Social Cognition, Vol. 25, No. 5, 2007, pp.

582-602

EAGLY
An Inclusive
AND CHAIKEN
Definition of Attitude

THE ADVANTAGES OF AN
INCLUSIVE DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE
Alice H. Eagly
Northwestern University

Shelly Chaiken
Berkeley, CA

In The Psychology of Attitudes, we provided an abstract—or umbrella—definition

of attitude as “a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular
entity with some degree of favor or disfavor” (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993, p. 1). This
definition encompasses the key features of attitudes—namely, tendency, entity (or
attitude object), and evaluation. This conception of attitude distinguishes between
the inner tendency that is attitude and the evaluative responses that express atti-
tudes. Our definition invites psychologists to specify the nature of attitudes by pro-
posing theories that provide metaphors for the constituents of the inner tendency
that is attitude. We advocate theoretical metaphors that endow attitudes with
structural qualities.

New efforts to contemplate the definition of attitude are welcome in

light of innovations in attitude theory and research. Researchers have
the burden of figuring out whether the phenomena that they have dis-
covered are compatible with definitions of attitude that emerged in the
field in earlier years. After all, Allport (1935) may have believed that he
had provided the definition for all time, and this definition lingered for
decades in social psychology textbooks. However, his definition became
too diffuse as attitude research developed in the second half of the 20th
century. If contemporary researchers suspect that the attitudinal phe-
nomena that they have identified may not be compatible with estab-
lished definitions, there are two possible outcomes: the definition
should change, or researchers should think harder to understand how

We thank Wendy Wood for comments on a draft of this article.

Please address correspondence to Alice H. Eagly, Department of Psychology, North-
western University, 2029 Sheridan Rd., Evanston, IL 60208; E–mail: eagly@northwest-
ern.edu or [email protected].

582
AN INCLUSIVE DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE 583

these phenomena are compatible with the established definition. So,

given important theoretical and empirical developments in attitude re-
search, the present is an excellent time for determining how phenomena
ordinarily identified as attitudinal relate to current and alternative
definitions of attitude.
Why should social psychologists bother to settle on a definition of atti-
tude? Perhaps scientists should just do research and not worry so much
about abstractions and labels. Not so. A science without definitions of
basic constructs would be chaotic. Definitions identify fields of inquiry
by setting their boundaries and distinguishing their questions from
questions that deal with other phenomena. Precise definitions also fos-
ter valid measurement. They provide a framework that enhances theory
development and empirical research in a community of scientists. We
should therefore all welcome this latest exchange of ideas on the
definition of the attitude concept.

THE ABSTRACT, UMBRELLA DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE

We offer an abstract—or umbrella—definition of attitude that posits

three essential features: evaluation, attitude object, and tendency (Eagly &
Chaiken, 1993). Together these elements refer to an individual’s propen-
sity to evaluate a particular entity with some degree of favorability or
unfavorability. Evaluation refers to all classes of evaluative responding,
whether overt or covert, or cognitive, affective, or behavioral. Evalua-
tion thus encompasses the evaluative aspects of beliefs and thoughts,
feelings and emotions, and intentions and overt behavior. None of these
reactions need be consciously experienced by the holder of an attitude,
although they may be conscious.
This evaluative responding is directed to some entity or thing that is its
object—that is, we may evaluate a person (George W. Bush), a city (Chi-
cago), an ideology (conservatism), and a myriad of other entities. In the
language of social psychology, an entity that is evaluated is known as an
attitude object. Anything that is discriminable or held in mind, some-
times below the level of conscious awareness, can be evaluated and
therefore can function as an attitude object. Attitude objects may be ab-
stract (e.g., liberalism, religious fundamentalism) or concrete (e.g., the
White House, my green raincoat) as well as individual (e.g.,
Condoleezza Rice, my sister–in–law) or collective (e.g., undocumented
workers, European nations). The entity, or attitude object, yields the
stimuli that elicit the evaluative responses that psychologists identify as
attitudinal. In addition, such stimuli can be varied—George W. Bush
may be denoted by his physical image as encountered on television, his
584 EAGLY AND CHAIKEN

statements as presented in newspapers and other media, his policies and

actions as expressed by his staff, and so forth. This attitude object aspect of
definitions of attitude is important because it distinguishes the concept
of attitude from other psychological constructs such as mood that
involve evaluative reactions that are more diffuse because they are not
directed toward a circumscribed entity.

