to do so. A high correlation of attitudes and subjective norms to behavioral intention, and subsequently to behavior, has been confirmed in many studies. The theory of planned behavior contains the same component as the theory of reasoned action, but adds the component of perceived behavioral control to account for barriers outside one's own control.[63]

Russell H. Fazio proposed an alternative theory called "Motivation and Opportunity as Determinants" or MODE. Fazio believes that because there is deliberative process happening, individuals must be motivated to reflect on their attitudes and subsequent behaviors.[64] Simply put, when an attitude is automatically activated, the individual must be motivated to avoid making an invalid judgement as well as have the opportunity to reflect on their attitude and behavior.

A counter-argument against the high relationship between behavioral intention and actual behavior has also been proposed, as the results of some studies show that, because of circumstantial limitations, behavioral intention does not always lead to actual behavior. Namely, since behavioral intention cannot be the exclusive determinant of behavior where an individual's control over the behavior is incomplete, Ajzen introduced the theory of planned behavior by adding a new component, "perceived behavioral control." By this, he extended the theory of reasoned action to cover non-volitional behaviors for predicting behavioral intention and actual behavior.

Explicit measures tend to rely on self-reports or easily observed behaviors. These tend to involve bipolar scales (e.g., good-bad, favorable-unfavorable, support-oppose, etc.).[66] Explicit measures can also be used by measuring the straightforward attribution of characteristics to nominate groups. Explicit attitudes that develop in response to recent information, automatic evaluation were thought to reflect mental associations through early socialization experiences. Once formed, these associations are highly robust and resistant to change, as well as stable across both context and time. Hence the impact of contextual influences was assumed to be obfuscate assessment of a person's "true" and enduring evaluative disposition as well as limit the capacity to predict subsequent behavior.[67] Likert scales and other self-reports are also commonly used.

Implicit measures are not consciously directed and are assumed to be automatic, which may make implicit measures more valid and reliable than explicit measures (such as self-reports). For example, people can be motivated such that they find it socially desirable to appear to have certain attitudes. An example of this is that people can hold implicit prejudicial attitudes, but express explicit attitudes that report little prejudice. Implicit measures help account for these situations and look at attitudes that a person may not be aware of or want to show.[68] Implicit measures therefore usually rely on an indirect measure of attitude. For example, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) examines the strength between the target concept and an attribute element by considering the latency in which a person can examine two response keys when each has two meanings. With little time to carefully examine what the participant is doing they respond according to internal keys. This priming can show attitudes the person has about a particular object.[69] People are often unwilling to provide responses perceived as socially undesirable and therefore tend to report what they think their attitudes should be rather than what they know them to be. More complicated still, people may not even be consciously aware that they hold biased attitudes. Over the past few decades, scientists have developed new measures to identify these unconscious biases.[70]