an estimate of the probability that something is true

-attitudes are based on sets of beliefs

-a positive or negative evaluation of an object

-objects include people, things, events, and issues

-when people use words such as love, hate, like, dislike, good, bad they are usually describing their attitudes

-ABC

-attitudes are formed through affective(or emotional experiences), behavioral, and cognitive processes

-behavioral processes + affective processes + cognitive processes = attitude

a consciously held attitude

-similar idea to explicit attitudes

-people may publicly express negative attitudes towards others they percieve as unintelligent in order to protect themselves from cousciously acknowledging their own intellectual insecurities

the simultaneous possession of contradictory implicit and explicit attitudes toward the same object

-explicit and implicit attitudes can develop simultaneously due to different situational factors

enduring beliefs about important life goals that transcend specific situations

-can shape attitudes and behavior

-constitute an important aspect of out self-concept; they convey what is important to us in our lives and serve as our guiding principles

-in 65 cultures, 10 different types of values that represent universal biological and social requirements of human existance

-some are compatible, some are in conflict, on the structure; compatible values are located close to one another

self-direction, universalism, benevolence, conformity/tradition, security, power, achievement, Hedonism, stimulation

-attitudes are positive and negative evaluations of objects

-attitudes are determined by a number of factors, including past behavior, emotions, and cognitions

-high need to evaluate people are more likely to hold attitudes toward issues and describe daily events in evaluative terms

-explicit attitudes are consciously held

-implicit attitudes are activated automatically outside of conscious awareness and may conflict with explicit attitudes

-values are enduring beliefs about important life goals that transcend situations and are important aspects of self-concept

-the tendency to develop more positive feelings toward objects and individuals the more we are exposed to them

-exposing people repeatedly to a particular object causes them to develop a positive attitude toward the object

-the theory that we often infer our internal states, such as our attitudes, by observing our behavior

-we do not know what our attitudes are, so we infer them from our behavior and the circumstances under which the behavior occurs

-infers that behaviors cause attitudes

-attitude theories that emphasize that people develop and change their attitudes based on the degree to which they satisfy different psychological needs

-to change an attitude, one must understand the underlying function that the attitude serves

-example: liking something for different reasons (i drink soda because my friends like it, you might drink soda because the company is environmentally friendly)

-one's beliefs about the consequences of performing the particular behavior

-one's evaluation of those possible consequences

determinants of subjective norms

-subjective norm is a persons judgment about whether other people will approve of a particular behavior

1) the percieved expectations of significant others

2) one's motivation to conform to those expectations

(prego- ex. my husband wants to wait until we can afford a house/i want to please my husband (so she will conform)

-how easy or difficult it is to perform the behavior

-when people believe that they have little control over performing a beahvior bc of lack of ability or resources, then their beahvioral intentions will be low regardless of their attitudes of subjective norms

-the tendency to seek consistency in one's cognition

-belief that people are motivated to keep their own beliefs, attitudes, self-perceptions, organized in a consistent and tension-free manner

-proprosed that althogh we may gernerally appear logical in our thinking and behavior, we often engage in irrational and maladaptive behavior to maintain cognitive consistency

-describes and predicts how we spend much of our time rationalizing our behavior rather than actually engaging in rational action

-cognitive consistency is an important motive in many people's attitudes and beahvior

-cognitive dissonance theory contends that if people hold inconsistent cognitions, they experience an unpleasant emotion (cog. dis) which they try to reduce

-cog dis does not always occur when one acts inconsistently

-cog dis is most likely when the attitude is important to the self and the inconsistency is substantial

-the need for cog. consistency appears to be less in collectivist cultures

-cog dis can be reduced thru self-affirmation theory