ATTITUDES AS ACQUIRED BEHAVIORAL DISPOSITIONS

Our definition, like most definitions of attitude, places attitudes inside

the mind of the individual. Campbell (1963) provided a particularly co-
gent statement of this general approach in his discussion of acquired be-
havioral dispositions, which he defined as states of the person that come
into being on the basis of some transaction with the environment. These
states then affect subsequent responding. Consistent with Campbell’s
treatment, attitudes do not exist at all until an individual perceives an at-
titude object (on a conscious or unconscious basis) and responds to it on
an explicit or implicit basis. This first response should not be considered
entirely learned from the environment because it may be influenced by
evolved predispositions or at least by an initial bias that directs attention
to the stimuli that constitute the attitude object (Buller, 2005). Some fear-
ful responses, for example, to snakes or spiders, appear to have some in-
nate aspects (Oehman & Mineka, 2001), and, more generally, some
attitudes have heritable precursors (e.g., J. M. Olson, Vernon, Harris, &
Jang, 2001; Tesser, 1993). Nonetheless, in Campbell’s and our view, atti-
tudes even toward entities such as snakes do not exist until an individ-
ual first encounters an instance of the entity. An individual who had no
(conscious or nonconscious) exposure to snakes could not be said to
have a negative attitude toward them but instead likely has the potential
for an easily acquired negative attitude.
An individual’s first reaction to an exemplar of a particular category,
such as a negative response in the case of a snake or a spider, leaves a
mental residue that predisposes the individual to respond consistently
with that residue on subsequent encounters with the same or other ex-
emplars. The initial negative response to a snake or spider makes nega-
tive responses more likely in the future. The evaluative mental residue
of past experience, or attitude, exists as a hypothetical construct, or in
Campbell’s terms, as an acquired behavioral disposition—that is, an in-
tervening tendency that hypothetically accounts for the covariation that
scientists observe between stimuli denoting the attitude object and the
evaluative responses elicited by these stimuli. An attitude is inside the
person, not directly observable, and is manifested by covert and overt
AN INCLUSIVE DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE 585

responses. Some of these responses are observable by researchers—or

ca n be ma de obs e r va bl e thr ou g h s pe ci a l ope r a ti ons or
instrumentation—and can thereby give evidence of the presence of the
attitude.

EVALUATIVE MENTAL RESIDUE AS A

TENDENCY TO EVALUATE

What is this residue of past experience that constitutes an attitude? We

have advocated and continue to advocate an abstract definition of atti-
tude that labels this residue as a tendency to evaluate. Along with attitude
object and evaluation as two elements of our definition, tendency is its
third key feature. An individual’s past experience establishes a tendency
to respond with some degree of positivity or negativity to an attitude ob-
ject—for example, negatively in the instance of spiders. Why do we in-
voke the term tendency rather than disposition or state or any of the other
terms that Campbell (1963) identified as denoting acquired behavioral
dispositions? The term tendency has appropriate connotations because it
does not imply that the residue of past experience exists necessarily on
an enduring basis or on a temporary basis. In psychology the term state
has come to imply temporariness, and the term disposition to imply
greater permanence. Therefore, neither term is suitable to refer to atti-
tude. Our stance that attitudes can be short-term or long-term departs
from earlier theorists such as Allport (1935) and Krech and Crutchfield
(1948), who defined attitudes as enduring. Although many attitudes are
enduring, others are not. Some encounters with attitude objects are so
fleeting and trivial that the mental residue left by the encounter fades
away with time. To allow for such possibilities, it is unwise to restrict the
concept of attitude in a temporal sense.
Another advantage of the term tendency is that it does not necessarily
imply that attitudes are accessible to consciousness. Although research-
ers traditionally dealt mainly with attitudes assumed to be consciously
experienced, from a contemporary perspective it is important to ac-
knowledge that the mental residue that constitutes attitude can exist
anywhere on a continuum that extends from unconscious to fully con-
scious. As these various considerations suggest, our goal is to provide a
nonrestrictive definition that can serve as a broad umbrella for attitude
research. Our definition thus is the following: Attitude is “a psychologi-
cal tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with
some degree of favor or disfavor” (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993, p. 1).
Some may object to this definition because it does not specify the inner
tendency beyond labeling it as evaluative. We purposefully avoid fur-
586 EAGLY AND CHAIKEN

ther specification of the inner tendency, not because it has not, cannot, or
should not be described in more detail. On the contrary, our reasoning is
that the description of this inner tendency inevitably changes as attitude
research develops and different theoretical positions emerge, become
popular, and then may erode. We thus envision that our definition of at-
titude provides an umbrella under which multiple conceptualizations of
attitudes’ inner tendency can flourish. In fact, we believe that our defini-
tion challenges psychologists to develop descriptions of that inner ten-
dency. The generality of our abstract definition of attitude thereby
complements the specificity of the many models of the mental residue
that is attitude. Some of these models accord considerable complexity to
this mental residue, whereas others propose a simple, unitary residue
that merely conveys some degree of positive or negative evaluation. Ef-
forts to model the psychological and physiological events that constitute
this inner tendency will never end and should never end.

