What are attitudes and their components? Discuss why attitudes are unreliable predictors of behaviour.

Due to the fact that every individual holds a number of attitudes within their own conceptual framework, the question then becomes on of how these attitudes are determined. There is never one simple answer to any question of this nature, and as such, it becomes an issue of 'theoretical controversy' (Reich and Adcock 1976). There are four main theoretical groups regarding the determination and foundation of attitudes, these being Cognitive, Emotional, Behavioural and Social. Cognitive theorists, also known as 'person-oriented' (Kahle 1984) theorists, believe that the experiences of a person, and their perceptions of the experience, cause an attitude to develop. There are two particular theories within this spectrum, that have had a far reaching effect on attitude research in general, these being balance and dissonance theories. The basic premise of these forms of theory is that individuals in general prefer balance and harmony, and as such all experiences produce either a positive or negative attitude, dependant on the individual's subjective experience of the particular event. Emotional theorists focus more on the 'physiological changes' (Bem 1970) that occur when an emotional response accompanies an attitude. There are a large number of theories based on this premise, with the most notable being classical conditioning. These theories generally concentrate on the premise that individuals, when faced with a situation, produce a physiological response. This physical response produces an attitude to a particular situation dependant on the nature, strength and amount of pleasure or displeasure of the reaction.

Behavioural theorists believe that rather than attitude causing behaviour, behaviour causes attitudes. Theorists of this school of thought fall within two main schools, those of cognitive dissonance and those of self perception. Cognitive dissonance theorizes that if an individual engages in behaviour that is not in agreeance with their beliefs or attitudes, this causes them enough discomfort to seek a return to harmony by convincing themselves that the behaviour actually meshes with their belief or attitude, thus changing the attitude in question. Self perception theorists believe that social influences ranging from superficial to profound, create the basic premises on which individuals base their attitudes. These social influences include exposure to media, social norms and group and interpersonal influences, such as family and friends. The theory is that exposure to these societal influences provide the individual with references on which they base their attitudes. None of the theories regarding attitude development are by any means mutually exclusive, as most theorists agree that it is a combination of things that cause attitudes to develop, and as we will see, any theory regarding attitudes causing or predicting behaviour faces numerous difficulties.

In attempting to research and measure attitude, one of the main issues facing the researcher is that attitudes are an internal and personal concept. They are not directly observable, and hence, not directly able to be measured. As stated by Elms (1976), the problem with measuring attitudes is that 'most people use only the vaguest criteria in categorizing personal concepts'. In order to produce empirical research, it is necessary to measure particular components of attitude. This allows to comparisons between individuals or groups. Unfortunately, in order to produce date, it is necessary to assume that questions designed by the researcher have the same meaning for all respondents. Given the subjective nature of attitudes themselves, this form of research can never be one hundred percent reliable or valid. Interpretive distortion will always occur. In order to minimize this distortion, a whole host of research methods have been designed to measure peoples attitudes, generally orientated around asking them what they think about particular people, issues or objects of attention in general. To a much greater degree than with the observation of behaviour and demographic social issues such as age or income, the very act of designing research to tap into peoples attitudes and to try to get to their internal world, creates problems. Along with the development of these new methodologies have come a whole host of problems of operationalism, reliability, validity and analysis, not least of which is the fact that, as verbal behaviour is also an action, we can ever prove that any answer is caused by an underlying attitude.

Research conducted by questionnaire consists of linguistic questions that are derived to measure theoretical constructs. What is measured from this construct will never be the actual attitude as experienced by the individual, hence causing a blurring between actual and communicated attitude. The beliefs, values and attitudes that a questionnaire is designed to measure, will vary according to the object of attention that the attitude is held towards, as an attitude does not exist on it's own, and is essentially a reaction to the external world. Because the subjective world is so complex, as soon as one sets out to measure a belief or value towards an isolated subject, distortion will inevitably occur, because it is highly unlikely that each respondent will understand the concept in exactly the same way. This has serious implications for the use of attitudes in explaining and predicting human behaviour. Such problems of conceptual confusion are demonstrated in Cohen, O'Connor and Blakemore's study, designed to examine the attitudes of nurses, entitled ' Nurses attitudes to palliative care in nursing homes in Western Australia'. This study is broken up into four parts, and it is the second and fourth parts which assist to illustrate the potential for conceptual confusion. These sections required participants to generate ten beliefs and emotions regarding palliative care, then rate the extent to which these beliefs and emotions influenced their attitude to palliative care. By leaving these sections free for the respondent to answer as they choose, the researcher is allowing a large amount of definitional flexibility. Such questions will be interpreted subjectively by the respondents, and as such, can never be objective, standard measures of an attitude, however attitudes are defined.

As evidenced above, the concept of attitude affecting behaviour is a tenuous one. The very nature of attitudes themselves makes it impossible to assume that any particular behaviour has it's foundations in a specific attitude. All attitudes are evaluative, in the sense that they are expressed only in the individual's terms, and as such, can be open to a wide interpretation by researchers. The simple fact that there are so many definitions of attitude, makes it difficult to measure, and hence unreliable as a predictor of behaviour. As attitudes are a private phenomenon, which are unobservable, we can only assume they exist. This questions the credibility of any behavioural prediction that is based on them, as attitudes themselves cannot be measured, only post behavioural actions can.

References

Attitude (15 December 1996) Retrieved 6 October 2004 from Wayne State University Web site : http://sun.science.wayne.edu/~wpoff/cor/grp/attitude.html

Augoustinos, M and Walker I (1995) Social Cognition : An Integrated Introduction London, United Kingdom: Sage Publications Inc

Bem, DJ (1970) Beliefs, Attitudes and Human Affairs California, USA: Wadsworth Publishing Company Inc

Colman, AM (Ed) (2001) Dictionary of Psychology New York, USA: Oxford University Press

Elms, AC (1976) Attitudes Milton Keynes, United Kingdom: Open University Press

Fitz-Gibbon, CT, Henerson, ME and Morris, LL (1987) How to Measure Attitudes California, USA: Sage Publications Inc

Kahle, LR (1984) Attitudes and Social Adaptation Oxford, United Kingdom: Pergamon Press Ltd.

Lemon, N (1973) Attitudes and Their Measurement London, United Kingdom: B.T. Batsford Ltd

Reich, B and Adcock, C (1976) Values, Attitudes and Behaviour Change London, United Kingdom: Methuen & Co Ltd

Shaw, ME and Wright, JM (1967) Scales for the Measurement of Attitudes New York, USA:McGraw-Hill Inc