Attitudes:

How Attitudes Form, Change and Shape Our Behavior

What's your opinion on the death penalty? Which political party does a better job of running the country?
Should prayer be allowed in schools? Should violence on television be regulated?
Chances are that you probably have fairly strong opinions on these and similar questions. You've developed
attitudes about such issues, and these attitudes influence your beliefs as well as your behavior. Attitudes are an
important topic of study within the field of social psychology. What exactly is an attitude? How does it develop?
Continue reading to learn more about how psychologists define this concept, how attitudes influence our
behavior and things we can do to change attitudes.
What Is an Attitude?
Psychologists define attitudes as a learned tendency to evaluate things in a certain way. This can include
evaluations of people, issues, objects or events. Such evaluations are often positive or negative, but they can
also be uncertain at times. For example, you might have mixed feelings about a particular person or issue.
Researchers also suggest that there are several different components that make up attitudes.
An Emotional Component: How the object, person, issue or event makes you feel.
A Cognitive Component: Your thoughts and beliefs about the subject.
A Behavioral Component: How the attitude influences your behavior.
Attitudes can also be explicit and implicit. Explicit attitudes are those that we are consciously aware of and that
clearly influence our behaviours and beliefs. Implicit attitudes are unconscious, but still have an effect on our
beliefs and behaviours.
How Do Attitudes Form?
Attitudes form directly as a result of experience. They may emerge due to direct personal experience, or they
may result from observation. Social roles and social norms can have a strong influence on attitudes. Social roles
relate to how people are expected to behave in a particular role or context. Social norms involve society's rules
for what behaviours are considered appropriate.
Classical conditioning:
Attitudes can be learned in a variety of ways. Consider how advertisers use classical conditioning to influence
your attitude toward a particular product. In a television commercial, you see young, beautiful people having fun
in on a tropical beach while enjoying a sport drink. This attractive and appealing imagery causes you to develop
a positive association with this particular beverage.
The first process used a basic principle of psychology is the evoking of an attitude by
the association of an unconditioned stimulus with a neutral or conditioned stimulus.
When a stimulus that is capable of producing a positive response ( The unconditioned
stimulus) regularly precedes a second stimulus ( The conditioned stimulus) the first becomes of a signal
for the second.
Advertisers and other persuasion agents have considerable expertise using this
principle to create positive attitudes toward their products.

Eg: If you are marketing a new beer and your target audience is young adult males you might safely assume that
attractive young women will produce a positive response.

In formation of prejudice: A Young child sees her mother frown and show other
signs of displeasure each time a member of a particular ethnic group is encountered. At first the child is
neutral toward members of this group and their visible characteristics ( Skin, colour, style of dress and
accent). The child has not yet learned to categorise these variations in terms of group membership.
However once these cues are paired repeatedly with the mothers negative emotional reactions, the
classical conditioning occurs. And the child comes to react negatively to members of a particular ethnic
group.

Operant conditioning: Operant conditioning can also be used to influence how attitudes develop. Imagine a
young man who has just started smoking. Whenever he lights up a cigarette, people complain, punish him and
ask him to leave their vicinity. This negative feedback from those around him eventually causes him to develop
an unfavourable opinion of smoking and he decides to give up the habit.
A basic form of learning in which responses that lead to positive outcomes or which
permit avoidance of negative outcomes are strengthened.
Principle of this theory:
Attitudes that are followed by positive outcomes tend to be strengthened and are
likely to be repeated, while attitudes that are followed by negative outcomes are weakened so their
likelihood of being expressed again is reduced
Sometimes the conditioning process is subtle, with the reward being psychological
acceptance. Parents reward children with smiles, approval, hugs for stating the right views. As a result
of this form of conditioning most children express political, religious, and social views that are highly
similar to those of their parents and other family members, until the teen years when peer influences
become especially strong.