THE IMPORTANCE OF DISTINGUISHING

BETWEEN ATTITUDE AND ITS EXPRESSIONS

In agreement with many other theorists (e.g., Zanna & Rempel, 1988)
and consistent with our treatment of attitude as an inner tendency of the
person, we maintain that attitudes can be expressed through many dif-
ferent types of responses. However, we disagree with some attitude the-
orists by objecting to definitions of attitude as a response per se. For
example, some attitude researchers have defined attitude as evaluative
judgments or affective or evaluative responses (e.g., Albarracín & Wyer,
2001; Kruglanski & Stroebe, 2005). Evaluative judgments, and, more
generally, overt or covert evaluative responses are best regarded as ex-
pressions, or manifestations, of the inner tendency that constitutes atti-
tude. Although all evaluative responses are of course attitudinal in the
sense that they express attitudes, they are not synonymous with attitude
itself. We are also reluctant to define attitude as a categorization of the
attitude object on the evaluative continuum (Zanna & Rempel, 1988) be-
cause categorization pertains to a particular process that is critical to
forming attitudes rather than to the end result that is the evaluative men-
tal residue of past experience. Attitude is thus a tendency or latent prop-
erty of the person that gives rise to judgments as well as to many other
types of responses such as emotions and overt behaviors. Attitude
theories have as one of their main goals the prediction of these
responses.
This theoretical separation between the inner tendency that consti-
tutes attitude and evaluative responses is important because it fosters
AN INCLUSIVE DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE 587

understanding of the relation between (a) evaluative tendencies, which

are mental residues of past experience with the attitude object, and (b)
current evaluative responding, which reflects a whole range of influ-
ences in addition to those that emanate from the inner tendency. This
distinction between attitude and its expression is fundamental to theory
development concerning attitude change, attitude–behavior relations,
and other attitudinal phenomena.
The failure of some psychologists to distinguish between attitudinal
judgments and attitude itself has instigated a debate about whether
most, if not all, attitudes are unstable, emerging anew in each specific sit-
uation. Those who have made such constructionist arguments for insta-
bility have equated instability in expressions of attitudes with
inconsistency in the evaluative tendency that constitutes attitude itself
(e.g., Schwarz & Bohner, 2001; Wilson & Hodges, 1992; see also Schwarz,
this issue). Our constructionist colleagues are thus entirely correct to ar-
gue that evaluative judgments may well be constructed on each occasion
of encountering an instance of an attitude object. For example, the pres-
ence of an audience with known views on an issue might cause a person
to render relatively thoughtless, superficial evaluative judgments that
have the goal of pleasing audience members (Prislin & Wood, 2005).
Such judgments may appear to be inconsistent with a person’s earlier
evaluative responses because they reflect the demands of the current sit-
uation as much as or even more than the influence of the preexisting
mental residue that constitutes the person’s attitude.
We agree that context effects are pervasive. Context effects due to the
presence of an audience or other cues are ubiquitous because
evaluative judgments are not pure expressions of attitude but outputs
that reflect information in the current situation as well as at least some
aspects of the preexisting evaluative tendency. The contemporaneous
setting contains not only cues that elicit the inner attitude but also a
wealth of information that provides new inputs to the attitude, acti-
vates an individual’s goals, and provides standards against which to
judge the current instantiation of the attitude object. Evaluative judg-
ments and other evaluative responses such as behaviors and emotions
emerge from this array of influences. The person’s internal evaluative
tendency, or attitude, is but one influence on evaluative responding,
not the only influence. Moreover, aside from the influences that derive
from the external situation, the relation between the evaluative ten-
dency itself and a given evaluative expression is not one–to–one be-
cause each response only imperfectly maps evaluation. Like the items
on a Likert scale, each response that expresses evaluation reflects other
tendencies and states of the person (e.g., personality traits, moods) as
well as random error.
588 EAGLY AND CHAIKEN

Whereas judgments and other evaluative responses may be very labile

depending on the judgment context, the inner tendency or latent con-
struct that constitutes attitude may often be relatively stable, notwith-
standing our definition’s inclusion of temporary as well as enduring
tendencies to evaluate. Instability of attitudes may seem to be present
because people sometimes report what appear to be substantially differ-
ent attitudes in new situations. Although instability could arise because
of a genuine change in the inner tendency, some of this inconsistency
may reflect more ephemeral contextual factors. Therefore, apparent atti-
tude change can erode over time, resulting in a minimally changed
evaluative tendency. Due to the influence of contextual cues and new in-
formation, evaluative responding to an attitude object may merely vary
around an average value that reflects the inner tendency that constitutes
the attitude (e.g., N. H. Anderson, 1971). To understand this variability,
psychologists model the psychological processes that mediate between
the person’s evaluative tendency and the evaluative responses that are
elicited in varied circumstances. In other words, one of the main goals of
attitude research is to provide theories that account for the effects of
contextual variables on attitudes and their expression.
If attitudes were always constructed anew on the basis of current in-
puts and whatever information happens to be salient at a given moment,
psychologists would not have uncovered evidence of long–term stabil-
ity of many attitudes. Demonstrations of stability include considerable
consistency in the sociopolitical attitudes of civil rights activists over a
20–year period (Marwell, Aiken, & Demerath, 1987). Also, people’s atti-
tudes toward their jobs have proven to be moderately consistent across a
five–year time span in nationally representative survey data (Staw &
Ross, 1985). In addition, a meta–analytic examination of a set of broadly
defined attitudes that included self–esteem, work satisfaction, and life
satisfaction found moderate stability over five to ten years, albeit less
consistency over longer time periods ranging up to 40 years (Conley,
1984). Also uncongenial to a strict constructionist position is the moder-
ate degree of consistency that surveys have revealed across measures of
political attitudes and ideologies when these variables are assessed, not
by single items, but by measures of latent constructs that cumulate
across items (e.g., Moskowitz & Jenkins, 2004). A constructionist inter-
pretation of consistency between attitudes across time points and be-
tween ideologically related attitudes would hold that the situational
contexts in which these attitudes were constructed remained constant,
thus yielding consistent constructions. Such a high level of consistency
of contexts seems quite implausible.
AN INCLUSIVE DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE 589

