Theories of Attitude

1. Balance Theory
2. Congruity Theory
3. Affective Cognitive Consistency Theory
4. Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Theories of Attitude

Lets discuss these 4 theories of attitude in brief:

Balance Theory
Balance Theory is concerned with consistency in the judgement of people and or
issues that are linked by some form of relationship.

There are three elements:

 Person
 Other person
 Impersonal entity
There are two types of relationship to connect these three types of elements
1. The linking relations or sentiments
2. The unit relation
Both linking and unit relations are positive or negative towards any object or person or
stimuli etc. or these three types of elements.

Congruity Theory
Congruity theory is similar to balance theory. The focus of the theory is on changes in
evolution of a source and a concept that are linked by an associative or dissociative
assertion.

Congruity exists when a source and concept positively associated have exactly the
same evaluation, and when a source and concept that are negatively associated have
exactly the opposite evaluation attached to him.

Affective Cognitive Consistency Theory

The theory is also called structural because it is concerned with what happens within
the individual when an attitude changes.
It is concerned with the consistency between a person’s overall attitude towards an
object or issue and its his beliefs about the relationship.

Cognitive structure means end relationship between the object or issue and the
achievement of desired undesired values of goals.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

It is little-bit similar to affective cognitive theory. The difference between these two is
that the stimuli arise from environment in the first one.

This theory tends to tie in the third component of attitude. There are three types of
cognitions: 1. Dissonance 2.