Final answer:
The statement is true; attitudes consist of three components: affective (emotions), behavioral (influence on behavior), and cognitive (beliefs and knowledge). These components work together to form our evaluations of various stimuli and can be influenced by both internal factors like cognitive dissonance and external factors such as social conformity and advertising.
Step-by-step explanation:
According to social psychology, attitudes are a complex of an affective component (which deals with feelings or emotions), a behavioral component (how the attitude influences our behavior), and a cognitive component (beliefs and knowledge). These components are interconnected and influence how we evaluate various stimuli such as people, ideas, or objects.
Our attitudes and beliefs can be influenced both by internal mechanisms, like cognitive dissonance, and by external factors, such as conformity and persuasion. Cognitive dissonance refers to the discomfort we feel when our attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors are inconsistent with each other, which can prompt a change in one of these components to resolve the dissonance. External forces, like social influences, can also shape our attitudes through processes like conformity, where we adjust our behaviors or beliefs to align with group norms, and through persuasion tactics in advertising that appeal to our emotions or reason.