ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR IN PSYCHOLOGY

ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR IN PSYCHOLOGY

            According to psychology, attitude can be defined as behavior, emotions, and beliefs one holds for people, objects, events, or things. Attitudes are formed as a result of what we go through as we grow up, and more often, they develop into a behavior. Attitudes are prone to change. They involve people’s opinions on different things like; political opinions, issues of religion and education, death sentence, and social media issues. We all have different attitudes towards certain things which make our beliefs (Cherry, 2020)

According to psychologists,either good or bad attitudes can be developed by individuals, although they can be unpredictable. Attitudes are made up of three components; the affective component involves the feelings that a particular thing, object, or person brings. How one’s attitude contributes to the formation of a behavior is the behavioral component and beliefs that one has towards the object is the cognitive component. There are both conscious and unconscious attitudes that all influence behavior. The formation of attitudes is influenced by various factors like learning, experience, or social factors. One’s experiences or those of others can have an impact on how they view and act towards certain things (Cherry, 2020).

The society is responsible for shaping behaviors in people. Behaviors can be learned through operant or classical conditioning like in advertisements and also from observing those around us, for example, our parents. Behavior and attitude are not always aligned.  Not all people who support a particular football team watch the match. An opinion becomes strong if; the person is looking forward to a good ending, when one needs to align it with their behavior, when they are learned through experience, if one does very well on the issue or if the issue could make you win or lose something. (Molly Y. Zhou, 2017).

In case one’s beliefs and thoughts do not agree this results to psychological distress called cognitive dissonance. In this case, a change in attitude is important. For instance, in a situation whereby one values financial stability but starts dating a financially unstable person, he or she might decide to change their attitude to accommodate their partner or instead end the relationship and consider finding someone else who matches their beliefs.

Both attitude and its components can change. All the components of attitude can be used to bring change in it. Attitudes that are desired can be made strong through operant conditioning and, in the same way, the ones that are not needed weakened. Positive emotions towards an object can be brought through classical conditioning. Learning through observing also brings change in attitude. According to the Elaboration Like hood theory, change occurs due to being able to listen then think about the message or influenced by the behavior of the speaker, which brings a short time change. In Dissonance Theory, when people have conflicting beliefs about a particular subject, they can shift their attitudes to come down the tension that could come as a result of the different opinions. (Geoffrey Haddock, 2017)

References

Cherry, K. (2020, January 10). Attitudes and Behavior in Psychology. Retrieved from Very well mind: Attitudes and Behavior in Psychology

Geoffrey Haddock, G. R. (2017, April 16). Attitudes: Content, structure, and functions. Retrieved from Blackwell publishing: https://www.blackwellpublishing.com/content/hewstonesocialpsychology/chapters/cpt6.pdf

Molly Y. Zhou, D. B. (2017, DEC 12). Educational Learning Theories. Retrieved from GALILEO UNIVERSITY SYSTEM OF GEORGIA: https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=education-textbook