Rajecki (1990) says that an attitude is ' a predisposition to respond cognitively, emotionally, or behaviourally to a particular object in a particular way.' Attitudes guide how we react to others, what causes we support, how we vote, our consumer preferences, our personal style etc. Attitudes are latent constructs. This means they cannot be observed directly. They must therefore be inferred from our thoughts, feelings and behaviours. This is not so easy, as people have ' more faces that the town clock'! There are two main approaches in social psychology to the study of attitudes, the structural approach, and the functional approach.
what people think and believe.
Personal biases, preferences, and subjective assessments that predispose one to act or respond in a predictable manner. Attitudes lead people to like or dislike something, or to consider things good or bad, important or unimportant, worth caring about or not worth caring about.
Enduring systems of positive or negative evaluations, emotional feelings, and action tendencies with respect to an object. Consumer's overall liking or preference for an object. (Assael)
People's biases, inclinations, or tendencies that influence their response to situations, activities, people, or program goals.
A persons predispositions toward an object, person, or group, which influence his or her response to be either positive or negative, favorable or unfavorable, etc.
favorable or unfavorable evaluations of a particular person, object, event, or idea
mental states used by individuals to structure the way they perceive their environment and to guide the way in which they respond. A psychological construct comprised of cognitive, affective, and intention components.
The positive, neutral, or negative feelings a person has about the economy, politics, goods, services, institutions, and so on.
Attitudes can be defined as an affective feelings of liking or disliking toward an object (which can be basically anything) that has an influence on behavior. As Don Forsyth describes in his text book (Our Social World), an attitude is not a feeling, a cognition, or a form of behavior; instead, atitudes combine all three components in an "integrated affect-cognition-behavior system." What this all means, is that attitudes are made of three components that all influence each other. If one compnent changes, then it influences the entire attitude structure. In addition, each components not only has an influence on the attitude structure as a whole, but also on each other component. Although many people think attitudes are pretty simple (you like something or you don't. That's it...fuggetabowtit), you can see that attitudes are actually quite complex and dynamic.
the extent to which a person agrees or disagrees with a certain action or concept; a learned disposition manifesting itself in a general state of readiness either to itself or to react toward an object or class of objects in either a favorable or unfavorable manner in a more or less consistent and characteristic way.