Attitudes
(see Fazio and Olson 2003).
GEOFFREY HADDOCK
Cardiff University, UK
GREGORY MAIO
University of Bath, UK
Attitudes refer to an individual’s overall eval-
uations of people, groups, and other objects
in their social world. Reporting an attitude
involves making a decision concerning liking
versus disliking or favoring versus disfavoring
an attitude object. The study of attitudes is
at the core of social psychology. This review
summarizes some important areas of attitude
research.
Over time, researchers have developed
different techniques to measure attitudes.
Researchers often distinguish between
explicit and implicit measures of attitudes.
Explicit measures of attitudes are those that
require respondents’ conscious attention to
the construct being measured, directly asking
them to think about and report their attitude.
For example, an explicit measure of attitudes
toward blood donation might ask respon-
dents to indicate whether blood donation is
positive versus negative. Common forms of
explicit measures include Likert scales and
semantic differential measures. Implicit mea-
sures of attitudes are those that do not require
respondents’ conscious attention, assessing
an individual’s attitude without directly ask-
ing for a verbal report of the attitude. Implicit
measures have gained considerable popular-
ity in contemporary research as they are less
likely to be influenced by social desirability
concerns. Prominent implicit measures of
attitude include the implicit association test
(IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz
The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory. Edited by Bryan S. Turner.
© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118430873.est0018
1998) and the evaluative priming technique
The study of attitude content has demon-
strated that attitudes have cognitive, affective,
and behavioral components (see Maio and
Haddock 2015). Cognitions refer to beliefs,
thoughts, and attributes associated with
an object. Cognitions have an impact on
many types of attitudes. For instance, within
the study of intergroup attitudes, stereo-
types are usually considered as beliefs about
the attributes possessed by a particular
social group and influence individuals’ over-
all attitudes toward groups. The affective
component refers to feelings or emotions
associated with an object. Affective responses
influence attitudes in a number of ways,
such as evaluative conditioning and mere
exposure. The behavioral component refers
to behaviors an individual has performed (or
might perform in the future) with respect
to an attitude object. There is evidence that
all three types of information are important
sources of attitudes, often in subtle but pow-
erful ways. For instance, merely nodding your
head up and down while being presented with
information about an object leads to a more
positive attitude compared to hearing the
same information while shaking one’s head
from side to side (Briñol and Petty 2003).
Research on attitude structure has found
that in addition to holding univalent attitudes
(e.g., attitudes that are positive or nega-
tive), individuals can have attitudes that are
ambivalent (see Maio and Haddock 2015).
This occurs when an individual may simulta-
neously possess positive and negative beliefs
and feelings about the same attitude object.
Research has found that ambivalence has a
number of important consequences, such as
2 AT T I T U DES
spending more time thinking about informa-
tion relevant to the attitude object. Ambiva-
lence has links to cognitive dissonance theory
(which is described elsewhere in the volume).
The study of attitude functions addresses
why people hold attitudes. Five functions
have received the most attention (see Maio
and Haddock 2015). The object appraisal
function refers to the ability of attitudes to
serve as energy-saving devices that allow
individuals to summarize the positive and
negative attributes of objects. Related to this
is the utilitarian function, which exists in
attitudes that maximize rewards and min-
imize punishments obtained from attitude
objects. The social adjustment function is
fulfilled by attitudes that help individuals
identify with people they like and to dissoci-
ate from those they dislike. The ego-defensive
function exists in attitudes that serve to
protect an individual’s self-esteem. Finally,
attitudes can serve a value-expressive func-
tion, such that an attitude may express an
individual’s self-concept and central values.
Knowing an attitude’s function has important
consequences for how individuals process
information as well as for understanding
when attitudes are most likely to change.
Attitudes are important because they influ-
ence how people process information and
how they behave. For example, attitudes influ-
ence the stimuli that individuals notice in
their environment. When presented with an
array of attitude objects for a brief time, peo-
ple are more likely to notice objects for which
they have a well-defined attitude. Attitudes
also affect how individuals encode and pro-
cess information, as well as individuals’ mem-
ory for different types of information (see
Maio and Haddock 2015). Similarly, attitudes
are an important determinant of behavior.
Two prominent models of attitude–behavior
relations are the theory of planned behavior
(and its antecedent, the theory of planned
behavior; see Ajzen 1991), which focuses on
how attitudes influence deliberatively chosen
behavior, and the MODE model (Fazio 1990),
which includes an explanation of attitudes’
effects on spontaneously executed behavior.
One prominent area of attitudes research
concerns the study of persuasion – how
attitudes change. Researchers have developed
a number of prominent models, the most
influential being the Elaboration Likelihood
Model (Petty and Cacioppo 1986), which
describes how the effects of a message depend
on our likelihood of evaluating it carefully.
Attitudes are also most likely to change when
the information contained within a persua-
sive appeal matches the properties of the
message recipient’s attitude (e.g., its content
or function; see Maio and Haddock 2015).
As with almost all fields of scientific
enquiry, attitude researchers have debated
various aspects of the concept. In the past two
decades, two important debates surround (a)
the degree to which attitudes are represented
in memory versus constructed and (b) the
psychological nature of attitudes in light of
the development of measures such as the
IAT and the evaluative priming technique.
From our perspective, the first question
highlights the distinction between strong and
weak attitudes. Strong attitudes are likely to
be represented in memory, whereas weak
attitudes are likely to be constructed. Turning
to the conceptualization of attitudes, the
development of implicit measures led some
researchers to consider whether individuals
might have unconscious attitudes of which
they lack awareness. However, as noted
above, most researchers posit that it is more
appropriate to conclude that implicit and
explicit measures of attitude differ in whether
they require conscious attention in reporting
one’s attitude.
Attitudes research continues to flourish
and a number of emerging areas continue
to develop. One particularly interesting area
is the application of cognitive neuroscience

techniques to the study of attitudes. Such
research is allowing scientists to understand
better the time course and neuroanatom-
ical process related to attitudes. A second
substantive area relates to the continued
application of attitudes research to social
issues such as prejudice and health behavior
change. Attitudes research can be translated
into techniques that seek to reduce prejudice
and help individuals adopt a healthy lifestyle.
SEE ALSO: Allport, Gordon; Cognitive
Dissonance; Measurement; Social Cognition;
Social Influence; Social Psychology; Values
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AT T I T U DES 3
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FURTHER READING
Haddock, G. and Maio, G. R., eds. 2012. Psychology
of Attitudes: Key Readings. London: SAGE.