"Public attitudes crucial to AIDS fight...."

This article discusses the struggle of the Chinese to accept and not discriminate against patients with HIV. The attitudes of the Chinese towards patients with AIDS in the past have been negative, leading patients to hide their HIV status. When Chinese President Hu Jintao shook hands with AIDS patients on World Aids Day (December 1st) in 2004, attitudes in China began to change towards these patients. It is crucial that the attitudes change because it is necessary for people with HIV to come forward and get treatment willingly, as this will help them, and protect other people from the disease.

Attitudes are global evaluations, our likes and dislikes, our lasting general evaluations of people, objects, or issues. For example, for everyone you know, you have a schema in your head for that person, what they're about, what they wear, etc and how you evaluate them (whether yo like or dislike them. Attitudes can be both positive and negative. Many times, attitudes are objectively measured by a scale called the Likert scale, which is a scale using a set of possible answers that has both extremes of feelings. The attitude accessibility is the degree to which an attitude is ready to become active in an individual's mind, guiding thoughts and behavior. If we wanted to get the best idea of the true attitudes in China, we would ask a random assortment of people to fill out Likert scales on their attitude towards HIV/AIDS and question them about the topic seeing how they reply, and how quickly they reply. 

Why is a bad attitude towards care and treatment of HIV patients a bad social phenomenon? Because it will spread if people are not treated. Why might this be? Because of one of the main functions of attitudes, the utilitarian function. The utilitarian function of attitudes serves to alert people to rewarding objects or situations that should be approached, and to alert people to costly/punishing situations that should be avoided. If the attitudes in China is so bad against HIV/AIDS, that people are socially punished and shunned for admitting to having AIDS you can bet your bottom dollar that these attitudes will keep people from getting treated, therefore making China much more at risk for spread of the epidemic. Props to the President of China for changing attitudes and stigmas against these patients to aid in the health of his country!