ABSTRACT
Several lines of theoretical and research interest have gradually been converging upon the study of "cognitive structure," especially in the area of social attitudes. Theorists are reluctant even to consider cognitive units of an attitude apart from other cognitive units, preferring to treat cognition as "structured" into meaningful wholes. If psychologists are to talk about "cognitive structure," they must do something about it; there must be a correspondence between theory and some sort of research operation. F. Heider's theory is addressed to structural details of cognition, but there has been no research operation available to investigate these details with particular attitude contents. The chapter focuses on some inspiration from D. Cartwright and F. Harary's objective system for the examination of "structural balance," from Heider's ideas on cognitive balance. It discusses the "psychological model" and the "mathematical system". The mathematical system is designed specifically for dealing analytically with the structure of attitudinal cognitions.
