RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ATTITUDES AND EVALUATIVE SPACE - A CRITICAL-REVIEW, WITH EMPHASIS ON THE SEPARABILITY OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE SUBSTRATES

Evaluative processes refer to the operations by which organisms discri minate threatening from nurturant environments. Low activation of posi tive and negative evaluative processes by a stimulus reflects neutrali ty, whereas high activation of such processes reflects maximal conflic t. Attitudes, an important class of manifestations of evaluative proce sses, have traditionally been conceptualized as falling along a bipola r dimension, and the positive and negative evaluative processes underl ying attitudes have been conceptualized as being reciprocally activate d, making the bipolar rating scale the measure of choice. Research is reviewed suggesting that this bipolar dimension is insufficient to por tray comprehensively positive and negative evaluative processes and th at the question is not whether such processes are reciprocally activat ed but under what conditions they are reciprocally, nonreciprocally, o r independently activated.