There are many ways to define an attitude, and several definitions are currently accepted. Basically, an attitude is a stable and enduring disposition to evaluate an object or entity (a person, place or thing), in a particular way. “I like working on this project” and “I do not like working after office hours” are examples of attitudes because they express a persons general feeling, either favorable or unfavorable toward something.
Attitudes may be learned from the experiences we have. These include mostly mundane events such as being praised by our parents for expounding “liberal” attitudes, but also major life and world events.
The basic processes through which we learn attitudes remain the same throughout life, though as we grow older the attitudes we learn may be more complex, and the ones we already hold may become more resistant to change.
The processes through which our experiences create attitudes are all related to “learning” which is a basic human process. We will learn more about learning processes in the chapter 6 of this module.
As for now just keep in mind that all our attitudes are learned from our experience of the social context around us.
The influence of the family, schooling, and peer groups waxes and wanes as we grow into adolescence and adulthood.
Thus, the primary sources of our attitudes change as we mature. A final source of attitudes is the culture in which a child grows up. Culturally prevalent prejudices are generally reflected in prejudiced attitudes.
Apart from the other related comments on this thread, I would add that attitude is sometimes shaped from active and sometimes from passive learning, meaning that some of your behavior originates from events that happened around you, whereas other were consciously made as a decision.