Definition of "mental attitude" [mental attitude]

• A complex mental state involving beliefs and feelings and values and dispositions to act in certain ways (noun)

WordNet. Princeton University. 2010.

• "Indeed, the right mental attitude of the occultist was insisted upon as essential to the operation."
• "Says Vasari, "Then arose new architects who after the manner of their barbarous nations erected buildings in that style which we call Gothic", while Evelyn but expresses the mental attitude of his own time when he writes, "The ancient Greek and Roman architecture answered all the perfections required in a faultless and accomplished building" -- but the Goths and Vandals destroyed these and "introduced in their stead a certain fantastical and licentious manner of building: congestions of heavy, dark, melancholy, monkish piles, without any just proportion, use or beauty.""