The Nature of Attitudes

Eagly & Chaiken

(1993, 1998)
• Are attitudes really three-dimensional? Are all attitudes
three-dimensional? Are attitudes three-dimensional all the
time? Does one “dimension” exert more power over the
others?
• Must one go through the three types of processes for an
attitude to be formed?
• How do we measure attitudes? What are we really
measuring (affective, behavioral, cognitive)?
• How do we change attitudes? What are we really
changing (affective, behavioral, cognitive)?
Attitude : Importance

ATTITUDE concept is central to social psychology

• people’s attitudes have major consequences

Attitude
* causes individual phenomena (motivates behavior /
attitude consistent behavior, selective perception)
* Causes societal phenomena (so it underlies social
conflict/social issues)
Attitude : Importance

“…is probably the most distinctive and

indispensable concept in contemporary
American social psychology” (Allport, 1935)

The concept of attitude is still widely used

today
Attitude : Defined
• “Attitude is a psychological tendency that is expressed by
evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or
disfavor” (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993)

• Psychological tendency : internal

• Evaluating : evaluative responses, e.g., overt/covert,
affective (A), behavioral (B), cognitive (C)
A, B, C >> evaluative basis
• A bias that predisposes an individual towards positive or
negative evaluative responses
evaluative responses, produce psychological tendencies
Attitude : Defined

* only when a person responds to an entity/object in an

affective, cognitive, or behavioral way can he/she have
an attitude

* is a hypothetical construct (a mental state) inferred to

explain why certain people react in certain ways to
certain objects (covariation of stimuli and responses)
ie, it intervenes between the stimulus and response
Attitude : Characteristics
* are tendencies (short-term)
* not necessarily dispositions
* but may be long-term
thus, attitudes may be changeable or enduring

* may be acquired (learned and unlearned)

* or may be biological
* may be important or unimportant
Attitude : as Defined
• Attitude as a tendency or an internal state that is
inferred (not directly observed) from the (a) evaluative
response to an (b) object

S O R
STIMULUS ORGANISM RESPONSE
observable inferred/latent observable
(IV) (intervening state) (DV)

stimuli that evaluative responses

denote the attitude ATTITUDE POSITIVE or
OBJECT NEGATIVE
Attitude Explains Covariation of S & R

stimuli that ATTITUDE evaluative responses

denote the attitude POSITIVE or
OBJECT NEGATIVE

degree of:
- abstractions - goodness or badness
- concrete objects - approval/disapproval
- favor/disfavor
- liking/disliking
Popular attitude - approach/avoidance
objects: - attraction/aversion
1. social policies (a point along a
2. ideologies bipolar continuum,
3. social groups extreme + to extreme -)
Attitude Explains Covariation of S & R

stimuli that ATTITUDE evaluative responses

denote the attitude POSITIVE or
OBJECT NEGATIVE

- inferred state
- accounts for the
covariation
between S & R
[ the attitude object (S)
and the evaluative
response (R) ]
Attitudes as Evaluative
* responses differ in direction (positive to negative)
* responses differ in intensity (strong, moderate, slight)
* responses measured along a bipolar continuum
from extremely positive to extremely negative, including a
neutral point

The meaning of people’s responses:

evaluation – good-bad, valuable-worthless
potency – strong-weak, hard-soft
activity – active-passive, fast-slow

Largest % of total variance in people’s responses is

evaluation
Attitude Objects

Social / political attitudes

toward social policies, ideologies, social groups
Prejudice
negative attitude toward minority groups
Liking / interpersonal attraction
toward individuals
Self-esteem
toward self
Values
toward abstract goals
The A B C Model of Attitude
• Attitudes as likewise formed through 3 types of
antecedents:
A (affective processes) attitudes formed primarily
from people’s emotional experiences
B (behavioral processes) attitudes derived from
past behavior (people infer attitudes consistent
with past behavior)
C (cognitive process) attitudes developed when
people form beliefs by gaining new information
about the object; can be thru direct or indirect
experience with object
The A B C Model of Attitude
stimuli that ATTITUDE evaluative responses
denote the attitude POSITIVE or NEGATIVE
OBJECT

affective affective responses

feelings/moods/emotions/
sympathetic NS
behavioral behavioral responses
overt actions exhibited
or intentions to act
cognitive cognitive responses
beliefs/associations/
thoughts