What attitudes are

Social psychology studies how our behaviour is shaped by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others. Even when alone, we behave with others in mind.

An attitude is a state of mind, a set of views about some topic (the attitude object), with an evaluative feature: positive, negative or neutral. An opinion becomes an attitude when it carries emotion and a tendency to act.

Attitudes have three components (the A-B-C model):

• Affective: the emotional part (I like or dislike it);
• Behavioural (also called conative): the tendency to act in a certain way;
• Cognitive: the thoughts and beliefs about it.

Example, an attitude to the environment: 'I feel happy in clean places' (affective); 'I want to plant trees' (behavioural); 'Green spaces are good for health' (cognitive).

Attitudes are tendencies to act, not behaviour itself, so they cannot be directly observed from outside; we infer them.

Related ideas:

• Beliefs: the cognitive base of attitudes: what we think is true.
• Values: attitudes or beliefs with a 'should' or 'ought' in them ('people should work hard'). Values are deep and hard to change.

Features of attitudes:

• Valence: is it positive or negative?
• Extremeness: how strong is it? A neutral attitude is lowest on extremeness.
• Simplicity or complexity (multiplexity): is it one simple attitude, or made of many parts?
• Centrality: how much does it influence other attitudes in the person's system? A central attitude affects many others.

Attitudes guide how we act.