ABSTRACT
Social scientists have long been fascinated with the study of attitudes on all manner of subjects. W. D. Crano and R. Prislin went so far as to say that social scientists have carried on an "unremitting romance with attitudes over the past half-century". Attitudes reflect tendencies or predispositions to respond to things in predictable ways. Other visually oriented methods of measuring attitudes via self-reports also have been developed. Visual scales make it easier for respondents to conceptualize their attitudes, because they can "see" where their attitudes fit on a scale or continuum. Although explicit measures are fairly easy to administer, they have drawbacks. A reliance on self-reports presumes that people are aware of their attitudes and that they are willing and able to report them. In addition to explicit and implicit measures, a variety of other, less scientific means can be used to infer people's attitudes. These include inferring attitudes from appearances, from associations, and from behavior.
