What is Attitude : Definition in Psychology

Attitude

Attitude is a mental state because it exist in a person’s mind.it is a basic aspect of social cognition, influence our thoughts and affect our behaviour.

It is as a mental set or preparedness that could significantly influence physical reaction time.

Attitude may be positive or negative. It affect our thoughts, behaviour and influence behaviour.it can be learned through one’s own experiences and through interaction with others.

 

Definitions :-

 An attitude is defined as an individual’s tendency or predisposition to evaluate an object or a symbol of that object in a certain way.   –Katz and Stotland.

 

Attitude refer to certain regularities of an individual’s feeling, thought, and predisposition to act towards some aspect of his environment. – Secord and Backman.

Attitude as the keystone in edifice of the field of social psychology. – G Allport.

Person’s mind would tend to fall into a set pattern or attitude that would colour his perception of the situation. – H.Spencer  and Alexander Bain.

So, attitude is defined as an enduring system of three components centring about a single object,- cognitive, feeling and action.

 Tripartite model or ABC  model of attitude :-

So, any attitude has these three components:-

· Affective component  - it is  the way a person feel toward objects, events or other person.

· Behavioural component – it is the action that the person takes with respect to object, person or situation.

· Cognitive component – it refers to the way the person think about another person, object or situation.

Function of attitude:-

· Instrumental or heuristic function :- individual develop positive favourable attitude toward objects that are rewarded and unfavourable attitude toward objects that punish. It is also known as adjustive or Unitarian function.

· Knowledge or schematic function :- it concern with how a person organises and processes information about his social world. It allows us to see the social world as a more familiar, predictable and less uncertain place.

· Self-esteem function :-  a person obtain satisfaction by expressing himself in terms of attitude that are appropriate to his personal values and self concept. It enhance self-worth.It is also known as value- expressive or social identity function.

· Ego- defensive function :- attitude can serve to protect people from themselves and other people. People protect himself from being criticized of unpleasant truth or harsh realities of himself by holding a particular attitude.

· Impression motivation function :- our attitudes can shift in order to create positive view or desired impression on others, to make our good impression on others. It is also known as management Function.

Formation of attitude :-

· Genetic factors:- it plays some role in the formation of attitudes.

Research shows that attitude of identical twins correlated more highly than non-identical twins towards many social issues.

· Learning based on association- classical conditioning :-  our process of social learning is classical conditioning, based on Association of stimulus and responses plays an important role in the formation of attitude.

Example :- if a child in the classroom frequently finds that the teacher call his class fellow as lazy, stupid etc, indicating an unfavorable attitude of the teacher, so the child also develops similar negative attitude towards that fellow.

· Learning based on consequences- instrumental conditioning :- in this, learning is based upon direct experience with the attitude object.

If a person experience reward to attitude object, he develops a favourable attitude,and if he experience punishment after interacting with attitude object, he may develop a negative or unfavorable attitude towards the attitude object.

Religious, social and caste issues are found similar to their parents, so parents play an important role in shaping the attitude of child.

· Learning based on illustration- observational learning :- attitude are learnt through observing the behaviour of significant others. Many child develop attitudes by what they observe their parents or others. Also observe mass media, television, films, magazines, newspaper and so on.

· Social comparison :- people’s compare ourselves with another person or group of people and develop attitude as we think it to be proper.

So, attitude developed as a result of social comparison/ information, with our desire to be similar to the people whom we like.

· Miscellaneous factor :-  1) Group membership :- in group, pressure to show conformity and they shape our attitudes and our behaviour. (group or culture norms)

2) Child rearing:- in this, parental values, beliefs and practices affect attitude of the children.

3) Chance conditioning:- learning takes place by chance or by mere coincidence.

4) Direct instruction:- given by parents, teachers or others.

5) Interaction with others:- attitude developed when the person is surrounded by other people with that kind of attitude.

Attitude change:-

Attitude change occurs anytime an attitude is modified, change occurs when a person goes –

- From being positive to negative (incongruent)

- From slightly positive to very positive ( congruent)

- From having no attitude to having one.

Sometimes, the same influences that lead to attitude formation can also create attitude change.

· Learning theories of attitude change :- classical, operant conditioning and       observational learning can be used to bring about attitude change.

· Elaboration likelihood theory of attitude change :- this theory of persuasion, says that people alter their attitude in two ways- first, they can be motivated to listen and think about the message, thus attitude shift. Second, they influence by the characteristics of the speaker, leading to a temporary or surface shift in attitude.

· Self perception theory :-  when we have no ( or a very weak) prior existing attitude on a particular issue we can infer our attitudes from observing our own behaviour.

· Cognitive dissonance theory :- people can also change their attitudes when they have conflicting beliefs about a topic, in order to reduce the tension created by these incompatible beliefs people often shift their attitude.

· Balance :- attitude change if there is a state of Imbalance between the P-O attitude, O-X attitude and P-X attitude. (P- person whose attitude is being studied, O- another person/object, X- topic towards which the attitude is being studied)

Imbalance found when all three sides of P-O-X are negative or two are positive and one is negative.

Balance is found, when all three sides are positive or two sides are negative and one is positive.

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