Dr.

RAM MANOHAR LOHIYA NATIONAL

LAW UNIVERSITY

ACADEMIC SEESION:2020-2021

PSYCHOLOGY

CHANGE IN ATTITUDE: SOCIAL INFLUENCE

Submitted to: Submitted by:

Ms. Isha Yadav Saddhvi Nayak

Psychology 200101114

RMNLU 1st semester (Section B)

B.A.L.L.B(Hons.)
 CONTENTS

S.NO. Topic Pg.NO.

1. Declaration 3

2. Acknowledgement 4

3. Introduction 5-6

4. Definition 7-8

5. Attitude change 8-10

6. Social influence 10-12

7. Effect of social media 12-13

8. Survey 13-16

9. Conclusion and references 17-18

 DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the project work entitled “Change in

Attitude: Social Influence” submitted to the Dr. Ram Manohar
Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow is a record of an
original work done by me under the guidance of Ms. Isha
Yadav, faculty of sociology, the Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya
National Law University and this project is submitted in the
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the
degree of B.A.L.L.B (Hons.). The results embodied in this have
not been submitted to any other University or Institute for the
award of any degree or diploma.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This survey paper would not have been accomplished without the
generous contributions of individuals. First of all, I express my gratitude
to the Almighty, who aided me with his strength, wisdom and patience to
complete this project as a term paper.

Additionally, I express my gratitude and deep regards to my teacher for

the subject Ms. Isha Yadav for giving me the freedom to work on
“Change in Attitude: Social Influence” and also for her exemplary
guidance, monitoring and constant encouragement throughout the
course of this survey paper.

I would also like to thank the authorities of Dr. Madhu Limaye Library
who provided the remote access of the library to provide the research
material.

Moreover, I also thank all my batchmates and seniors who aided me

along the way, and my family and friends for their constant
encouragement without which this assignment would not have been
possible.

I know that despite my best effort some discrepancies might have crept
in which I believe my humble professor would forgive.

THANKING YOU ALL.

Saddhvi Nayak.
 INTRODUCTION

Everything needs a change, or more precisely everything is going on this universe

because there is a change. A change is happening that’s why this earth is rotating,
day and night is happening , anything one can imagine is because of change.
Coming at the topic, so attitude is that changes every minute, every second, every
millisecond. So, first what is attitude? Attitude is the way you think, do, feel or
behave for a particular thing or person. If we see in psychology the meaning of
attitude, then it is a psychological construct , a mental or emotional entity that
characterizes a person. Prominent psychologists Gordon Allport described it as
“the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary social
psychology.” One’s attitude towards anything or a person can also influence
other’s attitude as well, it is complex and an acquired state through experiences.
There are two types of attitude towards something or someone, either positive or
negative. Most contemporary perspective on attitudes permit that people can be
ambivalent towards an object by holding both, positive and negative attitude at the
same time, towards the same object. Eagly and Chaiken defined attitude as “a
psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with
some degree of favor or disfavor.” A person’s attitude can tell about himself pretty
well, it can encode information, attention and behavior if the person is pursuing
unrelated goals. Attitude of person is determined by psychological factors like
ideas, beliefs, values, etc. There are different components of attitude, it’s called
CAB or ABC’s of attitude:

Cognitive component: it defines that what are one’s thought and belief about
something or someone.
Affective component: it define that what an object, person or issue make you feel
about it.

Behavioral component: it defines that how attitude influences or changes your

behavior towards something or someone.

So, next question that comes is that how attitude are forms? The answer is that
attitude is formed due to various factors that are:

Social factors: customs or norms can have a great influence on attitude. It is that
we are told to do from the very beginning as to how to behave in front of certain
people, etc.

Experience: this also causes huge influence on attitude respective of any personal
experience regarding something or observation. For example, that when a kid falls
in a pool that is deep and he cannot swim, he will make an attitude about pools,
lakes or water bodies that he will have aquaphobia and will never go in them.

Condition: this is the factor which influences most of the people’s attitude.
Suppose one person’s friend gives a condition that he will only be friend with him /
her when he / she leaves one of his / her habbit that which the friend does not like.

Learning: this is has a huge influence on attitude as what one person learns
changes his / her whole mindset and way of thinking. The things we see in the
movies, we learn that it might be so amazing to wear these clothes or go to this
place or do that thing, all of this creates a positive association.

