ABSTRACT
Psychologists have long recognized that attitudes—our summary evaluations of the people, places, and things in our environment—can be tremendously powerful. Attitudes direct our attention away from some objects and toward others, they color our interpretation of stimuli, they bias the thoughts we generate, and they shape what we later recall about an event. And attitudes motivate and guide our actions, leading us to approach some objects and avoid others. Indeed, a large literature documents the many diverse ways that attitudes influence our perceptions, cognitions, and behavior, profoundly shaping virtually all aspects of social behavior (for a review, see Albarracin, Johnson, & Zanna, 2005).
