Attitude: The Concept

As a term that stresses how we perceive ourselves and our positions in different surroundings, attitude is an interdisciplinary concept. This concept has a detailed historical development--through past scientific studies to today's commonly known associations of "negative" and "positive" states-of-mind most publicized in commercialized media.

We find attitude being analyzed among the disciplines of sociology, psychology, the creative arts, as well as the business environment. We can look at these disciplines individually, or in a collective sense, combining them to apply them to an institution such as advertising. Studying attitude in each of these disciplines, as well as collectively, allows a clear perspective of consumer behavior, a crucial element in the area of marketing communications.

In order to better develop the concept in the discipline of communication theory, we look at attitude theory to better define the underlying motives that humans possess in consumer behavior, and more broadly, in the realm of marketing communications.

We can develop a better grasp of the concept of attitude by looking at a broad list of descriptions:

• People's feelings, beliefs, goals, knowledge, values and intentions that result from prior experiences, modified by new experiences (12)
• A cumulative evaluation of objects, people, advertisements or issues (17)
• An account for approximately 10 percent of variability in predicting (consumer) behavior (28)
• A concept that has risen from a mixture of personal beliefs concerning behavioral outcomes (24)
• "Learned predispositions to respond to an object or class of objects in a constantly favorable or unfavorable way" (4)
• A central affective theoretical construct of social psychology, paired with self-esteem (11)
• A construct that has received much attention in marketing over the last 25 years--simply the "evaluations of a product or brand" (3)
• The "evaluation of an object associated in memory with the representation of that object" (3)
• A historically contextual list of terms compiled by Erland Nelson, a researcher on attitude, in the 1930's

In order to see attitude theory from its early stages, we must first look at its original position, where it was labeled as a concept of art.

Next - The Overview - The Introduction - The Psychological Spectrum - The Relationships - The Economic Realm - The Conclusion - The Resources - The Contacts - The Author

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