What is an Attitude?
An attitude is your collation of beliefs, thoughts and feelings about something; experiences, others, yourself, an argument, personally significant objects etc. It can also be defined as an idea or an opinion/perspective you hold closely to yourself. But not all these attitudes might be developed because of what you feel towards something. There are many variables that can come in the way of your attitude/opinion being formed. For example, it can depend how much social/peer pressure you have at the time of the development of your opinion on a topic. Which can lead to you conforming your perspective.
Throughout the course of history, psychologists around the world have put forward tons of theories and models to help gain more knowledge concerning the formation of an attitude, why may our attitudes change and help explain to a further extent what an attitude actually is. One of these models, the ABC or the tri-component model, is one of the most influential models and most used model today. Within this ABC model, there are three components that this model consists of; the effective component, the behavioral component and the cognitive component, all simply representing your beliefs, feelings and actions that will in the end make up and form your attitude. |
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How Attitudes are Formed
Attitudes are formed when you have experienced something or have observed/listened to someone else’s experience. But there are many factors in the process of forming an attitude that can change the way it is formed. For example, variable factors like experience, social pressure and learning/knowledge about a topic, these can all change and contribute greatly to how the attitude is formed and the end product of the formed attitude.
“To change people’s behavior, you must change their intentions to perform the behavior. To change intentions, you must change either their attitudes or their norms regarding the behavior (or both). To change attitude or norm, you must change beliefs concerning the behavior.”
From: http://uk.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/6991_pryor_ch_1.pdf
From: http://uk.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/6991_pryor_ch_1.pdf
Different Ways You Can Form an Attitude
Forming attitudes by learning are made up of different methods of conditioning; operant, classical and observation conditioning.
Operant Conditioning: Operant Conditioning, also known as instrumental conditioning, is when an individual associates a behaviour with a certain action or consequence. Some of the components that make up operant conditioning is reinforcement and punishment. When a young child is doing homework and they are rewarded upon completing it, they associate doing homework as a good thing and will be influenced to do more; because of the rewards they will receive afterwards. This is an example of positive operant conditioning. Even though this method of learning seems straight forward, it all depends on the assumption that the actions you do are followed up by reinforcement and your action would be strengthened even more and the chances of it likely to be done again would increase in the future. Classical Conditioning: Another different learning method, Classical Conditioning, also known as Pavlovian Conditioning is when a person (or thing) learns through making associations between environmental and natural occurring stimulus. This is also another type of learning that majorly influences behaviourism; the assumption that learning occurs because of the natural environment. Within Classical Conditioning, there are three stages: Stage 1: Before Conditioning When a stimulus in the natural environment triggered a certain behavior or response which at the moment is a natural and unlearned response; the behavior hasn’t formed yet. Stage 2: During Conditioning When a stimulus that gives no response (neutral stimulus) is given an association with an unconditioned stimulus. (When you associate a stimulus with someone or thing) This now becomes the Conditioned Stimulus. Stage 3: After Conditioning When the conditioned stimulus gets associated with the unconditioned stimulus which would create a conditioned response. |
Observational Conditioning: The last type different type of conditioning, Observational Conditioning is the only type of conditioning where you would learn something indirectly. This type of conditioning can be referred to as modeling, shaping and vicarious reinforcement. This conditioning can happen at anytime and at anywhere, even though the majority of observational conditioning usually can be found in learning situations that involve children. This is because they will look up to older individuals and will learn from them. It is when someone learns an action or thought by observing someone else do the action or thought. (imitating someone) |
How Can We Change Attitudes?
