Formation and function of attitudes

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Nicola Giles 0502120

ED612 Beliefs, Attitudes and Behaviours.

Critically discuss the formation and function of attitudes.

For several decades now there has been literature on attitudes, there is a continuous undercurrent of controversy over both the theoretical and operational term “attitude”. According to Staington Rogers (1995) there are many fundamental questions that psychologists have tried to answer over the last 70 years. This assignment is going to look at two of the major questions, where do attitudes come from? And how they are moulded and formed?  

The assignment will look at beliefs about attitudes and definitions from theorists that have been vital in discussing attitudes over the past 70 years. Looking closely and critically at how we express our attitudes and all the different component models that make up different theories to attitudes. Questioning attitude formation and the different approaches to acquiring our attitudes, where they come from and their functions in us as human beings. The concept of attitudes can be termed in a number of ways, so looking at the links of terminology may help in understanding of where and why we have attitudes.

Daryl Bem points out in his book ‘Beliefs, attitudes and Human affairs’ that how we believe and what we believe can be difficult to extract from our thinking.  Beliefs are something we believe to be true or right, Bem suggests there are ‘primitive beliefs’ which are gained by our own experience e.g. an orange is a sphere shape, we feel the oranges

shape, its a fact, therefore oranges are sphere shape so this is what we believe. There are also ‘Zero order beliefs’, these are beliefs taken for granted maybe because a parent has

told you and parents always tell the truth (so you believe) e.g. dogs are nasty, daddy said so, therefore dogs must be nasty. Then there are ‘first order beliefs’ where there could be

an alternative belief e.g. dogs can be nice, not all dogs are nasty (which is a fact). Lastly there are ‘higher order beliefs’ where there may be lots of alternative answers e.g. believing smoking causes cancer, or that if you smoke you will die young, yes there is evidence to support this but you can also get cancer other ways and also there are some very old people still alive who have smoked all their lives (Bem, 1970).

Not much more than a hundred years ago the term ‘attitude’ was used mostly with reference to a person’s stance or posture. To describe someone as adopting ‘a defiant attitude’ or ‘a threatening attitude was to refer to his physical being. Although this can still be the case today attitude increasingly connotes the psychological rather than the physical orientation of a person (Jahoda & Warren, 1970, p7).

All people express attitudes to certain objects or certain situations in life everyday (give or have an opinion) these can be ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ e.g. I love chocolate (positive) or

I hate brussel sprouts (negative).  Our beliefs about these objects or situations usually have a reason e.g. Chocolate tastes nice and it gives me a boost of energy or brussel sprouts taste horrible and they give me an upset stomach. These beliefs or attitudes may

then lead to actions e.g. eat chocolate regularly and never eat brussel sprouts (Evans, 2008, pp1).

 

Social psychologists have made substantial progress in the understanding of attitudes, and the relationships between other social psychological characteristics at least since the 1930’s when G. W. Allport, defined an attitude as “a mental and neural state of readiness, organised through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individuals response to all objects and situations with which it is related” (Allport, 1935, p810). Another influential definition was given by D. Krech and R.S. Crutchfield “An attitude can be defined as an enduring organisation of motivational, emotional, perceptual and cognitive process with respect to some aspect of the individual’s world (Krech & Crutchfield, 1948, p152).

According to Newcomb (1964) the essential component of the concept of attitude are two, firstly the notion of an attitude has been found useful because it produces a conceptual bridge between persisting psychological states of the individual,  and persisting objects of orientation (including whole classes of objects) in that individuals world. Secondly the important conceptual tool must be defined as to come to grips with the facts of inta individual psychological organisation, and also with the facts of persistence in spite of change. Newcomb then defined an attitude as ‘the individuals attitude is the organisation of psychological processes, as inferred from his behaviour with respect to some aspect of the world which he distinguishes from other aspects. It

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represents the residue of his previous experience with which he approaches any situation’ (Newcomb, 1964).

Attitudes are generally understood to be made up of a number of components; there is in the case of Thurstone, the one component attitude model, the affect for or against a psychological object. This is a very simple theory and is questioned over and over in its simplicity (Hogg and Vaughn, 2002, p 146).

Arguably there is the two component model favoured in Allport’s theory, this is an idea that there is something inside everyone that influences our choices about ...

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