How your attitude is formed.
QUE: Discuss how attitudes are formed giving examples.
People`s behavior is a result of their attitudes towards certain phenomena. These attitudes shapes how one may the world or the people around them. It is these attitudes that shapes people`s likes and dislikes and their perception of the world. Consequently the purpose of this essay is to explain in great detail how attitudes are formed. An attitude is a predisposition to respond in particular ways toward specific things. There are both negative and positive attitudes. It has three main elements which are, feelings about that thing (Emotional component), a tendency to act toward that thing in certain ways (Cognitive component) and the combination of thought and action (Behavioral component) (Kasschau,2003). In forming attitudes conditioning (classical and operant),observational learning from parents and peers and culture all play a pivotal role in forming people`s attitudes. The above mentioned points will be explained as the essay unfolds.
For an attitude to be full made the three components have to be incorporated the first component is the emotional component refers to how people feel about an object, person, group, event or some piece of work. Whether they feel happy or sad. In fact, there are hundreds of other emotions that play role in formation of attitudes (Kasschau,2003). These emotions help in creating dispositions towards certain people or objects.
In addition, the cognitive component is people`s way of dealing with information that includes perception, thinking, and memory. Attitudes are also based on how people perceive certain information and how much they consider it to be meaningful (Kasschau,2003). They usually think about an object or person among others and these thinking patterns play a key role in the formation of attitudes about the target objects.
More so, the third component is behavioral and this the combination of thinking and feeling in a certain way about some objects leads people to act toward that object in a certain way. If people consider a task enjoyable (emotional component) and think that it is a useful activity (cognitive component), e.g. solving math problem or playing a game of chess, it is more probable that people will do that task in a positive way (behavioral component). If we consider math or chess to be boring (emotional component) and relatively less useful activities (cognitive component), then we will most likely avoid them (behavioral component) (Kasschau,2003). Thus through the three components it is evident how an attitude is formed.
Attitudes can be formed through classic conditioning. Classical conditioning is when people experience a stimulus, respond to it, and then stop responding after repeated exposure. People would have learned something significant, but have not learned to forge connections between two stimuli. Yet a great deal of learning depends on associating one thing with another. For example, a fruit and its taste. This can be seen in little Albert`s experiment, in 1920 J B Watson and Rosalie Rayner used conditioning on a human called Albert. Thus and Rayner attempted to condition on Albert who was 11 months old to fear laboratory rats. At first Albert happily played with the rats because he was not yet conditioned. Watson hammered a steel bar to produce a loud bang and Albert showed response. Eventually Albert showed fear each time he saw the rat even though the loud sound was not repeated. It provided evidence that emotional responses can be classically conditioned in humans (Kasschau,2003). In this case the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is the loud noise, the unconditioned response (UCR) is fear, the conditioned stimulus (CS) is the rat, and the conditioned response (CR) is fear.
In addition, Classical conditioning is also used by advertising agencies. In classical-conditioning terms, the music or celebrity is an unconditioned stimulus for internal responses associated with pleasure, and the advertiser hopes that the product in the advert will become a conditioned stimulus, evoking similar responses in people(Wade&Tavris,2008). One can note that Albert grew with the fear of rats and people buy things because a celebrity they like advertised the product thereby giving evidence that conditioning plays a part in forming attitudes.
Another conditioning type is operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is learning controlled by the consequences of the organism’s behavior. (Staddon & Cerutti,2003, citied in Lilienfeld, Lynn, Namy& Woolf, 2011). Operant conditioning is also known as instrumental conditioning, because the organism’s response serves an instrumental function. That is, the organism “gets something” out of the response, like food, or avoiding something unpleasant. In operant conditioning negative and positive reinforcement form people`s attitudes. Reinforcement is the process by which a stimulus increases the probability that a preceding behavior will be repeated. When an attitude is followed by favorable consequences, the attitude tends to occur more frequently. For example, an attitude that enables a hungry person to get food will be repeated(Carlson,2005). On the other hand, when a behavior is followed by unfavorable consequences then the attitude will not be repeated for example, when a child steals and then the mother punishes him/her it means that this attitude will not be repeated because of the negative reinforcement that followed. Therefore, one can say that operant conditioning plays a part in forming attitudes by rewarding positively and negatively to certain attitudes.
Furthermore, attitudes are also a result of watching and imitating others thus observational learning (Kasschau,2003). This process usually happens when people interact and it is possible to see someone adopting parents` attitudes towards a certain political party. A person may like a B. M. W because all his friends favours that car brand. (Newcomb et al, 1967) states that peers also play a pivotal role in forming attitudes, when one belongs to a peer group that smokes marijuana that person will most probably have a welcoming attitude towards the drug because he/she doesn’t want to be left out. Observation is not only limited to family and peers but it also includes the culture that an individual comes from. “Culture influences everything from our taste in food to our attitudes toward human relationships and our political opinions”. (Kasschau,2003:579). For example, if a person comes from a society that racially discriminates black people through observation and imitation that individual will have the same hostile attitude towards the blacks. Therefore, one can safely say that attitudes are formed through observational learning.
Moreover, people can also inherit attitudes. Research has found that some of the attitudes are inherited, at least in part, via genetic transmission from our parents (Olson, Vernon, Harris, & Jang, 2001). In most some cases it is evident how attitudes are inherited especially in the African context. People tend to have attitudes that their grandparents had for example one can possess a negative attitude towards dirty as result people will conclude that he/she is like his/her uncle who once worked in a hotel and did not like dirty as well. In support of the above mentioned point (Bourgeois, 2002) says that these attitudes form earlier and are stronger and more resistant to change than others, although it is not yet known why some attitudes are more genetically determined than are others. In addition, people`s genetics can form their attitudes for example a person who was born a genius in maths and chemistry will grow up to like what they can do best whereas one who fails the two subjects will not like the subjects. Thus through genetic make ups one can say that attitudes are formed.
REFRENCES
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