ATTITUDES ATTITUDES Beliefs and feelings about objects people

ATTITUDES

ATTITUDES • Beliefs and feelings about objects, people and events. • Can determine how people will react to different stimuli.

HOW ATTITUDES DEVELOP • 4 different factors • Conditioning • Observational Learning • Cognitive Evaluation • Cognitive Anchors

CONDITIONING • Childhood • Usually follow attitudes about things as shown by parents, teachers, siblings and friends. • EX: Parents who believe it is important to share may praise a child when he/she shares a toy with a friend. Thus conditioning the child to hold a positive attitude about sharing.

OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING • We acquire attitudes from other people • Watching how people we admire talk, dress and act • Teens often use this style to develop their attitudes.

COGNITIVE EVALUATION • Evaluating evidence to form beliefs. • Usually use this method when people think they have to justify their beliefs. • EX: Political alignment/political issues

COGNITIVE ANCHORS • Earliest attitudes • Persistent beliefs that shape the way a person sees and interprets the world.

ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR • The definition of attitudes suggests that peoples attitudes are always consistent with their behavior. • This is clearly not true! • EX: most people know smoking is harmful to their heath; however, they still smoke. • Attitudes are more likely to guide behavior when people are aware of the attitude. • Verbalizing an attitude makes it come to mind quickly and are more likely to influence behaviors.

ATTITUDES FOLLOWING BEHAVIOR • Most of the time attitudes come first! • Attitudes are likely to follow behavior when people are encouraged to follow a behavior that goes against their attitude. • People often suffer cognitive dissonance or an uncomfortable feeling of tension when experiencing this contradiction. • In order to reduce this effect people may try to justify their behavior and gradually change their attitude. • EX: Having to argue the opposite side of an argument to which you don’t agree.