THE METAPHORIC NATURE OF DESCRIPTIONS

OF THE EVALUATIVE TENDENCY
As we have indicated, researchers’ quest to understand the nature of the
inner tendency that constitutes attitude is an important tradition in re-
search. Theorists have defined this construct in varying ways, depend-
ing on their particular theoretical frameworks. Most notably, Fazio
(1989) defined attitude as an association in memory between an attitude
object and an evaluation (see also Fazio, this issue). This specification of
the latent property that constitutes attitude follows from associative
learning or network models of learning (e.g., J. R. Anderson, 1983). This
way of thinking about the inner tendency that constitutes attitude has
been influential. A colleague of ours thus remarked several years ago
that he could not imagine that the future would offer any other way of
thinking about attitudes. From his perspective, the object–evaluation
association seemed to be the transcendental definition of the mental
residue that is attitude.
Our colleague was not prescient in his views of attitude theory. New
metaphors continually emerge. Most notably, connectionism has fostered
several provocative metaphors (Conrey & Smith, this issue). In some ap-
plications of this general approach, attitude objects are represented as
nodes that are linked by implicational relations to unipolar valence nodes,
as in Van Overwalle and Sieber’s (2005) research. In this model, the men-
tal residue that is attitude consists of these positive and negative nodes
and their links to the attitude object node. In another connectionist meta-
phor, Bassili and Brown (2005) proposed an attitudinal cognitorium that
represents attitude as a module that contains atomistic elements repre-
senting memories and feelings that are associated with the attitude object.
In any particular situation, a pattern of activation develops among these
elements, and an overall evaluation may emerge from this activity. These
connectionist metaphors yield varied insights about the nature of
attitudes.
The classic metaphor for understanding the evaluative mental resi-
due that constitutes attitude is the tripartite model whereby cognition,
affect, and behavior are three omnipresent components of attitude
(e.g., Katz & Stotland, 1959; Krech & Crutchfield, 1948; Rosenberg &
Hovland, 1960). This way of thinking about attitude surely has contrib-
uted to theorizing and has roots in earlier traditions of understanding
the human psyche (McGuire, 1969). Nonetheless, from a contemporary
perspective, it seems misleading to maintain that that the mental resi-
due of past experience with an attitude object invariably has three com-
ponents, as stated in many textbook descriptions of attitudes.
Attitudes may indeed reflect cognitive, affective, and behavioral expe-
590 EAGLY AND CHAIKEN

riences with attitude objects, but there is little justification for claiming
that these experiences produce three separable and omnipresent
components of evaluative tendencies.
Many other possibilities exist for specifying the inner tendency, in-
cluding, for example, the metaphors inherent in various cognitive con-
sistency theories, such as the balance theory representation of attitude as
a sentiment relation between two cognitive elements and the dissonance
theory representation of attitude as a cognitive element (see Eagly &
Chaiken, 1993). No matter which specifications of the inner tendency
may be widely embraced at a particular point in time, we resist defining
attitude in terms of any one of them. Our reluctance stems in part from
the fact that all ways of specifying the tendency that constitutes attitude
have been metaphoric because they do not have an inherent reality that
allows them to be directly viewed or verified. Therefore, associative net-
work models produce a mere metaphor, albeit a highly generative one,
as do connectionist models, the three–component model, cognitive con-
sistency models, and all other models. Researchers cannot directly ob-
serve object–evaluation associations or any of the other psychological
entities that they have proposed as descriptions of attitudes.
The varied metaphors that have emerged for describing attitudes’ in-
ner tendency are important because they guide theorizing, yield a useful
vocabulary for thinking about attitudes, and bring certain types of test-
able hypotheses to light. Moreover, the fact that a particular specifica-
tion loses popularity does not negate its contribution to attitude theory.
For example, Doob (1947) defined attitude as a learned, implicit antici-
patory response, a treatment that adopted language from the Hullian
learning theory framework, which was very popular in the 1940s. Al-
though contemporary attitude research is not guided by this particular
theoretical metaphor, it enhanced understanding of attitudes at the
time. In fact, as testimony to the enduring importance of prior theoriz-
ing, the implicit response aspect of Doob’s definition anticipated the
contemporary interest in implicit attitudes.
Our abstract definition of attitude encompasses the various distinctive
conceptualizations of the latent tendencies that constitute attitudes. A
definition that provides an overall framework for attitude theory and re-
search would ideally not change as new theories emerge and become
popular. Most theories of attitudes describe, with certain words and im-
ages, the mental residue that constitutes attitude. Each approach can
promote important insights about attitudes, as long as it inspires testable
hypotheses that yield sufficient levels of confirmation. The consistency
of our umbrella definition with these metaphors derives from its
breadth, which allows it to transcend particular theoretical preferences,
as well as from its precision, which identifies attitudes’ three key ele-
AN INCLUSIVE DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE 591

