Abstract

This article addresses the imprecise connotations of “attitude” typically utilized in mainstream psychology and offers additional, clarifying seminal notions buttressed by phenomenology. The work also proposes a relational conceptualization of attitude. Attitude is the tendency to apprehend something or someone with favorable or unfavorable inclinations, which, while true, begs clarification. In psychology, attitude tends to adopt a somewhat rigid form in the interest of possibly predicting future behavior. However, this article argues that attitude, in its natural form, is contextual and constitutes part of the essence of being in relation to the lifeworld. The “natural attitude” manifests as a mode of being informed by individuals’ paradigms or worldviews and acknowledges the innate agentic nature of humanity. This conceptualization assumes that meaningful parts of one’s attitude can shift within particular contexts and/or according to experience. Consequently, a more complete definition of attitude should include the agentic and relational/contextual nature of being and reflect a person’s worldview or identity as follows: attitude denotes a person’s position or stance in relation to something or someone; it is experienced within particular contexts and is subject to potential variations and agentic action, and which represents a person’s worldview or identity.