Attitude has a role in changing behavior as well. Attitude changes because of many
reason, one of them is social influence. It is a great cause for changing attitude.
 DEFINITION

We have discussed attitude earlier, now let’s see, what is the definition of attitude
in terms of psychology? Social psychologists use the term “attitude” to refer to
people’s evaluation of almost any aspect of the world. Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss
psychiatrist, is given the definition of attitude as “readiness of the psyche to act or
react in a certain way”. He further said “presence of two attitudes is extremely
frequent, one conscious and the other unconscious. This means the consciousness
has a constellation of contents different from that of the unconscious, a duality
particularly evident in neurosis”. The strength with which attitude is held tells us
about the behavior of that person. Attitude can perform various function to a
person like:

 Knowledge: attitude provides knowledge to an individual, it give us the

recognition about ourselves as well as others behavior. We get the awareness
of other’s behavior by seeing their attitude. For example: a person like white
color over any other color, if he goes to a cloth shop we can predict that he is
going to buy some cloth of white color.
 Self / Ego-expressive: the attitudes we intimate help us to know about
ourselves and helps us to communicate with ourselves as well as to others.
Attitude helps us to be aware of our expressions, feelings, beliefs and values.
 Adaptive: if we express our thoughts publicly people will give reviews, so
we have to adapt it and with that our attitude also changes. For example:
earlier teacher used to teach on blackboards after that smart boards came, so
the teachers had to adapt the new way of teaching and also their attitude
changes regarding the way of teaching.
  Ego-defensive: this function only helps to keep our respect, self-esteem from
being humiliated. For example: if a person is being humiliated for his way of
speaking so he will try to give some comments through which he can
defend himself.

ATTITUDE CHANGE

Attitude changes only when the situation changes or new situation arrives, any
change in the environment changes our attitude. Even if the attitude changes from
positive to negative, slightly positive to very positive or from having no attitude to
having one. Attitude changes due to the same reasons attitude is formed such as:

1. Learning theory
2. Self-perception
3. Dissonance theory
4. Persuasion

Let’s take an example, one kid walking on the road is very happy as he bought
himself a chocolate. He sees a kid of his same age but not with same condition
sitting on the side of the road and asking for food. Suppose the name of happy kid
is A and the one sitting on the side of road is B. As soon as A sees B all his
happiness ruins and his attitude changes and he suddenly becomes sad and caring
at the same time. He gives his chocolate to B and brings some food for him.

In this example we see how the attitude instantaneously changes. Not only by
seeing something the attitude changes. One person is thinking something else and
started thinking something else also changes the attitude. Let’s understand how the
attitude changes :

Learning theory:
There are several theories by which attitude changes such as classical conditioning,
operant conditioning and observational learning. Classical conditioning is which
creates positivity with the object, person or any event by causing positive vibes
with target object. Operant conditioning is which weaken the attitudes which one
does not desire for and strengthen the attitudes which one desire for. Observational
learning is in which one observe their behavior and accordingly change their
attitude.

Self-perception:

It basically is when we don’t have any prior experience to any situation or any
issue, we infer from our behavior. We sometime may be in pressure while we are
doing certain tasks from our society, so we try to impress the society by doing
things in a way which we don’t do when we are alone. For example, a person finds
money fallen on the road, he gives them to the police and infer himself as honest. It
is some kind of pressure which he can’t see and gives the money to the police and
infers to be honest.

Dissonance theory:

This theory is that when one behaves in a way which contradicts existing attitude
and causes discomfort. To resolve this discomfort, people will find ways to solve
the discrepancy and change their attitude to match the behavior they have
performed. For example, when a social worker’s food accidently falls down, he
feels bad as he know that how difficult is it for somebody to buy this food which
has fallen down.

Persuasion:
It is the attitude change via an external message. There are two ways in this: first,
the people might listen to the message and try to understand it and second, when
the people get influenced by the message. For example: the debates which happen
in news channel, the two conditions are: first, people listen to the debate and try to
understand both sides , second is when people get influenced by the one side by
their points they give or by their way of speaking and start supporting it. First
condition is leads to an attitude shift and second leads to temporary or surface shift
in attitude.

SOCIAL INFLUENCE

The society brings many changes in our lives whether we like it or not, we have to
adjust accordingly. Social influence means the way in which an individual changes
itself according to the demands of social environment. Social influence can be seen
in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, sales
and marketing. In 1958, Harvard psychologists, Herbert Kelman identified three
varieties of social influence:

1. Compliance: when one person keeps their opinion to themselves and in

public they agree to others opinion. For example: suppose A is a person and
B tries to talk to A regarding farmers bill that the bill is not correct. A thinks
that the bill is perfectly correct but he tells B that yes the bill should be
changed, he will not tell B that he thinks the bill is correct, i.e., compliance.
2. Identification: when one person gets influenced from any celebrity or any
respected person. For example: one person keeps the beard same as Prime
Minister Narendra Modi because he likes it, so he also keeps the same shape
of beard as PM, i.e., identification. There are fans of many film stars that try
to keep the same attire that some celebrity keeps in any movie.
 3. Internalization: when people accept a belief, value or behavior and agree
with it publicly as well as privately. For example: suppose a person beliefs
in astrology that when a cats crosses your path, you should not cross the path
until someone crosses that. That person infact stops when cat crosses the
path, he accepts it publicly as well as privately, i.e., internalization.