ments of evaluation, attitude object, and tendency. This definition em-

braces psychologists’ invention of new and shifting metaphors for
understanding the mental residue that constitutes attitude. Although all
such conceptions do not have equal value in furthering knowledge
about attitudes, a multiplicity of metaphors produces far more
understanding than adherence to a single metaphor.

THE ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF ATTITUDES

Despite the difficulties of arguing that the inner tendency that is attitude
necessarily has three components, the tripartite model, in a revised
form, has continued to be important (e.g., Breckler, 1984; Zanna &
Rempel, 1988). As theory and research developed, interpretations of the
three–component idea gravitated toward meaning that the mental resi-
due of experience with an attitude object can be formed or expressed
through cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes.
Why is it useful to retain a revised tripartite analysis? In terms of atti-
tudes’ antecedents, the labeling of them as cognitive, affective, and be-
havioral acknowledges differing assumptions concerning how attitudes
come into being and change (see Eagly & Chaiken, 1993, 1998). For ex-
ample, theories of message–based persuasion have traditionally as-
sumed a cognitive learning process that follows from exposure to
persuasive communications. Affective or emotional processes are inher-
ent in several theories of attitude formation, including Zajonc’s (1980,
1984) proposition that “preferences” (i.e., evaluations) are based pri-
marily on affective responses, unmediated by thinking. The idea that at-
titudes derive from behavioral responses has appeared in varying
forms, including dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957) and
self–perception theory (Bem, 1972).
In describing the manner in which attitudes are expressed, this revised
tripartite, or neotripartite, analysis also points to cognition, affect, and be-
havior, but as three types of evaluative responding that attitude objects
elicit. The cognitive aspect of attitudes consists of associations that peo-
ple establish between an attitude object and various attributes that they
ascribe to it (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). The affective aspect of attitudes
consists of feelings and emotions and the as yet only partially mapped
physiological responses that may accompany affective experience
(Schimmack & Crites, 2005). The behavioral aspect of attitudinal re-
sponding refers to overt actions toward the attitude object as well as to
intentions to act. Cognitions, affects, and behaviors all express positive
or negative evaluation of more or less extremity (and sometimes they are
neutral in their evaluative implications).
592 EAGLY AND CHAIKEN

Despite the insights that have followed from thinking about cognitive,
affective, and behavioral antecedents and consequences of attitudes, the
idea of three components has often been overstated. One concern is that
the three components have frequently failed to appear as neatly separa-
ble in straightforward factor analytic tests (see Eagly & Chaiken, 1993).
Regardless of their empirical separability, there is no necessity that atti-
tudes include all three aspects—cognition, affect, and behavior—either
at the point of their formation or at the point of attitudinal responding.
Attitudes can be formed or expressed primarily or exclusively on the ba-
sis of any one of the three types of processes or some mix of these pro-
cesses. The formation of attitudes through affective, cognitive, or
behavioral processes establishes associations that are linked to the atti-
tude object and can become part of the mental residue that is attitude.
These associations can reflect one or a mixture of the affective, cognitive,
and behavioral precursors of attitude.
Many psychologists have argued that affect, understood as feelings
and emotions, surely is a necessary component of attitudes. Some of
these psychologists have merely equated evaluative emotions and feel-
ings with abstract evaluation (a view that we do not endorse), but others
think that emotions and feelings are truly the core of attitudes. However,
contrary to the idea that affect is necessarily primary to attitudes (e.g.,
Zajonc, 1984), research has shown that attitudes may be based mainly on
cognitions or on affects (see Chaiken, Pomerantz, & Giner–Sorolla,
1995). Once the evaluative extremity of the cognitive and affective con-
stituents of attitudes is controlled, affective constituents of attitudes ap-
pear to be more accessible in memory for attitudes that are primarily
affectively based, and cognitive constituents for attitudes that are pri-
marily cognitively based (Giner–Sorolla, 2004). Given such findings, af-
fect may not be a more essential component of attitudes than cognitions
or behaviors. Affect may well be special, but this matter is an empirical
and theoretical issue, not a definitional one. In summary, the
neotripartite cognitive–affective–behavioral analysis is best regarded as
providing a convenient terminology for referring to differing aspects of
the processes that are involved in forming and expressing attitudes.
Such an analysis favors metaphoric representations of attitudes’ inner
tendency as potentially multifaceted and not merely taking the form of a
unitary abstract evaluation.

IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT ATTITUDES

Some recent elaborations of attitude theory distinguish between implicit

and explicit attitudes. In current parlance, explicit attitudes are evalua-
AN INCLUSIVE DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE 593

tions that are reported by the person who holds the attitude. The person
who self–reports an attitude is aware of his or her attitude or at least
aware of the expression of the attitude that is elicited by the measuring
instrument. Until recent years, the predominant view in research, al-
though not generally stated, was that attitudes are explicit in the sense
that people are largely aware of their own evaluative tendencies. In con-
trast, implicit attitudes are those that people do not consciously recog-
nize (e.g., Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Although earlier theorizing was
not devoid of acknowledgment that people can be unaware of their atti-
tudes, this recognition has come to the forefront of theoretical and em-
pirical efforts to understand attitudes. This direction represents an
important step beyond the strands of theorizing about implicit attitudes
that were embedded in some earlier perspectives. For example, in addi-
tion to Doob’s (1947) introduction of the idea of implicit anticipatory
evaluative responses, Zajonc (1980, 1984) contributed seminal ideas
about evaluative preferences without conscious inferences, and the un-
obtrusive measures movement advocated assessing attitudes without
people being aware that their attitudes are under scrutiny (Webb,
Campbell, Schwartz, & Sechrest, 1966).
There is general agreement among contemporary attitude researchers
that, even when a person does not have conscious access to an attitude, it
may be automatically activated by the attitude object or cues associated
with the object (e.g., Bargh, Chaiken, Govender, & Pratto, 1992). Atti-
tudes that are implicit in this sense can direct responding, perhaps
mainly spontaneous behaviors, as some researchers have argued (e.g.,
Dovidio, Brigham, Johnson, & Gaertner, 1996). In contrast, explicit atti-
tudes, to which one has conscious access, are presumed to be activated in
a more deliberative manner that requires cognitive effort. Such attitudes
may better predict behaviors that are under volitional control (Ajzen &
Fishbein, 2005). These differing implications of implicit and explicit atti-
tudes for spontaneous and volitional behaviors illustrate the potential
utility of studying implicit attitudes.
One manifestation of this distinction is Wilson, Lindsey, and School-
er’s (2000) conception of dual attitudes, by which people may have an
implicit attitude and an explicit attitude toward the same attitude object.
Wilson and his colleagues assumed that new information often changes
an existing attitude, creating a new explicit attitude. Yet, the prior atti-
tude may continue to be present, but often in implicit form. This ap-
proach acknowledges the constructionist point that attitudinal
expressions are often unstable. By adding the principle that an “old” at-
titude may endure in implicit form, this theory also takes account of the
common tendency for newly changed attitudes to erode and revert to a
value more typical of the average of past expressions of the attitude.
594 EAGLY AND CHAIKEN

Consistent with some aspects of the Wilson et al. (2000) position,

Gawronski and Bodenhausen (2006) have proposed that implicit atti-
tudes derive from affective associations that are activated automatically
by stimuli associated with an attitude object (see also Gawronski &
Bodenhausen, this issue). They have assumed that these (not necessarily
unconscious) associations are activated, regardless of whether a person
would regard them as accurate or inaccurate, true or false. These associ-
ations thus do not possess a subjective truth value. Gawronski and
Bodenhausen have also assumed that explicit attitudes derive from
evaluative judgments that take the form of propositions that the holder
of the attitude regards as accurate, or true. For example, an individual
might have automatic negative affective associations to an illegal immi-
grant but derive a more positive evaluation from activating the proposi-
tional knowledge that most illegal immigrants are merely trying to
provide for their impoverished families.
Despite this theory’s ties with particular distinctions between more
spontaneous and more deliberative processing (e.g., Gilbert, 1991;
Strack & Deutsch, 2004), the idea that nonendorsed associations, or
extrapersonal associations, can underlie attitudes remains a point of con-
tention (Fazio & Olson, 2003). An implicit measure that reduces their in-
fluence provides estimates of attitude that are more in agreement with
those produced by other explicit and implicit measures (M. A. Olson &
Fazio, 2004; Han, Olson, & Fazio, 2006). Measuring instruments that ex-
clude nonendorsed (automatic or otherwise) associations may well
yield more valid estimates of the mental residue that constitutes
attitude.
Even though we agree that attitudes need not be conscious to influ-
ence responding, we maintain that there is only one underlying
evaluative residue, regardless of whether it takes a unitary or multifac-
eted form or whether the holder of the attitude is aware or unaware of its
presence. Regarding attitudes as dual or multiple or divisible into im-
plicit and explicit attitudes captures certain phenomena but may not
provide the most productive direction for theorizing about the mental
residue that constitutes attitude. It is tempting to take such a direction,
given the dissociations that sometimes occur between estimates of atti-
tudes from implicit and explicit measures. However, such dissociations
can reflect a variety of differing influences. Postulating two types of atti-
tudes does not relieve the burden of understanding the theoretical
processes that underlie these dissociations.
What might produce dissociations between estimates of attitudes
from implicit and explicit assessments? Most obviously, an attitude may
not be validly expressed on explicit measures due to the influence of sit-
uational pressures such as norms fostering politically correct respond-
AN INCLUSIVE DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE 595

