5.1: Attitudes

People may hold different outlooks toward life, depending on their attached associations to something. For example, someone might be in a negative mood: it’s raining outside, and she relates that to being sad. When she turns on the television, she sees a bunch of players, expressing happiness: they are about to win a coveted title as team.

Both of these situations describe attitudes—a set of emotions, beliefs, and behaviors that result from a positive or negative evaluation of a person, place, object, or event. Here, the attitudes are explicit—consciously known and outwardly stated.

Luckily, the interactions between peoples’ attitudes and how they act upon them can be reciprocal. That is, attitudes can affect actions—the happy football team knows that they’re joyful and will continue to win more games—and actions may impact attitudes—the woman can do her workout routine indoors to feel optimistic again.

However, sometimes, individuals aren’t aware of their true attitudes or want to admit to them, especially if they are socially unacceptable or controversial, as is the case with racial biases and sexuality, for example. Such evaluations are considered implicit—they are not verbally or overtly expressed; they occur outside of conscious awareness and control.

Even so, people may express unprejudiced views but still harbor negative attitudes. Fortunately, resources exist to examine the pervasiveness and strength of implicit attitudes and bring them into conscious awareness!