Cognitive Dissonance:
Leon Festinger hypothesized a theory that we change our beliefs or attitudes to keep mental consistency. When there are two conflicting beliefs we change our attitudes to justify our actions. Let us use smoking to demonstrate this theory. Somebody who thinks that smoking is bad for them and yet still engages in it is having conflicting beliefs. They are more likely to rationalize it. They can rationalize it in for different ways: modifying, trivializing, adding or denying the attitude or belief. An example of each is as follows. Modifying- their thinking would be something like “I don’t smoke very much so the impact will be minimal”. Trivializing- “The evidence is weak that smoking causes cancer”. Adding- “I eat healthy so smoking will not affect me”. Denying- “The idea that smoking causes cancer is a myth”. In order to change attitudes we either have educate people so they find it hard to rationalize their actions or force cognitive dissonance to occur. To put this in perspective let’s imagine there is a book at the top of the shelf you would like to have a look at, but you cannot reach no matter how hard you try. Eventually you decide that the book on top of the shelf is outdated and contains useless information. Because you were not able to get the book even though wanting it you changed your beliefs about the book.
Self Perception Theory:
The self perception theory is based on the idea that when people do not know how they feel they use their behaviour as a guide. People don’t always use self perception as majority of the time they know their thoughts and feeling about a topic. But on the occasion were they initial feelings were blurred and not known they will use infer from their actions what their point of view was. A example that has many studies to support it, is when somebody you don’t know whether you like or not asks you for help and give it to them, we examine our behavior in the situation and draw from it that we like the person. This is because we were unclear to our attitude towards that person so doing something positive for them meant we must have a positive view associated with them.
The Halo Effect:
This effect derives from the thought that our initial impressions makes us expect other similar qualities. We apply this effect to people. Somebody’s personality for instance for us can revolve around one aspect of them. Celebrities usually are prone to this kind of treatment, we find them “attractive” and can consider them smart and caring as well. Another notable example would be sports related, if we see a soccer player pass a ball accurately we tend to assume that are good at dribbling as well. A psychological study applied this effect with similar results. Two groups of students were put in two separate rooms to watch two different videos of the same teacher. One presented his speech in a uplifting and good spirited way while the other had a more negative approach. When asked about his psychical appearance and accent, which was kept consistent. Students watching the more positive video rated higher than those who watched the more unfavorable one.
Fundamental Attribution Error:
We all have privileged access to our own thoughts and feelings. But we do not have access to others. This causes us to estimate what they are thinking and feeling. This commonly is quite self orientated and judgmental. This means that we do not take into account their context. An excellent demonstration of this is Schizophrenia.
We as a society tend to view those suffering from Schizophrenia as detached, strange individuals who are living in a false world. Their condition can cause them to hear voices that in reality are not there. When we see or hear about them we constantly don’t take into account their circumstance. If we were able to know the situation they are in we would be more empathic towards them. Brendon Murphy explained how he engages his class in a practical activity to give his students some context. He puts his class in groups of three and gets two to engage in a casual conversation, like describing one's weekend. Then the third group member is told to whisper negative things into the ear of the person who is describing their weekend, all while the other person is asking questions. This makes it incredibly difficult to not only communicate but to think as well. This gives the students some context and thereby changes their attitude towards people with this condition.
Persuasion:
Persuasion is the attempt to alter someone’s attitude using information. People can try to persuade you to believe their opinion or beliefs. They can be done in two ways using rational persuasion or emotion appeal. Rational persuasion is when they use logic and reason to change your point of view.They do this by supplying evidence and drawing on your background knowledge to reach an educated view. Thinking rationally is only used on average 5 percent of the time. It also burns for more calories than that of using instincts and emotion. An example of someone who will commonly use rational persuasion is a doctor. A doctor will use facts and logic to make you eat better and exercise more. Emotional appeal is using emotional “triggers” to evoke an emotion from someone. This is done on the subconscious level and is relatively instinctive. Instead of using logic and rational thinking we constantly rely on our subconscious, about 95 percent of the time. For this reason emotion is sometimes called a logic fallacy. An example of emotional appeal is the use starving children on media to create a sympathetic response. This is turn will encourage you to do something to help and the charity being advertised is providing you an opportunity to do so.
