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Attitude (Psychology) : 1 Definitions
Attitude (Psychology) : 1 Definitions
Attitude (Psychology) : 1 Definitions
This article is about the psychological construct. For 1.2 Jungs denition
other uses of attitude, see Attitude.
Attitude is one of Jungs 57 denitions in Chapter XI
of Psychological Types. Jungs denition of attitude is
In psychology, an attitude is an expression of favor or
a readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain
disfavor toward a person, place, thing, or event (the atway.[10] Attitudes very often come in pairs, one contitude object). Prominent psychologist Gordon Allscious and the other unconscious. Within this broad defport once described attitudes the most distinctive and
inition Jung denes several attitudes.
indispensable concept in contemporary social psychol[1]
ogy. Attitude can be formed from a persons past and The main (but not only) attitude dualities that Jung denes
present.[2] Key topics in the study of attitudes include at- are the following.
titude measurement, attitude change, consumer behavior,
and attitude-behavior relationships.[3][4]
Consciousness and the unconscious. The presence
of two attitudes is extremely frequent, one conscious
and the other unconscious. This means that consciousness has a constellation of contents dierent
from that of the unconscious, a duality particularly
evident in neurosis".[11]
1.1
Denitions
Extraversion and introversion. This pair is so elementary to Jungs theory of types that he labeled
them the attitude-types.
Social psychology
An attitude is an evaluation of an attitude object, ranging from extremely negative to extremely positive. Most
contemporary perspectives on attitudes also permit that
people can also be conicted or ambivalent toward an object by simultaneously holding both positive and negative
attitudes toward the same object. This has led to some
discussion of whether individual can hold multiple attitudes toward the same object.[5]
2 Measurement
Many measurements and scales are used to examine attitudes. Attitudes can be dicult to measure because measurement is arbitrary, meaning people have to give attitudesa scale to measure it against, and attitudes are ulti1
3 STRUCTURE
mately a hypothetical construct that cannot be observed son has about a particular object.[19] People are often undirectly.
willing to provide responses perceived as socially undeFollowing the explicit-implicit dichotomy, attitudes can sirable and therefore tend to report what they think their
attitudes should be rather than what they know them to
be examined through direct and indirect measures.
be. More complicated still, people may not even be conWhether attitudes are explicit (i.e., deliberately formed) sciously aware that they hold biased attitudes. Over the
versus implicit (i.e., subconscious) has been a topic of past few decades, scientists have developed new measures
considerable research. Research on implicit attitudes, to identify these unconscious biases.[20]
which are generally unacknowledged or outside of awareness, uses sophisticated methods involving peoples response times to stimuli to show that implicit attitudes exist (perhaps in tandem with explicit attitudes of the same 3 Structure
object). Implicit and explicit attitudes seem to aect peoples behavior, though in dierent ways. They tend not to The classic, tripartite view oered by Rosenberg and
be strongly associated with each other, although in some Hovland [21] is that an attitude contains cognitive, afcases they are. The relationship between them is poorly fective, and behavioral components. Empirical research, however, fails to support clear distinctions beunderstood.
tween thoughts, emotions, and behavioral intentions associated with a particular attitude.[22] A criticism of the tri2.1 Explicit
partite view of attitudes is that it requires cognitive, aective, and behavioral associations of an attitude to be conExplicit measures tend to rely on self-reports or easily ob- sistent, but this may be implausible. Thus some views of
served behaviors. These tend to involve bipolar scales attitude structure see the cognitive and behavioral com(e.g., good-bad, favorable-unfavorable, support-oppose, ponents as derivative of aect or aect and behavior as
etc.).[16] Explicit measures can also be used by measuring derivative of underlying beliefs.[23]
the straightforward attribution of characteristics to nomiDespite debate about the particular structure of attitudes,
nate groups. Explicit attitudes that develop in response to
there is considerable evidence that attitudes reect more
recent information, automatic evaluation were thought to
than evaluations of a particular object that vary from posreect mental associations through formed through early
itive to negative.[24]
socializations experiences. Once formed, these associations are highly robust and resistant to change, as well as [25] Among numerous attitudes, one example is peoples
stable across both context and time. Hence the impact of money attitudes which may help people understand their
contextual inuences was assumed to be obfuscate assess- aective love of money motive, stewardship behavior, and
ment of a persons true and enduring evaluative dispo- money cognition. These ABC components of attitudes
sition as well as limit the capacity to predict subsequent formulate, dene, and contribute to an overall construct
behavior.[17] Likert scales and other self-reports are also of Monetary Intelligence which, in turn, may be related
to many theoretical work-related constructs.[26][27][28][29]
commonly used.
