the spontaneous activation of an attitude when this cued by the encountering of the attitude object. Essentially, the person’s whole schema of whatever the attitude consists of is triggered. The likelihood of automatic activation depends on the depth and accessibility of an attitude.
AUTOMATIC ACTIVATION OF ATTITUDES: “A person may experience the automatic activation of attitudes when he or she encounters a stimuli that triggers such an attitude – for example, if a person feels strongly about being allowed to smoke in a hospital and sees a no smoking sign there, this may trigger the attitude.”