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Petty: The most common perspective today would be that attitudes refer to people's general evaluations of objects, issues, and people. There are a variety of sources that these general evaluations come from. They can be based on your emotions or specific information or beliefs or past behavioral experiences. The reason I think attitudes are important is that a good amount of evidence shows that these general evaluations are one of the most critical determinants of our behavior. So when people talk about social problems of the day, whether it's heart disease and cholesterol, AIDS, or drug abuse, one of the critical things we must do is to influence and modify people's attitudes. Most of our major social problems turn out to be problems of attitudes. For example, people think that they don't like low-fat food. They say it's not good tasting, or they are afraid to try it. So the first step in any kind of public education campaign is to look at what people's attitudes are and attempt to modify them so that behavior will follow.

Krupat: But couldn't someone say," Why bother with attitudes? Why not get right to the matter of interest and just get people to comply, to change their behavior without worrying about attitudes?" Petty: According to most attitude theorists, change through compliance is only temporary. Compliance occurs because of people's responses to particular aspects of some situation. The factors that produce compliance in one situation might not be present in another situation. On the other hand, people