There is also a considerable interest in intra-attitudinal
and inter-attitudinal structure, which is how an attitude
2.2 Implicit
is made (expectancy and value) and how dierent attitudes relate to one another. Which connects dierent atImplicit measures are not consciously directed and are
titudes to one another and to more underlying psychologassumed to be automatic, which may make implicit meaical structures, such as values or ideology.
sures more valid and reliable than explicit measures (such
as self-reports). For example, people can be motivated
such that they nd it socially desirable to appear to have
3.1 Attitude component models
certain attitudes. An example of this is that people can
hold implicit prejudicial attitudes, but express explicit attitudes that report little prejudice. Implicit measures help Multicomponent model is the most inuential model of
account for these situations and look at attitudes that a attitude. Where attitudes are evaluations of an object that
person may not be aware of or want to show.[18] Implicit have cognitive, aective, and behavioral components.
measures therefore usually rely on an indirect measure These components are also known as taxi CAB, that will
of attitude. For example, the Implicit Association Test get you where you want to go.
(IAT) examines the strength between the target concept
and an attribute element by considering the latency in
Cognitive component The cognitive component of
which a person can examine two response keys when each
attitudes refer to the beliefs, thoughts, and attributes
has two meanings. With little time to carefully examine
that we would associate with an object. Many times
what the participant is doing they respond according to
a persons attitude might be based on the negative
internal keys. This priming can show attitudes the perand positive attributes they associate with an object.
3
Aective component The aective component of
attitudes refer to your feelings or emotions linked
to an attitude object. Aective responses inuence
attitudes in a number of ways. For example, many
people are afraid/scared of spiders. So this negative
aective response is likely to cause you to have a
negative attitude towards spiders.
Behavioral component The behavioral component
of attitudes refer to past behaviors or experiences
regarding an attitude object. The idea that people
might infer their attitudes from their previous actions. This idea was best articulated by Bem .[30]
3.2
MODE Model
The theory of attitude evaluation. (Motivation and Opportunity as Determinants of the attitude - behavior relation) When both are present, behavior will be deliberate.
When one is absent, impact on behavior will be spontaneous. The MODE Model was developed by Fazio . Your
attitude can be measured in two dierent ways:
Explicit measure
prejudicial attitudes to be more consistent with their selfconcept. Similarly, a persuasive message that threatens
self-image is much more likely to be rejected.[35]
Daniel Katz classied attitudes into four dierent groups
based on their functions
1. Utilitarian: provides us with general approach or
avoidance tendencies
2. Knowledge: help people organize and interpret new
information
3. Ego-defensive: attitudes can help people protect
their self-esteem
4. Value-expressive: used to express central values or
beliefs
Utilitarian People adopt attitudes that are rewarding and
that help them avoid punishment. In other words any attitude that is adopted in a persons own self-interest is considered to serve a utilitarian function. Consider you have
a condo, people with condos pay property taxes, and as a
result you don't want to pay more taxes. If those factors
lead to your attitude that increases in property taxes are
bad your attitude is serving a utilitarian function.
Implicit measure
Knowledge People need to maintain an organized, meaningful, and stable view of the world. That being said important values and general principles can provide a frameExplicit measure are attitudes at the conscious level, that
work for our knowledge. Attitudes achieve this goal by
are deliberately formed and easy to self-report. An Immaking things t together and make sense. Example:
plicit measures are attitudes that are at an unconscious
level, that are involuntarily formed and are typically un I believe that I am a good person.
known to us.[31] Both explicit and implicit attitudes can
shape and individuals behavior. Implicit attitudes how I believe that good things happen to good people.
ever, are most likely to aect behavior when the demands
are steep and an individual feels stressed or distracted.[32]
Something bad happens to Bob.
