THE THEORY OF ATTITUDE FORMATION AND CHANGE AND ITS APPLICATION TO SOCIAL GROUP WORK

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job., Introduction

F. Jones

W h y d o p e o p l e t hi n k t h e w a y t h e y d o ? H o w d o t h e y c h a n g e t h e i r minds? These and similar questions have long been asked by epistemologists and more recently by social psychologists. The latter, since the second world war, have accumulated data from experiments and surveys which are, to a greater d e g r e e t h a n heret ofore, m easurabl e; and the im pli cati ons of thi s research on attitude change extend to social group work. The social group worker asks the question. Why do group members think a s they do? And where unacceptable behavior springs from the delinquent's attitude towards society, the group worker may ask, How can the delinquent be induced to change his mind? The fundamental questionWhy do pe ople hol d pa rt icula r at ti tude s? may be answered in a number of ways. The answer proposed in this article is an exposition of the theory of Daniel Katz which involves a functional approach to attitudes) The second part of th e arti cle c once rns the allied but distinct topic of the processes of opinion change. Here the thinking of H.C. Kelrnan on compliance, identification and internalization is explored. 1 While Kelman and Katz are both social psychologists and their conclusions cannot be incorporated into the theory and practice of social group work without further investigation and experiment, nonetheless what they say is clearly relevant to group work, even if there remain many unanswered questions. For this reason,
I shall refer to those aspects of their theories which have special relevance to groups and work with groups, though I shall not attempt to spell out in detail all the implications for social group work,
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What are attitudes and opinions?

G r e e n states that a n y a t t i t u d e i s a hypot he t i c a l or l a t e nt variable ra t he r th an a n im me dia te ly o bs er va bl e va ria bl e. 3 it i s, in other words, a n abst rac ti on. According to Green, the concept of attitude does not refer to any one specific act or response of an individual, but it. is an abstraction from a large number
1 D. Katz, "The Functio:n) Approach to :he Study of Attitudes," Public Opinion. Quarterly, 24 (Summer 1960), pp- 163-204. 2 H.C. Kelman, "The Role of the Group in the Induction cif Therapeutic Charge," Inter-national Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 13 (October 1963), pp. 399431. Also. Kelrnan, "Proce sse s of O pinion Chan ge, in W.G . Ben nis, Be nne and R. Chin (ed s.) . The Planning of Change (Nev York= Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), pp. 509-516. 3 Bert F. Green, - Attitude Measurement," Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. Gardner Lindzey, Vol. 1 (Reading: A.ddison-Westey, 1953), p. 335.