Attitude (psychology)

In psychology, attitude is a psychological construct that is a mental and emotional entity that inheres or characterizes a person, their attitude to approach to something, or their personal view on it. Attitude involves their mindset, outlook and feelings. Attitudes are complex and are an acquired state through life experience. Attitude is an individual's predisposed state of mind regarding a value and it is precipitated through a responsive expression towards oneself, a person, place, thing, or event (the attitude object) which in turn influences the individual's thought and action. Most simply understood attitudes in psychology are the feelings individuals have about themselves and the world. Prominent psychologist Gordon Allport described this latent psychological construct as "the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary social psychology." Attitudes can be formed from a person's past and present. Key topics in the study of attitudes include attitude strength, attitude change, consumer behavior, and attitude-behavior relationships. In social psychology, an attitude is an evaluation of an object, ranging from extremely negative to extremely positive. An attitude can belong to both or either a conscious and unconscious mental state. Most contemporary perspectives on attitudes permit that people can also be conflicted or ambivalent toward an object by simultaneously holding both positive and negative attitudes toward the same object. This has led to some discussion of whether an individual can hold multiple attitudes toward the same object. Additionally, attitude can be defined as a set of emotions or beliefs towards a person, place or event. Attitude can have many different variations of characteristics each one unique in different ways. Researchers suggest that some attitudes are inherited via genetic transmission from our parents.Attitude can also be referred to evaluations in terms of a preference for or against an object. This is commonly in terms such as like, dislike, prefer or hate.