Attitude Theory: The History
As stated in the preface, attitude was once a term describing subjects in 17th century artwork. However, through time, the term evolved through forms--mental positioning on political issues, collective thoughts of groups of people, or an individual's motivational state (6). During this period, attitude suited the creative arts field much better than any scientific field.
DeFleur and Westie inform us that the definition of attitude began its shift during the 19th century, when it appeared in philosophy studies describing an individual's mental state. Attitude then appeared in experimental psychology. Through studies of learning and motivation, attitude survived as an "intellectual" term, crossing over to psychological terminology. The fourth stage of attitude's conceptual development began with the concern of measurement of attitudes in the 1920's. Several researchers conducted experiments concerning attitudes--from several perspectives, resulting in an immense list of definitions for a term whose maturity grew more with each historical moment in psychology (6).
The "probability" definition of attitude then evolved--a definition implying that definable sets of behavior exist--where an individual performs as responses toward a stimulus. As defined in modern communication theory, individuals respond to the attitude object.
At the time the work was written, however, DeFleur and Westie felt that the "probability" definition of attitude--as a syndrome of responses--is more clearly defined. They also point out that attitude was secondly defined as an internal process of an individual determining a reaction to a stimulus--a latent process of conception.
Lindesmith and Strauss distinguished their definition of "true attitude" from the behavior from which an attitude was inferred:
"....the idea developed that attitudes are separate from behavior and are more general than their specific overt expressions. Hence a distinctions came to be made between attitudes and opinions, the latter being taken to mean verbal reports from which attitudes can be inferred" (14).
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