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Attitudes refer to the general and relatively enduring evaluations people have of other people, objects, or ideas. These overall evaluations can be positive, negative, or neutral, and they can vary in their extremity. For example, one individual might view jazz music in a mildly positive way, whereas another might be wildly positive and another might be somewhat negative. Individuals can hold attitudes about very broad or hypothetical constructs (eg, anarchy) as well as about very concrete and specific things (eg, a particular brand of chewing gum). Before turning to our primary focus on the processes involved in changing attitudes, we address some important background issues on the nature and structure of attitudes. Following this background discussion, we describe ways to change attitudes that involve relatively high versus low amounts of cognitive effort and the consequences of these different strategies.