Social influence has many effects on an individual, one of them being change of
attitude. Social influence can change a person’s way of thinking, values and
beliefs, it can even change the actions or pattern of behavior that the person has.
Social influence can be positive as well as negative or neutral, taking an example
of peer pressure. A high school kid wants to buy some kind of expensive watch
only to fit in the group of friends and on the other side a person has peer pressure
to join a dance class to learn dance. First example is neutral, it becomes negative if
the kid steals the watch; second example is positive. Social influence can be
categorized in two ways:

 Informational social influence:

The name itself tells what is it, making decisions based on the information
provided, precisely they want everything to be correct. An individual who make
decisions on the information provided to him by someone else and change their
thinking, belief or behavior. For example: a person buys an item online from a
particular website, he doesn’t know anything about it but he shops from it because
one of his friends recommended it.

 Normative social influence:

In this, it works differently from informational social influence. In this they change
their beliefs, values or behavior irrespective of them to be right. They just want to
be accepted or more precisely to fit in. For example: a person start smoking and
drinking just to impress the cool group in the college.

EFFECT OF SOCIAL MEDIA

In the era of everything instant, the perception of living life has dramatically
changed. Earlier, to do something took some time but now days because of the
modern technology everything has become easier. The pace of change is
accelerating for example the change in information and communication technology
has in important role in shaping the impact of social media. Through social media
one can be in touch with family and friends, they can entertain themselves, they
can see their favorite celebrity, they can share information, they can see the brands
they like, etc. Social media is that thing which everyone has now starting from kid
to old people. Social media has many things by which attitude changes like:

Celebrities: they make sure their daily life is shown to their fans and they post all
their daily works. The post of workout changes our attitude and we also want to do
workout. The post of a dress changes our attitude and we try to get their dress, the
post of their dogs changes our attitude and we want that same dog, the post of their
video calling their friends changes our attitude and we to do video call our family
or friends.

Entertainment: social media has many ways of entertaining people through

photoplays or photos. The videos or photos we see changes our attitude
accordingly like if we see some funny video or photo our attitude changes and we
become happy. If we see some serious video or photo we become serious, if we see
something that is emotional we become emotional.
Getting in touch with family and friends : because of the technology, we are
now able to get connected to our family and friends in seconds. As soon as we start
talking, our attitude changes accordingly and automatically.

Favorite brands: the brands we like, we want to see what new collections they are
sharing. We get to know price and all and if we could buy it we become happy.

Everything has an effect on our attitude as we see anything on social media. It can
be positive, it can be negative, or it can be neutral. But there are some really bad
behavior on the social media which can be risky and can be hazardous as well.

SURVEY

Question 1-
Question 2-

Question 3-
Question 4-

Question 5-
Question 6-

Question 7-
 CONCLUSION

Through this survey, we get to know what and how people behave and their
attitude changes. We see that the survey is filled by young people and we see that
most of the people will buy clothes from a store which is recommended by their
family members, they don’t interfere in their neighbor’s matter. The whole new
changed attitude of young people is because of the culture they see was followed
before was just not reaching to them or they might have not been told by their
parents how they used to do when they were young people. Particular attention is
paid to work on attitude accessiblity, ambivalence, and the affective versus
cognitive bases of attitudes. In persuasion, our review examines research that has
focused on high effort cognitive processes (central route), low effort processes
(peripheral route), and the multiple roles by which variables can have an impact on
attitudes. Special emphasis is given to work on cognitive dissonance and other
biases in message processing, and on the multiple processes by which mood
influences evaluations. Work on the consequences of attitudes focuses on the
impact of attitudes on behavior and social judgments.

REFERNCES

 Baron, R. A., & Branscombe, N. R. (2017). Attitude. In Social psychology. Upper Saddle
River: Pearson.
 Psychology, R. (n.d.). ATTITUDES AND ATTITUDE CHANGE., from
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.48.1.609?
journalCode=psych
 Cherry, K. (2020, May 03). How Can Our Attitudes Change and Influence Behaviors?
Retrieved January 28, 2021, from https://www.verywellmind.com/attitudes-how-they-
form-change-shape-behavior-2795897#:~:text=In%20psychology%2C%20an%20attitude
%20refers,enduring%2C%20they%20can%20also%20change.
 Attitude Change (SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY) - iResearchNet. (2017, October 25).
Retrieved January 28, 2021, from http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-
psychology/attitudes/attitude-change/#:~:text=Attitude%20Change
 %20Definition&text=Attitude%20change%20occurs%20anytime%20an,no%20attitude
%20to%20having%20one.
 Types of Social Influences and Their Effect on Behavior. (2020, May 13). Retrieved
January 28, 2021, from https://online.rider.edu/blog/types-of-social-influence/