So I believe Bob must not be a good person.
Function
6
Serves to express ones central values and selfconcept.
Formation
Change
CHANGE
2. Source Characteristics: The major source characteristics are expertise, trustworthiness and
interpersonal attraction or attractiveness.
The
credibility of a perceived message has been found
to be a key variable here; if one reads a report about
health and believes it came from a professional
medical journal, one may be more easily persuaded
than if one believes it is from a popular newspaper.
Some psychologists have debated whether this
is a long-lasting eect and Hovland and Weiss
(1951) found the eect of telling people that a
message came from a credible source disappeared
after several weeks (the so-called "sleeper eect").
Whether there is a sleeper eect is controversial.
Perceived wisdom is that if people are informed of
the source of a message before hearing it, there is
less likelihood of a sleeper eect than if they are
told a message and then told its source.
3. Message Characteristics: The nature of the message
plays a role in persuasion. Sometimes presenting
both sides of a story is useful to help change attitudes. When people are not motivated to process
the message, simply the number of arguments presented in a persuasive message will inuence attitude change, such that a greater number of arguments will produce greater attitude change.[40]
4. Cognitive Routes: A message can appeal to an individuals cognitive evaluation to help change an attitude. In the central route to persuasion the individual
is presented with the data and motivated to evaluate the data and arrive at an attitude changing conclusion. In the peripheral route to attitude change,
the individual is encouraged to not look at the content but at the source. This is commonly seen in
modern advertisements that feature celebrities. In
some cases, physician, doctors or experts are used.
In other cases lm stars are used for their attractiveness.
Attitudes can be changed through persuasion and an important domain of research on attitude change focuses on
responses to communication. Experimental research into
the factors that can aect the persuasiveness of a message
include:
6.1
1. Target Characteristics: These are characteristics Emotion is a common component in persuasion, social
that refer to the person who receives and processes inuence, and attitude change. Much of attitude research
5
emphasized the importance of aective or emotion components. Emotion works hand-in-hand with the cognitive
process, or the way we think, about an issue or situation.
Emotional appeals are commonly found in advertising,
health campaigns and political messages. Recent examples include no-smoking health campaigns and political
campaign advertising emphasizing the fear of terrorism.
Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of cognitive,
aective and conative components. Attitudes are part of
the brains associative networks, the spider-like structures
residing in long term memory that consist of aective and
cognitive nodes.
agreed upon, humor appeals may work by creating incongruities in the mind. Recent research has looked at
the impact of humor on the processing of political messages. While evidence is inconclusive, there appears to
be potential for targeted attitude change is receivers with
low political message involvement.
Important factors that inuence the impact of emotion appeals include self ecacy, attitude accessibility, issue involvement, and message/source features. Self ecacy is
a perception of ones own human agency; in other words,
it is the perception of our own ability to deal with a situation. It is an important variable in emotion appeal messages because it dictates a persons ability to deal with
both the emotion and the situation. For example, if a person is not self-ecacious about their ability to impact the
global environment, they are not likely to change their attitude or behavior about global warming.
6.2
Attitude accessibility refers to the activation of an attitude from memory in other words, how readily available
is an attitude about an object, issue, or situation. Issue involvement is the relevance and salience of an issue or situation to an individual. Issue involvement has been correlated with both attitude access and attitude strength. Past
studies conclude accessible attitudes are more resistant to
change.
7 Attitude-behavior relationship
The eects of attitudes on behaviors is a growing research enterprise within psychology. Icek Ajzen has
lead research and helped develop two prominent theoretical approaches within this eld: the theory of reasoned
action[41] and, its theoretical descendant, the theory of
planned behavior.[42] Both theories help explain the link
between attitude and behavior as a controlled and deliberative process.
behavior. The theory was born largely out of frustration with traditional attitudebehavior research, much of
which found weak correlations between attitude measures
and performance of volitional behaviors (Hale, Householder & Greene, 2003, p. 259).
REFERENCES
8 See also
Cognitive dissonance
Elaboration likelihood model
Propositional attitude
7.2
7.3
Social psychology
Teenage rebellion
Theory of reasoned action
Theory of planned behaviour
Expectancy-value theory
Attitude polarization
9 References
[1] Allport, Gordon. (1935). Attitudes, in A Handbook of
Social Psychology, ed. C. Murchison. Worcester, MA:
Clark University Press, 789844.
