| Sumario: | The term attitude came into fashion early in the last decade as a replacement for the discarded term instinct. The change in terminology reflected a revolution in socio-psychological thought. Like the term instinct, the term attitude referred to the neurological patterns, which predispose an individual to adjust to a given kind of situation in a given way. Unlike instincts, however, attitudes were recognized as experiential and therefore, as social in origin. Originally, attitudes were imputed that is, if a man kicked a barking dog, his behavior in this situation was described as expressive of a kick barking-dogs attitude. Such descriptive use of the term by Floyd Ailport in 1924 and the more systematic use of it by L. L. Bernard in 1926 firmly established it in the vocabulary of the social sciences. With few exceptions, the term attitude as it is now used actually refers to a questionnaire response, which for convenience will be designated herein as a measured attitude. With few exceptions, also, those who use the term attitude continue to think of attitudes as descriptions of the neurological patterns, which predispose an individual to adjust to a given kind of situation in a given way. In all such usage there is the implicit assumption that the response given to a printed or oral question reveals the attitude, which would become operative in a situation of the kind referred to in that question.
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