ing. Moreover, both implicit and explicit measures impose certain

situational and methodological constraints on responding. These con-
straints differ, given that implicit measures are ordinarily based on re-
sponse latencies, usually of dichotomous responses, and explicit
measures on deliberative endorsement of evaluative statements, gener-
ally on paper–and–pencil rating scales. In addition, as we have noted,
some implicit measures are constructed so that they elicit nonendorsed
as well as endorsed associations—most notably, the Implicit Association
Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Also, although the
fundamental assumption of implicit measures is that they assess only
automatic responding, there is no assurance that currently available
measures satisfy this criterion (Conrey, Sherman, Gawronski,
Hugenberg, & Groom, 2005). In addition, there is no assurance that re-
spondents are necessarily unaware of implicitly assessed attitudes
(Olson & Fazio, 2004). Given that implicit measures, like explicit mea-
sures, merely allow investigators to infer the evaluative content of the
mental residue that is attitude, more research is needed before psycholo-
gists can decide whether the two types of measures reveal different
aspects of attitude. These issues, while complex, should inspire
researchers to explore the implications of more and less consciously
experienced attitudes.

THE STRUCTURE OF ATTITUDES

To better understand why differing types of measuring instruments and

situations can produce different estimates of attitudes, we suggest that re-
searchers develop metaphorical accounts of the inner tendency that ad-
dress its potential complexity. According to such theories of the latent
attitudinal tendency, an attitude is a repository of the individual’s past ex-
perience with the attitude object. Depending on external cues, this mental
residue is often activated as a unitary overall evaluation of the attitude ob-
ject but, given its potentially multifaceted nature, is sometimes activated
only in part.
Imputting structure to attitudes fosters understanding of their com-
plexity. The neotripartite analysis, by which attitudes may have different
types of antecedents, provides one important metaphor describing the
mental residue that constitutes attitude. The differing types of inputs to
attitudes can be represented in memory as mental associations linked to
the attitude object (Eagly & Chaiken, 1998). When positive and negative
experiences become attached to attitude objects in people’s minds, they
acquire mental associations that join the attitude object to relevant prior
experience, which may have taken the form of cognitive, affective, or be-
596 EAGLY AND CHAIKEN

havioral responding. In this sense, the inner tendency that is attitude may
be saturated with associations involving cognitions, affects, or behaviors,
but not necessarily with all three types of associations. Cognitive associa-
tions, or propositional knowledge, may be present (e.g., illegal immi-
grants are trying to support their impoverished families) along with
affective associations (e.g., fear of immigrants) and memories of
behaviors (e.g., signing of an anti–immigrant petition).
These mental associations may have regularities that lead psycholo-
gists to ascribe various structural properties to them. We have termed
some of these properties intra–attitudinal structure (Eagly & Chaiken,
1993, 1998). For example, mental associations may be more or less
evaluatively inconsistent with one another (i.e., ambivalent). Although
individuals often do have an abstract overall evaluation of many atti-
tude objects, perhaps in the form of an easily retrieved evaluation of, for
example, the war in Iraq, our neotripartite metaphor would also endow
this attitude with many more specific mental associations representing,
perhaps, knowledge of this war, prior emotional reactions to it, and
prior behaviors and behavioral intentions in relation to it. In addition,
because people form attitudes toward many different entities that them-
selves are interrelated, there may also be a larger structure whereby atti-
tude objects are connected to other attitude objects. For example, the war
in Iraq may be associated in many people’s minds with George W. Bush
and Dick Cheney. We have termed these more global structures that en-
compass more than one attitude inter–attitudinal structure. Many impor-
tant properties derive from inter–attitudinal structure (e.g., ideologies
formed by linked attitudes) as well as from intra–attitudinal structure
(e.g., ambivalence, evaluative–cognitive consistency).
Consistent with the neotripartite analysis of attitudes’ antecedents,
intra–attitudinal and inter–attitudinal structure reflect differing ways
that attitudes have been formed. As this model suggests, people can
form attitudes experientially based on direct or indirect cognitive, affec-
tive, or behavioral responding to the attitude object. This intra–attitudi-
nal mode of attitude formation entails storing the information produced
by one’s responses as associations between the attitude object and these
responses. As evaluative meaning is abstracted from these associations,
an overall abstract attitude may be formed as a generalization from these
more elementary associations. Alternatively, one can form an attitude in
a top–down manner by forging linkages between the attitude object and
other attitude objects. These links are stored, along with the target atti-
tude itself. This mode of attitude formation entails an inference by which
a new attitude is deduced from an attitude that has already been formed,
often a more abstract or general attitude (Eagly & Chaiken, 1995). For ex-
ample, in one demonstration of such a process, participants deduced
AN INCLUSIVE DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE 597

