The Theory
Researchers stated that people actually have to types of attitude. The first one is positive dispositional attitude and the other is negative dispositional attitude. Well, from the name itself we could have guessed what are the meanings of those two terms, right? The first one is called positive dispositional attitude because people with this attitude actually tend to like a lot of things as they face this world with such positive attitude. And then we have negative dispositional attitude. People with this type of attitude have a strong tendency to dislike so many things because they do not have a positive outlook to begin with.
This theory is explained in a journal that has been published recently which was written by Justin Hepler and also Dolores Albarracin, Ph. D. Those two people wrote a journal entitled Attitudes without Objects: Evidence for a Dispositional Attitude, Its Measurement, and Its Consequences. In the book, it is said that dispositional attitude actually represents a new perspective. On this matter, an attitude is not only a function of the stimuli’s properties but also the properties of the evaluator. It means that when people dislike something, it is not entirely about the objects but also about how those people view the objects and what are they feeling at the moment.
The Explanation
For instance, when you are talking about health care with someone and you want to know his or her opinion on that matter, you might think that you do not need to bring up other subjects like architecture for example. Most people would think that you are crazy because those two things, on the surface, are not related at all. It is because we know that architecture and also health care have two different and also independent stimuli that have totally unique properties’ sets. And we usually expect the attitudes toward those two subjects that are shown by the person you are talking to are also independent and unrelated.
However, we might not also guess that there is actually a critical factor any attitudes have in common and that one factor is the individual himself, the one that forms the attitudes. No matter what type of subjects we try to discuss, if the person we are talking to has negative dispositional attitude then they would likely not engage into the conversation seriously. However, if they have positive dispositional attitude, they would happily converse with you and show more good attitude in general. So, it is not about the objects they hate or dislike, it is their general attitude or outlook toward anything.
This research is actually really significant. It shows us that the problems are not on the obvious but the problems come from within. This is why it is really important for people to have positive outlook in life because that is just horrible if we could not enjoy anything immensely only because we have such negative outlook. When people likes a lot of things, they tend to enjoy life more than the ones that do not want to cut loose.