ATTITUDES

Week 4

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Attitudes
 WHAT IS AN ATTITUDE?

• Attitudes are evaluative statements—either favorable or unfavorable

—about objects, people, or events. They reflect how we feel about
something.
• "..a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a
particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor" (Eagly &
Chaiken, 1993)
• An attitude is "a relatively enduring organization of beliefs, feelings,
and behavioral tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups,
events or symbols" (Hogg & Vaughan, 2005)

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 WHAT ARE THE MAIN COMPONENTS OF ATTITUDES?

• The statement “My pay is low” is the cognitive component of an

attitude— a description of or belief in the way things are. It sets the
stage for the more critical part of an attitude—its affective
component.
• Affect is the emotional or feeling segment of an attitude and is
reflected in the statement “I am angry over how little I’m paid.”
Finally, affect can lead to behavioral outcomes.
• The behavioral component of an attitude describes an intention to
behave in a certain way toward someone or something—to continue
the example, “I’m going to look for another job that pays better.”
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 The Function of Attitudes

Daniel Katz (1960) outlines four functional areas:

1. Knowledge. Attitudes provide meaning (knowledge) for
life.  The knowledge function refers to our need for a world
which is consistent and relatively stable.  This allows us to
predict what is likely to happen, and so gives us a sense of
control.
• Attitudes can help us organize and structure our
experience. 
• Knowing a person’s attitude helps us predict their behavior.
For example, knowing that a person is religious we can
predict he will go to Mosque.

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2. Self expressive. The attitudes we express

(1) Helps in communicating who we are and

(2) may make us feel good because we have asserted our identity. 

Self-expression of attitudes can be non-verbal too: cap, or T-shirt

slogan.  Therefore, our attitudes are part of our identity, and help us
to be aware through expression of our feelings, beliefs and values.

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3. Adaptive.  If a person holds and/or expresses socially acceptable
attitudes, other people will reward them with approval and social
acceptance. 

• the adaptive functions helps us fit in with a social group.

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4.The ego-defensive function refers to holding attitudes that protect
our self-esteem or that justify actions that make us feel guilty. 

Individuals whose pride has suffered following a defeat in sport

might similarly adopt a defensive attitude: “I’m not bothered, I’m
sick of football anyway…”.

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 In the broader sense there is
• a positive attitude
• a negative attitude
• a neutral attitude.

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 List of Attitudes

• Acceptance • Inferiority
• Confidence • arrogant
• Seriousness • Happiness
• Optimism • Frankness
• Pessimism • Respectful
• Interest • Authority
• Independent • Sincerity
• Jealous • determined
• Courteous • Honest
• Cooperative • Sincere
• Considerate • caring
• Gratitude • Cheerful

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 Personality Vs Attitudes

• Personality traits are more rigid and permanent whereas

attitudes may change with different situations and
experiences in life.

• Personality traits are what humans are gifted with whereas

attitudes are learned and acquired.

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 How Do Attitudes Form?

• Classical conditioning
• Operant conditioning
• Observing the people around yourself

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• Stimulus - causes an action or response.
• Response - a reaction to something

• Unconditioned 
• An unconditioned response is behavior that occurs naturally
due to a given stimulus.
• Conditioned 
• A stimulus prompts a conditioned response only when
someone has come to associate that stimulus with another. 

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 Classical Conditioning
• A learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired:
a response which is at first obtained by the second stimulus is
eventually obtained by the first stimulus alone.
• John Watson proposed that everything from speech to emotional
responses were simply patterns of stimulus and response. Watson
denied completely the existence of the mind or consciousness. He
believed that all individual differences in behavior were due to
different experiences of learning.

• Stage 1: Before conditioning

• Stage 2: During conditioning
• Stage 3: After conditioning
• Little Albert experiment Week 4
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 Operant conditioning

Learning in which a voluntary response is strengthened or weakened,

depending on its favorable or unfavorable consequences

• B.F. Skinner (1938) coined the term operant conditioning; it means

roughly changing of behavior by the use of reinforcement which is
given after the desired response. Skinner identified three types of
responses or operant that can follow behavior.

• Behavior which is reinforced tends to be repeated (i.e. strengthened);

behavior which is not reinforced tends to die out-or be extinguished
(i.e. weakened).

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• Neutral operants: responses from the environment that neither
increase nor decrease the probability of a behavior being repeated.

• Reinforcers: Responses from the environment that increase the

probability of a behavior being repeated. Reinforcers can be either
positive or negative.
• Positive reinforcement
• Negative reinforcement

• Punishers: Responses from the environment that decrease the

likelihood of a behavior being repeated. Punishment weakens
behavior.

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Positive refers to adding a factor while negative refers to removing a factor. But positive and
negative do not represent the quality of the factor being added or removed. That factor can
be pleasant or unpleasant.

Positive reinforcement
• A mother gives her son praise (reinforcing stimulus) for doing homework (behavior).
• The little boy receives $5.00 (reinforcing stimulus) for every A he earns on his report card
(behavior).
• A father gives his daughter candy (reinforcing stimulus) for cleaning up toys (behavior).

Negative reinforcement
• Bob does the dishes (behavior) in order to stop his mother’s nagging (aversive stimulus).
• Joe presses a button (behavior) that turns off a loud alarm (aversive stimulus)

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Positive punishment and negative punishment

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 Cognitive Dissonance Theory
• Leon Festinger’s (1957) cognitive dissonance theory suggests
that we have an inner drive to hold all our attitudes and
beliefs in harmony and avoid disharmony (or dissonance).
• As mentioned earlier, people can also change their attitudes
when they have conflicting beliefs about a topic. In order to
reduce the tension created by these incompatible beliefs,
people often shift their attitudes.
• According to Festinger, we hold many cognitions about the
world and ourselves; when they clash, a discrepancy is evoked,
resulting in a state of tension known as cognitive dissonance.
As the experience of dissonance is unpleasant, we are
motivated to reduce or eliminate it, and achieve consonance
(i.e. agreement).s

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