Yup, in being attitude 'towards', it means that the preposition is used with abstract concepts (intangible or imprecise ones, I would say).      To give some examples of that, it follows some pieces of text taken from British Corpus (but the American ones wouldn´t be very different).     Like Marcio said, focusing into the attitude and changing, movement etc.

   In Portuguese you could translate them into 'pelo', 'para' , 'em direção á',  'por'; depending of context.

http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/saraWeb?qy=towards
From: British Corpus
These buildings are now almost equally at risk from insensitive conversion as they are from demolition because a softening in the attitude of local planning authorities towards proposals for change of use of agricultural buildings has recently been encouraged by central government in an attempt to ameliorate the worsening financial circumstances of farmers.

                [the idea is of changing and turning into something different from the beginning]

Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling towards heaven. 

[imprecise, you can´t say how much they rumbled...or how much remains to rumble]

Then, towards the end of January, people noticed that at least one boar was coming right up to the village in its nighttime foraging: there were tracks in the snow and patches of scratched earth where it had been digging for roots.

I see these Tours continuing to struggle as sponsors' money is attracted towards the best.

[imprecise, you can´t say wich day...or how much to the end...]

A key problem is getting paperback originals reviewed in the quality press, the attention of which has traditionally been directed towards hardback first editions.

    [an abstract concept, the attention is an abstract concept]

One fact that contradicts it immediately is that women are often in the vanguard of linguistic change towards the standard variety.

   [another abstract one, 'change' ]

James stepped outside and started to walk towards the hotel.

[the notion is:  imprecise - how much to walk? how much remains to walk?]

Broadly speaking, elite analysis directs the researcher's attention towards socio-political determination as opposed to economic determination.

     [abstract idea ]

Thus there was a certain ambivalence in attitudes towards wage-earning wives.

Your first charts will not be final or perfect, but these early charts are very useful steps towards an accurate pronunciation (and also, of course, necessary if you are doing a phonemic analysis).

   [abstract, the word 'attitude' in it send us to the concept Marcio presented] 

the N H S has been fundamentally changed as a consequence of Tory government policy towards it.

   ['policy' an abstract concept]

  P.S. I had not focused in these meanings and uses of 'towards', because the given examples  at the very beggining (the ones from the question) weren´t in this sense.

        On the contrary, 'towards' was  in the sense of real world, real things.  Thus, they were under the topic directional prepositions, in English grammar. 

         Since Marcio brought  the matter up for discussion in that sense, I complemented.

     Hope it helps somehow.   And feel free to comment, edit, correct and  proofread my answer, guys.

     PP.