Andre
The meaning and concept of attitude is perhaps the most indispensable and profound concept in social psychology today. Psychologists have devoted time and resources to understand the uniqueness of attitude as a natural response to the interaction we have with others around us and the environment in which we live.
While there is no uniformity among social psychologists in giving a generally accepted definition of attitude, we do understand that attitude is the set of emotions or beliefs you have about a particular person, object, organization, issue, or event. So, these beliefs and emotions, that is our attitudes, are formed over time as we are exposed to stimuli and evaluate them.
Attitude is formed as we directly experience these stimuli or due to the persuasion of others or the media. In other words, attitude is a learned social mechanism for interaction. It is not a fleeting snap judgment or gut reaction, but an aggregation of opinions learned over the years.
This understanding, therefore, makes attitude a subject of serious interest in social psychology. What it means is that we can learn negative attitudes just as easily as we can the positive ones. And this goes on to define how we approach relationships, businesses, and work in general.
As we experience the world – the good and the bad – our thoughts and emotions eventually culminate into attitudes or inform the opinions we form about things. These attitudes then affect our behavior. For instance, if you meet someone for the first time, and then you start interacting.
In the process, you were very kind to the person, perhaps you even helped the individual get out of a difficult situation. The person naturally receives and responds to the stimuli of compassion, love, and care, thereby forming a positive opinion about you. Without a doubt, that opinion influences how they react to you.
Upon meeting again another time, the person expects to meet a kind individual and will naturally want to treat you with respect and equal kindness. In a nutshell, his or her attitude towards you was formed based on your initial interaction.
Hence, attitudes are not static or cast in stone once formed. They can change, as in the case of broken trust or developing likeness for a brand you never liked before. In marketing, the concept of attitude formation can be used to influence consumers’ reaction to a particular product or brand.
Foundations of Attitude Formation
In general, studies show that attitudes have three foundations:
● Affect/Emotional foundation
● Behavioral foundation and
● Cognitive foundation.
In addition, evidence also suggests that attitudes may develop out of psychological needs and social interactions.
Affect or Emotional foundation
This is just typical of situations when attitudes are formed out of emotions. In this case, our feelings and emotions inform our attitude formation rather than logic and reasoning. You may hear someone say something like ‘i know in my heart’ or ‘I just feel that he’s a nice person’.
Here, your attitude towards a thing or person is not based on what they actually are but based on your emotions. This can happen through sensory reactions, values, classical conditioning, semantic generalization, evaluative conditioning, or simple exposure.
Behavioral foundation
Attitudes are sometimes formed from our actions. This often happens if we do something before forming an attitude. For example, if you attend a classical music concert, when you’re acting mindlessly i.e without thinking about what you’re doing e.g joining an industrial action or when we are unsure of our actions, like smoking even when we know it may be detrimental to our health.
In the end, you may develop a likeness for classical music because you attended the concert, end up supporting condemning a political cause, and develop a habit of smoking.
In these examples, we can see that our attitudes can basically be influenced by the actions we take before forming those attitudes.
Cognitive foundation
The cognitive foundation for attitude formation rests majorly on the ability of the individual to make informed opinions about something after being exposed to knowledge or information about that thing. In simpler words, attitude is formed based on thinking and evaluating our direct experience with elements in the world.
Thinking, in this case, involves any kind of active information processing, such as reflecting, deliberating, analyzing, imagining, and reflecting. It could also be through simpler activities such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
If for instance, you previously believed that cannabis is outrightly bad for your health. Your attitude towards cannabis will obviously be repulsive. But if you read a publication by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that cannabis does, in fact, contain beneficial extracts that have positive medical or medicinal value, your attitude towards cannabis will likely change if you trust the FDA. By cognition, you firm a new attitude towards cannabis.
Also, if you have always thought that eating raw fish is poisonous, you’re likely going to have a reorientation and change of attitude if you saw people who ate raw fish and lived very fine.
Hence, when it comes to attitude formation by cognition, you are mostly making logical inferences from the information you are exposed to. The opinions or knowledge gained thereafter influence your attitude towards that thing, situation, or individual.
Nature of Attitude Formation
Here are the primary reasons that influence the nature of attitudes that we form.
Utilitarian: Naturally, you can always form positive attitudes towards things that seem beneficial. Also, you are likely to form negative attitudes towards things that you find scary.
Knowledge: The knowledge you gather about something informs what your attitude will be toward that thing. Attitude, in general, helps us to make sense of the world around us.
Expresses Our Values: The attitudes we form are naturally expressive of our values in life. In other cases, our attitudes reflect those of our peer group or contemporaries.
Ego-Defensive: Our attitude is often formed as a mechanism of defense against anything that threatens our ego, sense of self-worth, or social image. Rich people will obviously be found at expensive restaurants and fancy eateries as opposed to going to common places which are normally associated with the majority. This is not because the experience at those other restaurants is bad, but because eating there threatens the strength of their social status.
Conclusion
Our attitudes reflect how we approach life and they are formed as we interact with the world. Finally, attitudes can either be positive or negative depending on the circumstances which led to its formation.
