The Potential Influences Of Attitude And Attitude Change

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.

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.

Naturally, a large part of why people are anxious about cannabis use in the population is based on commonly held beliefs and phrases. This should remain separate when thinking logically about the issue at hand, it is unfortunately rarely the case. A more cynical view as to why cannabis has remained illegal over so many years is that it is simply not politically safe to do so. For a government to take a controversial stance, such as decriminalisation of cannabis, they risk losing the backing of a large proportion of the population. If there is truth to this, then it is a failure of the government as it may have ultimately affected the debate in more ways than one. It could be that the current evidence base has been influenced by the justification of current policy. For example, there may have been an underlying emphasis on finding results that suggest there is a link between psychosis and cannabis use. The deeper impact of this may be a cycle of animosity towards the drug leading to an ingrained cultural view of cannabis. This, in turn, may have been an additional barrier to legalisation thus far. Thus, it is important for emotion to be kept separate from the argument. If we were to attempt to alter current policy, social barriers like these may pose a challenge for advocates of decriminalisation. It is known that cannabis, like many drugs, has addictive properties and can lead to cannabis use disorder. In an epidemiological survey in 2012 to 2013, it was

“The earlier marijuana use begins and the heavier it becomes, the stronger the tendency to use other drugs is” (Effects of marijuana on youth 2). For instance, it introduces that among high school seniors who use marijuana daily, four times as many report daily alcohol consumption; twice as many report daily tobacco use. People don’t realize how dangerous marijuana can be; when they smoke it, they don’t think about the future consequences but only of the momentaneous pleasure it gives

A person’s daily life is a stake when marijuana is in their lives. Marijuana has the potential to pose difficulties in daily life or cause someone’s existing problems to become worse ("Health Effects of Marijuana Use."). Consumers have reported lower life satisfaction, worse mental and physical health, problems within relationships, and less success in their schooling and careers as opposed to their non-smoking peers ("Health Effects of Marijuana Use."). Studies have shown that marijuana usage is linked to accidents, increased absences, workman’s compensation claims, and job turnover ("Health Effects of Marijuana Use."). Studies have shown that marijuana usage is linked to accidents, increased absences, workman’s compensation claims, and job turnover ("Health Effects of Marijuana

Marijuana is a contrast to tobacco and alcohol when addiction characteristics do not show with the use of marijuana while addiction shows with legal tobacco and alcohol. It shows that less than one in ten marijuana smokers convert to consistent consumers of the drug, and most intentionally terminate their use after age 34, by comparison, 15 percent of alcohol users and 32 percent of tobacco smokers display indicators of drug dependency. Cannabis withdrawal indicators are uncommon and do not need replacement medication to stop the habit. When smoking marijuana comes to an end of an intake, the vast majority of smokers do not feel subjected to uncomfortable withdrawal indicators commanding restarting the use of marijuana.

An attitude are the long lasting beliefs, feelings, and behavioral responses towards social objects such as other people or issues (Attitudes and Behavior, n.d.). Attitudes can either be positive or negative.

“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.

Attitudes are thoughts that you have accepted as true and that lead you to think, feel, or act positively or negatively toward a person, idea or event. They represent an emotional readiness to behave in a particular manner. (Reece) Positive and negative attitudes affect how you work and how you influence other people around you. These attitudes can absolutely be changed though because we are not born with those attitudes. We form them as time passes, depending on the situations that we have been through. For instance, if you had a job where your supervisor was racist toward you, you would begin to form a negative attitude about supervisors thinking that all of them are going to be racist. Instead, you can change your attitude by thinking that not everyone acts the same way. A positive attitude can make a difference between an amazing life and a nonsense one. Therefore, a lot of people should try to change their attitude to a positive one.

Within today’s society, Cannabis is seen as a harmful substance of such negative controversy. Marijuana is a very prominent and controversial issue in society today. Despite many malicious allegations have been made regarding marijuana today, the truth of what marijuana’s real dangers are are beginning to come about again. Sadly, these facts have been held under considerable judgement because of what people stereotype a pot smoker as. This has been brought under heavy criticism due to the stereotypical view of what people view as the typical “pot smoker.” This image society has of a lazy and unambitious America has all been the result of almost one hundred years of false propaganda and stereotypes gossiped by certain private individuals trying to keep weed illegal for their own personal benefit.

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.

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