you really got a hold on me
The famous song by Smokey Robinson has much to do with social psychology. Social psychology attempts to explain social phenomena, and a major social phenomenon is attitude. An attitude, in social psychology, is defined as as enduring evaluation of people, objects, or ideas. Sure, there are different levels to which an attitude can be affected by society, but attitudes are more malleable than you probably suppose. However, before I go off on a tangent, let me summarize the main types of attitudes, and how they interact with one another. The first is called cognitive based and is an attitude based primarily on people's beliefs about the properties of an attitude object. An instance of a cognitive based attitude is when you think of a car in terms of its utility, effectiveness (maker, model), cost, etc. and not in terms of "how it makes you feel". The second attitude is affectively based and is defined as an attitude based more on people's feelings and values than on their beliefs about the nature of an object. For most people (myself included), I think that their attitude toward spiders is of this type, since it is mostly determined by popular perception of this eight-legged freaks. The last kind of attitude is called behaviorally based: an attitude based on observations of how one behaves towards an attitude object. For me, the attitude toward drinking water is of this type: I do it a lot, so "I guess I like it". Now that we have the groundwork laid of the different types of attitude, the real fun begins...but I'm late for class, so I'll finish it some other time.

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