The Psychology of Attitudes
Attitudes in a psychological context are defined as "the tendency torespond in a certain way toward certain issues, products, objects, orevents" (Seamon & Kenrick 661). This consideration puts the focus on howattitudes impact on how people think. However, as Seamon & Kenrick note,psychologists studying attitudes are also particularly interested in how The first interest in attitudes occurred in the 1920s. At thispoint, the interest in psychology was largely confined to experimentaltechniques, where aspects of psychology were tested and measured.Thurstone used this approach to test people's attitude toward differentethnic groups, with people asked to rate various statements about theChinese (Jones). This method was essential a survey, with the survey arating tool for recognizing people's attitudes. While this methodidentified attitudes, it did nothing to try and explain how attitudes were This focus on how attitudes are formed came later. Zimbardo andLeippe described what they termed an attitude system. This systemdescribes four components that make up an attitude. The first component iscognition, which refers to beliefs, thoughts, or
In this way, anindividual observes their own behavior and then forms an attitude based onthat behavior. As hasbeen seen, attitudes can be understood based on various theories, can beformed in various ways, are not always based on logic, can be formedautomatically or subconsciously, and do not always results in behaviorconsistent with the attitude. At the same time though, various problems emerged. However, in the majority of cases, people do not apply logic, butinstead apply rules of thumb. This would then result in behavioral intentions,where the person might decide to support environmental appeals, or onlypurchase products from companies that do not harm the environment. With very little information available, people tend to automatically makejudgments on these two aspects. It was observed that people's behavior did not always match their beliefs. Consider the case where a person has an attitude where they areagainst pollution. The final aspect worth noting returns us to a consideration of thelink between attitudes and behavior. A similar approach is applied with the view that facialexpressions, head movement, and posture influence attitudes. The second is to agree with the majority. This represents an attitude toward that movie or song. This attitude would also be likely to involve emotions,such as the person feeling sad about the destruction, or angry about thosedoing the destroying. In Pavlonian terms, the repeated pairing of a previously neutral conditioned stimulis with an unconditioned stimulus so that the conditioned stimulis comes to produce a conditioned response" (Seamon & Kenrick 662). Another issue that is important when considering attitudes is thelevel of logic involved in developing them.
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