The term ‘attitude’ is widely used in everyday language to refer to one’s opinion about something, or the behaviour linked to it.
We develop attitudes towards anything we can interact with, ranging from people or social groups, animals, objects, situations or specific behaviors. Defined by Allport as a key concept in social psychology (1935, p.798), attitudes help us deal with everything around us and, ultimately, define us as individuals and social group members.
This essay will cover how attitudes can be and have been defined in time, how they are structured and in what ways they can be measured, with particular focus on the objectivity and reliability of different types of explicit and implicit methods of measurement. It is also argued …show more content…
This makes them considerably less likely to be affected by any intentional deception as the responses that are being assessed are out of the person’s control (Crosby et al., 1980; Fazio and Olson, 2003). Also, these methods may spot less accessible attitudes, which have been developed through experience but may not be easily recalled, and underlying attitudes of which a person may not even be fully aware (Asendorpf et al., …show more content…
The mere definition of an attitude has been object of debate, as well as the actual number of component it may have, mostly because an attitude in itself is not physically observable and can often be inconsistent with behaviour. The controversy on the conception of attitudes lead to controversy in the way they are measured. Recent research has underpinned the possibility of indirect attitude measurement, although these methods still do not provide perfectly reliable and consistent data, although IAT has proved to be superior to other methods.
Questionnaire-like methods are still largely used in research; evidence shows however that they cannot be considered a valid measure for the attitude as a whole.
It is therefore suggested that attitude measurement involving self-report measures should assess each attitude component separately, considering the qualitative differences of each and choosing different methods
We develop attitudes towards anything we can interact with, ranging from people or social groups, animals, objects, situations or specific behaviors. Defined by Allport as a key concept in social psychology (1935, p.798), attitudes help us deal with everything around us and, ultimately, define us as individuals and social group members.
This essay will cover how attitudes can be and have been defined in time, how they are structured and in what ways they can be measured, with particular focus on the objectivity and reliability of different types of explicit and implicit methods of measurement. It is also argued …show more content…
This makes them considerably less likely to be affected by any intentional deception as the responses that are being assessed are out of the person’s control (Crosby et al., 1980; Fazio and Olson, 2003). Also, these methods may spot less accessible attitudes, which have been developed through experience but may not be easily recalled, and underlying attitudes of which a person may not even be fully aware (Asendorpf et al., …show more content…
The mere definition of an attitude has been object of debate, as well as the actual number of component it may have, mostly because an attitude in itself is not physically observable and can often be inconsistent with behaviour. The controversy on the conception of attitudes lead to controversy in the way they are measured. Recent research has underpinned the possibility of indirect attitude measurement, although these methods still do not provide perfectly reliable and consistent data, although IAT has proved to be superior to other methods.
Questionnaire-like methods are still largely used in research; evidence shows however that they cannot be considered a valid measure for the attitude as a whole.
It is therefore suggested that attitude measurement involving self-report measures should assess each attitude component separately, considering the qualitative differences of each and choosing different methods