12/6/2019 OneNote

Attitude
Thursday, 26 July 2018 6:08 PM

1. Attitude
a. predisposition to respond positively or negatively towards a certain idea, person, or
situation.
b. Carl Jung's definition, "readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way"
Attitude = combination of cognitive, affective and behavioral components

C: • Knowledge and beliefs.

Cognitive • When you form an opinion from the available information that’s cognitive
attitude.
• e.g democracy needed for inclusive growth. (belief)
A: • Feelings and emotions such as pleasure, hate, fear, anger, happiness,
Affective sorrow.
• What do we feel when that object is present before us?
• e.g. I like democracy (feeling)
B: • Overt behavior. Your predisposition (sensitivity) towards a person /
Behavioral object.
• e.g. I’ll vote in every election (behavior)

Structure
i. Unidirectional - attitude has two ends negative and positive. But, difficult to
distinguish between neutral and ambivalent attitude.
ii. Bidirectional -

Functions

Object help us approach beneficial things and avoid harmful things.

appraisal
Social Attitude helps us identify with people we like
adjustment
Utilitarian When you go to market, you’ll buy or not buy a product thinking “will this
product help me (cognitive)”.
Knowledge helps organize new information, and create generalization / stereotyping.
Ego- It prevents us from guilt feeling, by holding attitudes that protect our self-
defensive esteem (Defend your ego). Mechanisms? Denial, Repression, Projection,
Rationalization
Externalizat Similar to ego-defensive. By blaming external factors we try to defend our
ion internal conflict e.g. “I got low marks in interview because panel was
biased.”
Value To express one’s central values. Gandhi switched to Khadi dhoti to express
expressive his central value “self-reliance, simple living”.

c. When do attitudes guide behaviour? Depends on

i. Quality of the behaviour
ii. Quality of the person (self aware or spontaneous)
iii. Quality of the situation (norms, culture, time)
iv. Quality of the attitude itself (strong attitude = strong behaviour)

d. How do attitudes get formed?

i. Pavlovian - conditioning(sounding bell to feed dogs)
ii. Instrumental - if behaviour leads to +ve outcome continue, else suppress.
iii. Observational - how other people get treated for similar action

e. Cognitive dissonance - state of having inconsistent beliefs or attitudes, especially as

relating to behavioural decisions and attitude change.
f. Persuasion - communication intended to make other person believe or do something. The
success of persuasion depends on three factors: (i) source (Bachchan) (ii) message
(SBA=women dignity) (iii) target (ego, attitude).

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2. What is belief, values, attitude?

Belief • Belief is what we think about things.

• e.g. IPL is corrupt.
Value • Value is what we think ‘should happen’. They guide our behavior.
• e.g. Corruption is bad. Honesty is best policy.
• Value can be ‘desirable’ or ‘undesirable’
Attitude • Attitude is our like/dislike for an object, event, organization or person.
• Belief (IPL Corrupt) + Value (Honest is best) = frame our attitude towards
event/people.
• In above example, person’s attitude will be of hatred/cynicism towards cricket,
cricketers, products endorsed by those cricketers

3. Moral attitudes
i. Not all attitudes are concerned with morality. E.g. My attitude towards snakes has
nothing to do with morality. But my attitude towards democracy will have moral
undertones.
ii. Moral attitudes are based on moral convictions of what is “right” and what is “wrong”.
Moral attitudes are stronger than moral beliefs.
iii. Family, society, religion and education play important role in framing those moral
convictions.

4. Political attitudes
i. Factors affecting

Religion Religion shapes a person’s moral attitude E.g. Christianity defines

marriage as a union between man and a woman.
Age Young people interested in change, because they’ll live to enjoy fruits of
those changes.
Economic Poor will align towards communist / socialist ideology. He’ll vote for a
Status party promising to get food, fertilizer and kerosene subsidy.
Residence “Local” unemployed youth more likely to align with party promising
“action” against the migrants or reservation based on region.
Family Children more likely to espouse the political ideology of their parents.
Race If a race feels they’re deprived of opportunities, then more likely to lean
towards a party offering radical solutions against other races.
Gender Females more likely to lean towards liberal ideology.
Education Chinese may find Indian democracy as repulsive, because they have
been taught that Mao’s Communist ideology is best.
Conception Locke said, “Man is good rational person”. State should be kept weak,
about human and men should be made strong by giving more rights.
nature
Disposition If a person is born and raised in a military family, he’d be in favor of
strong state, discipline, order, authoritarianism.
Social media The information processed and shared on social media, molds a
person’s political views.

5. From administrative point of view, the burning issue is- “despite all the schemes and policies, how
to change attitude of the people?”
i. In Bangladesh open defection is very less. They built pit-latrine- that’s safer than open
defecation and cheaper than conventional toilet.
ii. But in India, many villagers have bikes, TVs and mobiles but not toilets at home and they
don’t feel guilty about it.
iii. So, basic issue is “their attitude towards cleanliness or dignity of women.”

6. Human values - Basic human values refer to those values which are at the core of being human.
i. The values which are considered basic inherent values in humans
include honesty, loyalty, sympathy, love, peace, etc. because they bring out the
fundamental goodness of human beings and society at large
ii. Values — like policies, plans, and goals — are heuristics to help us avoid an infinite
calculation each time we want to act.
iii. Instead of calculating in each conversation, at each moment, what to reveal and what to
conceal, a person adopts the general value of being honest, by default.
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7. Lessons from lives of great leaders

i. Gandhi - perseverance, self-belief, integrity, humility, dedication
ii. Mandela - fairness, service to society, dignity, forgiveness, respect.
iii. Luther King - equality, faith, selflessness, non-violence, hope

8. Role of family and educational institutions

i. Basis and sources of morals, values and ethics
• Family (Love, care, compassion, service, tolerance, self-sacrifice)
• Education
• Society
• Law
• Profession
• Conscience
• Intuition 

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