APPLICATION:
Change in the behavior: Giving the feedback and giving positive reward will help in
altering the attitudes and increase in the motivation
It shapes the behavior of an individual by rewarding the desired behavior and
punishing the undesired behavior


Observational Learning: people also learn attitudes by observing the people around them. When someone you
admire greatly espouses a particular attitude, you are more likely to develop the same beliefs. For example,
children spend a great deal of time observing the attitudes of their parents and usually begin to demonstrate
similar outlooks.

A basic form of learning in which individuals acquire new forms of behavior as a
result of observing others.
Social Comparison: The process through which we compare ourselves to others to
determine whether our view of social reality is or is not, correct (to the extent that our views agree,
with those of other people, we tend to conclude that our ideas and attitudes are accurate: after all, if
others hold he same views, these views must be right.
Social Comparison: Groups of people with whom we identify and whose opinion
we value.
Reference group: Groups of people with whom we identify and whose opinions we
value.


When Do Attitudes Influence Behavior?
We tend to assume that people behave in accordance with their attitudes. However, social psychologists have
found that attitudes and actual behavior are not always perfectly aligned. After all, plenty of people support a
particular candidate or political party and yet fail to go out and vote.
Researchers have discovered that people are more likely to behave according to their attitudes under certain
conditions:
ROLE OF THE SOCIAL CONTEXT IN THE LINK BETWEEN ATTITUDE
AND BEHAVIOR:

We have probably experienced a gap between our own attitude and behavior on
many occasions- This is because the social context can directly affect the attitude behavior connection.
Attitudes predict our behavior better when we are alone than with a potentially
disapproving audience

SITUATIONAL CONSRAINTS THAT INFLUENCES THE ATTITUDE
EXPRESSION:

Pluralistic Ignorance: When we collectively misunderstand what attitudes others hold
and believe erroneously that others have different attitudes than us.

STRENGTH OF ATTITUDE:
The term strength captures the extremity of an attitude ( How strong the emotional reaction is) the degree of
certainty with which an attitude is held ( the sense that you know what your attitude is and the feeling that it is
the correct position to hold) and the extent to which the attitude is based on personal experience with the attitude
object.

ATTITUDE EXTREMITY: Lets consider first attitude extremity, which is the extent to which an individual
feels strongly on one direction or the other, about an issue. One of the key determinants of this is what social
psychologists term vested interests. This is the extent to which the attitude is relevant to the concerns of the
individual who holds it. This typically amounts to whether the object or issue might have important
consequences for this person. The results of many studies indicate that the greater such vested interest is, the
stronger the impact of the attitude on behavior.

ATTITUDE CERTANITY: Importance of clarity and correctness
Research has identified two important components of attitude certainty: attitude clarity which is being clear
about what ones attitude is and attitude correctness, which is feeling ones attitude, is the valid or the proper
one to hold.

ATTITUDE OF PERSONAL EXPERINECE:

Depending on how attitudes are formed initially the link between attitudes and behavior can direr. Considerable
evidence indicates that attitudes formed on the basis of direct experience with the object about which we hold a
particular attitude can exert stronger effects on behavior than ones formed indirectly. This is because attitudes
formed on the basis of direct experience are likely to be stronger and be more likely to come to mind when in
the presence of the attitude object. Attitudes based on personal relevance are more likely to be elaborated on in
terms of supporting arguments and this makes them resistant to change
Cognitive dissonance: In some cases, people may actually alter their attitudes in
order to better align them with their behavior. Cognitive dissonance is a phenomenon in which a person
experiences psychological distress due to conflicting thoughts or beliefs. In order to reduce this tension,
people may change their attitudes to reflect their other beliefs or actual behaviours.
Imagine the following situation: You've always placed a high value on financial security, but you start dating
someone who is very financially unstable. In order to reduce the tension caused by the conflicting beliefs and
behavior, you have two options. You can end the relationship and seek out a partner who is more financially
secure, or you can de-emphasize the importance of fiscal stability. In order to minimize the dissonance between
your conflicting attitude and behavior, you either have to change the attitude or change your actions.
When your attitudes are the result of personal experience.
When you are an expert in the subject.
When you expect a favourable outcome.
When the attitudes are repeatedly expressed.
When you stand to win or lose something due to the issue.