[2] Allport, Gordon. (1935). Attitudes, in A Handbook of
Social Psychology, ed. C. Murchison. Worcester, MA:
Clark University Press, 789844.
[3] Lynn R. Kahle, Pierre Valette-Florence (2012). Marketplace Lifestyles in an Age of Social Media. New York:
M.E. Sharpe, Inc. ISBN 978-0-7656-2561-8.
[4] Elizabeth A. Minton, Lynn R. Khale (2014). Belief Systems, Religion, and Behavioral Economics. New York:
Business Expert Press LLC. ISBN 978-1-60649-704-3.
[5] Wood, W. (2000). Attitude Change: Persuasion and
Social Inuence. Annual Review of Psychology 51:
539570. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.51.1.539. PMID
10751980.
[6] Eagly, Alice H., and Shelly Chaiken. 1998. Attitude,
Structure and Function. In Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. D.T. Gilbert, Susan T. Fisk, and G. Lindsey,
269322. New York: McGowan-Hill.
[7] Ajzen, Icek (2001). Nature and Operation of Attitudes. Annual Review of Psychology 52: 2758.
doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.27.
A counter-argument against the high relationship be- [8] Vogel, T., Bohner, G., & Wanke, M. (2014). Attitudes
and attitude change. Psychology Press.
tween behavioral intention and actual behavior has also
been proposed, as the results of some studies show that,
[9] Vogel, T., Bohner, G., & Wanke, M. (2014). Attitudes
because of circumstantial limitations, behavioral intenand attitude change. Psychology Press.
tion does not always lead to actual behavior. Namely,
since behavioral intention cannot be the exclusive deter- [10] Main, R. (2004). The rupture of time: Synchronicity and
Jungs critique of modern western culture. Routledge.
minant of behavior where an individuals control over the
behavior is incomplete, Ajzen introduced the theory of
planned behavior by adding a new component, perceived [11] Main, R. (2004). The rupture of time: Synchronicity and
Jungs critique of modern western culture. Routledge.
behavioral control. By this, he extended the theory of
reasoned action to cover non-volitional behaviors for pre- [12] Main, R. (2004). The rupture of time: Synchronicity and
Jungs critique of modern western culture. Routledge.
dicting behavioral intention and actual behavior.
[19] Fazio, R. H. & Olson, M. A., (2003). Implicit Measures [33] Eagly, Alice H., and Shelly Chaiken. 1998. Attitude
in Social Cognition Research: Their Meaning and
Structure and Function. In Handbook of Social PsycholUse.
Retrieved from: http://commonsenseatheism.
ogy, ed. D.T. Gilbert, Susan T. Fiske, and G. Lindzey,
com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/
269322. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Fazio-Olson-Implicit-measures-in-social-cognition-research-Their-meaning-and-uses.
[34] Katz, Daniel (1960). The Functional Approach to the
pdf
Study of Attitudes. Public Opinion Quarterly 24 (2): 163.
[20] Sekaquaptewa, D., Espinoza, P., Thompson, M., Vargas,
P., & von Hippel, W. (2003). Stereotypic explanatory [35] Lapinski, Maria Knight; Boster, Franklin J. (2001).
Modeling the Ego-Defensive Function of Attibias: Implicit stereotyping as a predictor of discriminatudes. Communication Monographs 68 (3): 314324.
tion. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 75doi:10.1080/03637750128062.
82
[21] M. J. Rosenberg and C. I. Hovland, Cognitive, Aective and Behavioral Components of Attitudes. In M. J.
Rosenberg, C. I. Hovland (eds.), Attitude Organization
and Change: An Analysis of Consistency Among Attitude
Components. New Haven: Yale University Press (1960).
[22] Eagly, Alice H., and Shelly Chaiken. 1998. Attitude
Structure and Function. In Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. D.T. Gilbert, Susan T. Fiske, and G. Lindzey,
269322. New York: McGraw-Hill.
[23] Fazio, Russell H., and Michael A. Olson (2003). Attitudes: Foundations, Functions, and Consequences. The
Sage Handbook of Social Psychology. London: Sage.
