"In this chapter we discuss how perspectives have been approached in social psychology, communication science, and linguistics. Let us first discuss how perspectives are defined in these fields. From a psychological point of view, a perspective can be conceptualized as the existing knowledge, personally held view, beliefs, attitudes, or opinions about a given topic or object, as residing in an individual's mind. The most straightforward type of perspectives are beliefs and attitudes. Beliefs are bits of private knowledge about entities, such as: "this guy works for Sony", or "beer mixes poorly with chocolate". Attitudes are basically affective evaluations of entities, ranging from positive to negative, such as: "I don't like this guy", or "I love beer". The object of interest can also concern a broad entity, such as a generic social category of people (e.g., Germans, scientists). In these cases the associated set of beliefs are termed stereotypes, while attitudes about social categories are termed prejudice"-- Provided by publisher.
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