Leon Festinger hypothesized a theory that we change our beliefs or attitudes to keep mental consistency. When there are two conflicting beliefs we change our attitudes to justify our actions. Let us use smoking to demonstrate this theory. Somebody who thinks that smoking is bad for them and yet still engages in it is having conflicting beliefs. They are more likely to rationalize it. They can rationalize it in for different ways: modifying, trivializing, adding or denying the attitude or belief. An example of each is as follows. Modifying- their thinking would be something like “I don’t smoke very much so the impact will be minimal”. Trivializing- “The evidence is weak that smoking causes cancer”. Adding- “I eat healthy so smoking will not affect me”. Denying- “The idea that smoking causes cancer is a myth”. In order to change attitudes we either have educate people so they find it hard to rationalize their actions or force cognitive dissonance to occur. To put this in perspective let’s imagine there is a book at the top of the shelf you would like to have a look at, but you cannot reach no matter how hard you try. Eventually you decide that the book on top of the shelf is outdated and contains useless information. Because you were not able to get the book even though wanting it you changed your beliefs about the book.
Self Perception Theory:
The self perception theory is based on the idea that when people do not know how they feel they use their behaviour as a guide. People don’t always use self perception as majority of the time they know their thoughts and feeling about a topic. But on the occasion were they initial feelings were blurred and not known they will use infer from their actions what their point of view was. A example that has many studies to support it, is when somebody you don’t know whether you like or not asks you for help and give it to them, we examine our behavior in the situation and draw from it that we like the person. This is because we were unclear to our attitude towards that person so doing something positive for them meant we must have a positive view associated with them.
The Halo Effect:
This effect derives from the thought that our initial impressions makes us expect other similar qualities. We apply this effect to people. Somebody’s personality for instance for us can revolve around one aspect of them. Celebrities usually are prone to this kind of treatment, we find them “attractive” and can consider them smart and caring as well. Another notable example would be sports related, if we see a soccer player pass a ball accurately we tend to assume that are good at dribbling as well. A psychological study applied this effect with similar results. Two groups of students were put in two separate rooms to watch two different videos of the same teacher. One presented his speech in a uplifting and good spirited way while the other had a more negative approach. When asked about his psychical appearance and accent, which was kept consistent. Students watching the more positive video rated higher than those who watched the more unfavorable one.
Fundamental Attribution Error:
We all have privileged access to our own thoughts and feelings. But we do not have access to others. This causes us to estimate what they are thinking and feeling. This commonly is quite self orientated and judgmental. This means that we do not take into account their context. An excellent demonstration of this is Schizophrenia.
We as a society tend to view those suffering from Schizophrenia as detached, strange individuals who are living in a false world. Their condition can cause them to hear voices that in reality are not there. When we see or hear about them we constantly don’t take into account their circumstance. If we were able to know the situation they are in we would be more empathic towards them. Brendon Murphy explained how he engages his class in a practical activity to give his students some context. He puts his class in groups of three and gets two to engage in a casual conversation, like describing one's weekend. Then the third group member is told to whisper negative things into the ear of the person who is describing their weekend, all while the other person is asking questions. This makes it incredibly difficult to not only communicate but to think as well. This gives the students some context and thereby changes their attitude towards people with this condition.
Persuasion:
Persuasion is the attempt to alter someone’s attitude using information. People can try to persuade you to believe their opinion or beliefs. They can be done in two ways using rational persuasion or emotion appeal. Rational persuasion is when they use logic and reason to change your point of view.They do this by supplying evidence and drawing on your background knowledge to reach an educated view. Thinking rationally is only used on average 5 percent of the time. It also burns for more calories than that of using instincts and emotion. An example of someone who will commonly use rational persuasion is a doctor. A doctor will use facts and logic to make you eat better and exercise more. Emotional appeal is using emotional “triggers” to evoke an emotion from someone. This is done on the subconscious level and is relatively instinctive. Instead of using logic and rational thinking we constantly rely on our subconscious, about 95 percent of the time. For this reason emotion is sometimes called a logic fallacy. An example of emotional appeal is the use starving children on media to create a sympathetic response. This is turn will encourage you to do something to help and the charity being advertised is providing you an opportunity to do so.