Attitudes

✓ An attitude is a relatively enduring organization of beliefs, feelings, and behavioral tendencies

towards socially significant objects, groups, events, or symbols.

✓ Attitudes are evaluative statements favorable or unfavorable related to the person, object, or
events.

Attitude is defined as “a learned predisposition to respond in a predisposition to respond in a

consistently favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a given manner with respect to a given
object.”

Nature of Attitudes

✓ It changes with time & situation

✓ Related to feelings & beliefs of people

✓ Attitude effects one’s behaviour positively or negatively

✓ Attitude are learned

✓ Attitudes are the complex combination of things

✓ All people, irrespective of their status or intelligence, hold attitudes

✓ An attitude exists in every person’s mind.

✓ Attitude can change

Components of Attitudes

✓ This is called the ABC Model of Attitude

A : Affect : How people feel inside

B : Behaviour : What people do, their actions

C : Cognition : What people think about

Affective component

✓ Associated with emotional reaction

✓ The affective component of attitudes refers to your feelings, sentiments, emotions linked to an
attitude object.

✓ For example: “I am scared of spiders”.

Behavioral component

✓ The behavioral component of attitudes refers to the way the attitude we have influences how
we act or behave.
 ✓ Favorable and unfavorable evaluation

✓ For example: “I will avoid spiders and scream if I see one”.

Cognitive component

✓ The cognitive component of attitudes refers to the beliefs, thoughts, opinions, knowledge and
information that we would associate with an object

✓ For example: “I believe spiders are dangerous”.

All three components do not exist or function separately

• Formations of Attitudes

• Important sources of attitude formations are :

➢ Direct experience with objects

➢ Classical conditioning

➢ Operant conditioning

➢ Vicarious learning

➢ Family

➢ Social & cultural norms

➢ Occupation

➢ Peer Group

➢ Economic Status

➢ Mass Media