When you read about attitudes in the text, some thoughts may have come to mind about the types of attitudes people hold. For example, as you know some attitudes are positive, and some are negative. Also, some attitudes may be more "cold", based on beliefs and cognitions, whereas others may be more "hot", that is based on emotions. Finally, some attitudes are simply based on your previous behaviours – I buy Pepsi because I always drink Pepsi.

The text suggests that an attitude—one's favourable or unfavourable evaluative reaction toward something or someone—may be exhibited in beliefs, feelings, or intended behaviour. It is important to understand the distinctions this can create. If I want to convince you to buy a new laptop, then my approach should be different than if I want you to buy a kitten. The underlying basis of the attitude is different. Thus, when assessing attitudes, we should tap at least one of the following dimensions: affect (feelings), behaviour (intention), or cognition (thoughts).

Breckler's (1984) assessment of students' attitudes toward snakes provides a good illustration of the ABCs of attitudes. Affect measures were taken while the participant was in the presence of a snake and included heart rate, adjective checklists of positive and negative mood, and a scale with statements such as, "I feel tense," or "anxious," or "happy." Behaviour measures included the average distance subjects maintained from a variety of pictured snakes, the extent of contact the subject was willing to have with a live snake, and a scale with items such as "I scream whenever I see a snake," and "I like to handle snakes." Cognitive measures included a scale with statements such as "Snakes control the rodent population," and "Snakes will attack anything that moves," ratings of snakes on scales representing the evaluative dimension of the semantic differential, and the net proportion of favourable-to-unfavourable listed thoughts given in the presence of a snake. Breckler's analysis of responses to these various measures suggested the existence of three distinct components to attitudes that were moderately correlated – that is we tend to feel them all to some extent, and they tend to be consistent.

Breckler S. J. (1984). Empirical validation of affect, behavior, and cognition as distinct components of attitude. Journal of personality and social psychology, 47(6), 1191–1205. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.47.6.1191