their attitude toward a news item concerning sex discrimination from

their existing attitude on the general issue of equal rights for women
(Prislin, Wood, & Pool, 1998).
Aspects of attitude structure that are available in memory and there-
fore could potentially be activated are not necessarily accessible at any
particular point in time so that they influence evaluative responding.
The accessibility of attitude structure reflects the demands of the
perceiver’s situation as well as a variety of other factors such as person-
ality traits and chronic goals. The aspect of a person’s attitude toward,
for example, gay marriage, that is activated might or might not include
an abstract evaluation and might or might not include the differing
intra–attitudinal and inter–attitudinal associations to gay marriage that
the individual has stored in memory.
How do ideas about the complexity of attitude structure account for
findings that have led researchers to postulate that people hold more
than one attitude in relation to many attitude objects—for example, atti-
tudes that are old and new, implicit and explicit, or derived from asso-
ciative and propositional processes? If the evaluative mental residue has
been laid down by many encounters with the attitude object, it no doubt
has complex structure. Different aspects of that residue of past experi-
ence may form the basis of attitudinal responding in particular
circumstances.
To understand complex structure, consider, for example, people’s atti-
tudes toward their mothers. An affect–laden attitude is ordinarily formed
by the young child, and this attitude is elaborated and changed by numer-
ous experiences as the child matures. For example, a rebellious teenager
may form a negative attitude in response to a mother’s restrictions. The at-
titude of the mature son or daughter becomes more complex because of
the acquisition of knowledge about the mother in a wide range of settings.
Given such a complex structure, the adult child may appear sometimes to
revert to a childish or adolescent attitude when interacting with the
mother, perhaps without awareness of the activation of this aspect of the
attitude. Because the residue of past experience that constitutes this atti-
tude is multifaceted, it can be activated in various forms, depending on
situational cues and their relations to the stored mental associations
linked to the mother.
Attitudes toward richly experienced attitude objects such as family
members and one’s own nation can be particularly vulnerable to context
effects because contents of memory with differing evaluative implica-
tions may be activated in varying circumstances. However, some com-
plex attitudes are coherently organized in the sense that most mental
associations are consistent with the person’s overall evaluation of the at-
titude object. If so, the attitude may not be especially vulnerable to con-
598 EAGLY AND CHAIKEN

text effects because the person’s evaluation would be similar, regardless

of whether the overall evaluation or only some mental associations are
accessed (see Eagly & Chaiken, 1998; Chaiken et al., 1995). Nonetheless,
even for richly experienced attitude objects, the person has just one
evaluative residue of past experience, albeit one that encompasses
varied mental associations.
Attitudes that are fairly important but not so complexly experienced
in the past may ordinarily be more unitary because they are based on a
stable set of attributes that are chronically associated with an attitude ob-
ject (Van Harreveld & Van der Plight, 2004; Van Harreveld, Van der
Plight, De Vries, & Andreas, 2004). For example, attitudes toward cur-
rent social policies pertaining to issues such as taxes or immigration may
be based on relatively few attributes that are often accessed and there-
fore foster a similar abstract evaluation. Such an attitude may neverthe-
less be expressed somewhat differently under the influence of varying
contextual stimuli. Still, attitudes of this general type, such as prejudices
toward ethnic groups and evaluations of political parties, have proven
to be difficult to change and often endure over substantial time periods.
We suspect that the majority of the attitudes historically of interest to
social scientists are of this type.
In contrast to these moderately important, often sociopolitical, atti-
tudes commonly studied by social scientists, attitudes that are more im-
portant or less important are likely to be associated with the appearance
of greater attitudinal volatility. As we have indicated, attitudes accom-
panied by an especially rich repertoire of associations could yield
evaluative responses of inconsistent valence because of the activation of
only some of these associations in certain circumstances. In addition,
trivial attitudes or attitudes newly formed in laboratory experiments
would also appear to be volatile because the mental residue of past expe-
rience is relatively impoverished in terms of prior knowledge, emo-
tional experiences, or memories of overt behaviors. Appropriate
analysis of the underlying structure of attitudes could clarify these regu-
larities. For example, some connectionist metaphors for attitudes’ inner
tendency (e.g., Bassili & Brown, 2005; Van Overwalle & Sieber, 2005)
could be easily elaborated to model critical features of attitude structure.

ONCE MORE, THE DEFINITION OF ATTITUDES

Finally, we ask once more whether our definition of attitude as a psycho-

logical tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some
degree of favor or disfavor remains viable given current specifications of
this tendency. The answer to this question is yes. As we have shown in
AN INCLUSIVE DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE 599

this article, the generality and precision of our definition are congenial to
the various ways of thinking about attitudes’ inner tendency that theo-
rists have proposed. Moreover, this mental residue of experience with
an attitude object may take any of a variety of simple or more complex
forms because it can include a wide range of cognitive, affective, and be-
havioral associations. The challenge for attitude theorists is to propose
models of attitude that map these forms in ways that further the
understanding of attitudinal phenomena.

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