ABSTRACT
Attitudes refer to our overall evaluations of objects. For example, both of us like the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team and dislike the music of R.E.O. Speedwagon. Over the past 75 years, social psychologists have devoted considerable attention to the empirical study of attitudes. Indeed, attitudes research has always been at the core of social psychology, and it is fair to say that we have discovered a great deal about the attitude concept. For example, we have learned that attitudes can serve different psychological needs. While some attitudes might reflect our underlying values, others help us behave in ways appropriate to important reference groups. Similarly, we have learned that attitudes can be derived from affective information (e.g., feelings about an object), cognitive information (e.g., beliefs associated with an object), and behavioral information (e.g., past experiences with an object). Third, we have learned that attitudes often predict behavior, and have specified when this correspondence is most likely to occur. Fourth, we have also learned a great deal about how attitudes can be changed. The thoroughly comprehensive and scholarly text by Eagly and Chaiken (1993) is testimony to the myriad of developments that have taken place within the attitudes literature.
