How Are Attitudes Developed and Fostered?

Attitudes can also arise due to observational learning, wherein people internalize the attitudes of others; passing them on from one individual to the other. Attitudes can be held implicitly and do not innately imply behavior. Often individual’s will have consideration of a ground or opinion but not act on it when the chance rises. Many factors influence whether or not attitudes will come to impact behavior.

Aggressions can be broadly divided in to two types: Reactive/ Impulsive aggression (RA) refers to aggression that is impulsive, emotionally charged, affective and uncontrolled. It has its theoretical roots in the frustration-tolerance theory. It is most often observed in response to a perceived threatening stimulus and is frequently accompanied by negative affect, facial expressions described as hostile, temper tantrums,

According to Berkowitz (1993) aggression refers to goal-directed motor behavior that has a deliberate intent to harm or

Social psychologists employ a variety of different measures in attempt to measure attitudes, which cannot be directly measured due to their hypothetical and unobservable nature. However, they are often inferable from behaviour. For example, a negative attitude towards smoking might be reflected in moving away from someone who lights up in your vicinity (behaviour). Attitudes measures can be explicit (i.e. participant is asked directly about their attitude towards an object – e.g. opinion poll), or implicit (i.e. measure wherein participants sub-conscious attitudes are assessed without their knowledge – e.g…) (Haddock and Maio, 2008). Questionnaires are the most common measure of attitudes, utilising one of four types of attitude measurement scales.

Aggression is defined as behaviour directed towards another living being with the intent of harming or injuring them in someway, and can be defined as either

Some may perceive aggression as unhealthy and anti social but managed in a positive way can be empowering and enabling to individuals, groups and society as a whole.

“Attitudes are positive or negative evaluations, feeling, and tendencies that individuals harbor toward objects or concepts” (Wild). As the book mentions, attitudes are similar to values, these are formed according to a culture background and varies from country to country.

But, what is aggression in the first place? Aggression is a behavior that causes or intends to cause harm to others. Accidental harm does not count as

This essay will examine the strength of the link between attitudes and behaviour and show that attitudes do not always predict behaviour as there are a number of variables that need to be put in place before the evaluation of a person behaving according to their attitudes can be assessed. These variables will be discussed in some detail. The three component model will be discussed and also attitude formation will be touched upon, before the link between behaviour and attitude can be examined a general understanding of how and why attitudes are formed needs to be addressed.

Attitudes carry a huge weight in social psychology. In the past, the theory of attitudes was considered the most dominant study in social psychology (Allport, 1935). Throughout time, the term attitude has accumulated many definitions, a renowned definition being “a relatively enduring organisation of beliefs, feelings and behavioural tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events or symbols” (Hogg and Vaughan, 2014, p. 150). The focus on attitudes is so significant because the question of whether attitudes can predict behaviour has arisen time after time. If attitudes do predict behaviour, we can discover why people act in certain ways and, therefore, attempt to change negative behaviours. Over time, work has been carried out to determine to what extent attitudes predict behaviour.

Before trying to answer the question if attitudes predict behaviour, it is necessary to understand what does attitudes mean. This essay will first explain the definition of attitudes and behaviour. Thereafter will explain why an attitudes does not predict behaviour and then argue that occasionally an attitude can

Social psychologists know that people’s attitudes define whether they have a successful, bright, happy future. Most people can agree that this is the case, but people must ask themselves why and what really makes up a person’s attitude. In past years, attitude was recognized as one of the most important psychological experiences of human beings. Over time, the significance of attitudes has increased specifically in understanding how people come to be who they are. This paper will discuss the structure of attitudes through the ABC Model which explains three different components (affect, behavior and cognition) and how these components play a role in people’s lives.

The psychological concepts involved in this contemporary issue are implicit attitudes, obedience to authority, and dissonance reduction. Implicit attitudes are attitudes that are involuntary, unconscious, uncontrollable, and typically unknown to us. They differ from their counterpart explicit attitudes which are ones we

Attitudes refer to one’s evaluations of the social world: others, objects and ideas. These overall evaluations can be positive, negative, or neutral, vary in their extremity and be based on a variety of information (Tesser and Martin, 1996; Petty, Wheeler, and Tormala, 2003 ). A popular conceptualization of the attitude construct, the tripartite theory, holds that there are three primary types of information in which attitudes can be based (Breckler, 1984; Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960; Zanna & Rempel, 1988) : cognitions or beliefs, affect or feelings and actions or behaviour. As defined by Richard Perloff, persuasion is the process which moulds and shapes attitudes. It is through persuasion that changes in attitudes can occur. The two methods

Attitudes are the way someone communicates, behaves and interprets the message from others. This is when they will apply different generalities to specifically comprehend various groups (such as: stereotyping). These factors help them to analyze and interpret the meanings of numerous cultures / subcultures. In most cases, this can often lead to clashes with many people not fitting into these categories and using them to generalize about specific segments of society. (Deresky, 2011) (Sepehri, 2011)