How object, situation and personality shape human attitude in learning: An activity perspective and a multilevel modeling approach

Based on Activity Theory, this article examines attitude formation in human learning as shaped by the experiences of individual learners with various learning objects in particular learning contexts. It hypothesizes that a learner's object-related perceptions, personality traits and situational perceptions may have different relationships with the general attitude toward all the learning objects involved and the specific attitude toward each. An empirical study was conducted to verify the hypothesized relationships with the method of multilevel structural equation modeling. The result suggests that object-related perceptions have stronger direct effects on the specific attitude, personality traits have weaker moderating effects on the general attitude, and situational perceptions have both moderating effects on the general attitude and mediated effects on the specific attitude through object-related perceptions.