[24] http://www3.psych.purdue.edu/~{}willia55/392F-'06/
Wood-Influence
[25] Exploring the Latent Structure of Strength-Related Attitude Attributes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38: 167.
[26] Tang, T. L. P.; Liu, H. (2012). Love of money and unethical behavior intention: Does an authentic supervisors
personal integrity and character (ASPIRE) make a difference?". Journal of Business Ethics 107 (3): 295312.
doi:10.1007/s10551-011-1040-5.
[27] Tang, T. L. P.; Sutarso, T. (2013). Falling or not falling
into temptation? Multiple faces of temptation, monetary intelligence, and unethical intentions across gender. Journal of Business Ethics 116 (3): 529552.
doi:10.1007/s10551-012-1475-3.
11
Van Bavel, J.; Xiao, Y.J.; Cunningham, W.A.
(2012). Evaluation is a dynamic process: Moving beyond dual systems models. Social and
Personality Psychology Compass 6 (6): 438454.
doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2012.00438.x.
Cunnigham, A.; Zelazo, P.D.; Packer, D.J.; Van
Bavel, J.J (2007). The iterative reprocessing
model: A multilevel framework for attitudes and behavior 25 (5). pp. 736760.
10
Further reading
Breckler, S. J., & Wiggins, E. C. (1992). On dening attitude and attitude theory: Once more with
feeling. In A. R. Pratkanis, S. J. Breckler, & A. C.
Greenwald (Eds.), Attitude structure and function.
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. pp. 407427
Eagly, A., & Chaiken, S. (1995). Attitude strength,
attitude structure and resistance to change. In R.
Petty and J. Kosnik (Eds.), Attitude Strength. (pp.
413432). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Fazio, R. H. (1986). How do attitudes guide behavior? In R. M. Sorrentino & E. T. Higgins (Eds.),
The handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior (pp 204243). New York:
Guilford Press.
Fazio, R.; Williams, C. (1986). Attitude accessibility as a moderator of attitude-perception
and attitude-behavior relation: An investigation
of the 1984 presidential election. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 51: 505514.
doi:10.1037/0022-3514.51.3.505.
Tesser, A (1993). On the importance of heritability in psychological research: The case of
attitudes. Psychological Review 100: 129142.
doi:10.1037/0033-295x.100.1.129.
Joseph P. Forgas, Joel Cooper, William D. Crano.
2010. The Psychology of Attitudes and Attitude
Change. Publisher Routledge. ISBN 1848729081,
9781848729087
Garifullin R.R.154 encoding attitudes Eective inuence on The Subconscious Curing of depression,
neurosis and alcohol dependence. Book encoding &
Curing Of depression, neurosis and alcohol dependence oscow: 2004, 176 . ISBN 5-98132028-1
Gerd Bohner. 2002. Attitudes and Attitude Change:
Social Psychology. Publisher-Psychology Press.
ISBN 0863777791, 9780863777790
EXTERNAL LINKS
Greg Maio, Georey Haddock. 2010. The Psychology of Attitudes and Attitude Change: Sage Social Psychology Program. Publisher SAGE. ISBN
141292975X, 9781412929752
Dolores Albarraci, Blair T. Johnson, Mark P.
Zanna. 2005. The Handbook of Attitudes.
ISBN 0805844937,
Publisher Routledge.
9780805844931
Frank M. Andrews. 1991. Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes. PublisherGulf Professional Publishing. ISBN 0125902441,
9780125902441
John P. Robinson, Phillip R. Shaver.1980. Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes. Publisher
Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research. ISBN 0879441305, 9780879441302
Eagly, Alice H.; Chaiken, Shelly1993. The Psychology of Attitudes. Publishers-Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College.
Icek Ajzen. 2005. Attitudes, Personality, and Behavior. Publisher McGraw-Hill International. ISBN
0335224008, 9780335224005
G. Haddock. 2004. Contemporary Perspectives on
the Psychology of Attitudes. Publisher Taylor &
Francis. ISBN 184169326X, 9781841693262
11 External links
Positive Attitude Quotes In Hindi
How to Get Into the Habit of Positive Thinking
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