Attitudes

AQA Physical Education

Attitudes LOs
Define Attitudes, beliefs and values
Explain the difference between
attitudes, beliefs and values
Describe the Components of an attitude
Explain how attitudes are formed
Explain how to change attitudes
through persuasive communication and
cognitive dissonance

Activity 1
1 group of 3, 1 group of 4 2
observers
4 Tasks to complete

Write a Poem about Sport

10 minutes

Devise an arm wrestling

competition and decide a
winner
10 minutes

Plan a coaching session

teaching youngsters to
throw and catch
10 minutes

Draw a sports stadium

10 minutes

Discuss the task

What attitudes did people have?

Task
In pairs come up with
potential definitions for
belief, values and attitudes
Decide what is the
difference between the
different terms.

Definitions
Attitudes ideas charged with
emotion (positive or negative)
which predisposes a class of actions
to a particular social situation
Belief represent the knowledge
or information we have about the
world
Values are deep seated feelings
or thoughts (emotions) which form
the basis for evaluating if
something is worthwhile. (Culturally
based)

The link.
Attitudes are therefore
Blend of beliefs and values

Learned via
Social environment (experience)

Provide us with a means to express

our values
Attitude is a key which determines
behaviour
Can have attitudes to objects,
people, events or ideas
Not all embracing (can hate rugby
but not all sport)

Secord and Backman

(1964)
Developed 3 components of
attitude (Triadic model)
Cognitve (what we know and
believe about the attitude object.)
Affective (how we feel about the
attitude object.)
Behavioural (how we actually
behave towards, respond to or
intend to respond to the attitude
object.)

Applied to sport
An athlete can show a positive
attitude to sport by believing in
the benefits of exercise
(Cognitive)
By showing enthusiasm and
enjoyment in games (affective)
By turning up to practice and
taking a regular part in sport
(behavioural)

But
Relationship between cognitive
and behavioural parts are
unreliable
i.e. what you believe is not
necessarily what you do
E.g. you might believe that
weight training will make you
stronger but you might not do it!!
Due to Affective component
(male might want to look
muscular but female may not!)
So quite a simplistic approach

Attitude Formation
Learning (past experiences,
successes and failures)
Familiarity
Classical conditioning
Operant Conditioning
Socialisation (Significant
others)
Peer groups and social groups

Positive or negative
attitudes
Positive attitudes formed:
Belief in exercise
Enjoyable experiences in
sport
Being good at a sport
Excited by challenge of sport
Using sport as stress release

Positive or negative
attitudes
Negative attitudes formed:
Not believing in benefits of
exercise
A bad past experience
Injury
A lack of ability
Fear of taking part
Suffering stress when taking part
Influence of others

Positive attitude towards

sport
We must ensure:
See the relevance of specific
fitness and practice
programmes
Gain a direct experience of the
fitness/practice programmes
to specific activities
And that any negative
attitudes are dealt with ASAP!

Changing attitudes
Persuasive Communication
Four basic factors;

Who is trying to persuade?

What is the message?
Whom is the message trying to reach?
What is the situation context?

Cognitive Dissonance
Challenging one or more components
of an attitude causes unease in the
performer which may motivate them
to change attitude

Example
E.g. You might reject the need for
aggression in your sport (Belief 1)
But in order to win against a particular
team you must physically intimidate
your oponent (Belief 2).
Two beliefs conflict
This dissonance is resolved by telling
yourself that its alright to playhard
against this particular opponent because
they play rough too
Modification to (Belief 1)

What else..
Coaches may also use

Point out benefits to health

Making activities fun and enjoyable
Allowing easy initial success
Using roll models
Attributing the reasons for success
internally

Changing Attitudes Task

Using your notes..
Look carefully at the methods used by coaches to
change attitudes.
You are trying to establish a rugby league team for
girls and at the first session quite a few girls arrive
but are not sure they want to continue. They think
rugby league is mainly for men and is too physical for
them.
How can you persuade the girls to continue?
How can you change their attitude?

Attitudes and Predjudice

A prejudice = extreme attitude
E.g. Gender, race, age, officials, team
Formed: social learning, fitting in with
social norms, media pressure, past
bad experience, fear
Overcome PC, CD, re-educate (roll
models/media), punishment,
reinforce fair behaviour

Measurement..
Dogmatism task
Two scales
Thurstones scale
Likerts scale

Observation