Functional attitude theory (FAT) suggests that beliefs and attitudes are influential to various psychological functions. Attitudes can be influential on many processes such as being utilitarian (useful), social, relating to values, or a reduction of cognitive dissonance. They can be beneficial and help people interact with the world. In the late 1950s when psychoanalysis and behaviorism reigned supreme as the foci of psychological studies, Smith, Bruner, and White (1956)[1] and Katz (1960) [2] separately and independently developed typologies of human attitudes in relation to the functions to which they believed the attitudes served.[3] This theory proposes that attitudes are held by individuals because they are important and integral to psychological functioning. The function of an attitude is more important than whether the attitude is accurate or correct.
Aristotle's Rhetoric, renowned for its modes of persuasion in ethos, logos, and pathos, gave mankind its first recorded guide to and theory of social influence. Aristotle recognized that different appeals are necessary for different types of persuasion, and that these appeals can be tailored and refined to better suit the audience or better suit the product or idea at hand. In the late 1950s when psychoanalysis and behaviorism reigned supreme in the U.S. as the foci of psychological studies, Smith, Bruner, and White (1956)[1] and Katz (1960) [2] separately and independently developed typologies of human attitudes in relation to the functions to which they believed the attitudes served.[3] The goal of these ‘functional attitude theories,’ (FAT) as they would come to be known, was to understand the effect of functional attitudinal states in relation cognition and behavior, and specifically, for Katz (1960),[2]