Formation of Attitudes:

Learning:

One of the approaches regarding formation of attitude is the learning approach that regards
attitudes as habits like anything that is learned. It includes all the principles that apply to
other forms of learning as well.

Motivation:

Another important approach towards formation of attitude is motivational approach. It is

based on the principle of cognitive consistency that states that we tend to seek consistency
among our attitudes and between attitudes and behavior. It emphasizes the acceptance of
attitudes that fit into our overall cognitive structure.

Mere exposure: The phenomenon that being exposed to a stimulus increases one’s feelings,
usually positive, toward that object; repeated exposure can lead to positive attitudes.

Direct Personal Experience

A second way we form attitudes is through direct personal experience. If we have a flat tire
and someone stops to help, we may change our attitude about the value of going out of our
way to assist others. Attitudes acquired through direct experience are likely to be strongly
held and to affect behavior. People are also more likely to search for information to support
such attitudes. Direct experience continues to form and shape our attitudes throughout life.
One study examined the effects of direct experience with government agencies on younger
and older individuals’ attitudes toward government.

The Effect of the Mass Media

Mass media play an important role in our society. For example, media heroes tend to be a
very important influence in the development of our attitudes toward all manner of things:
race, gender, violence, crime, love, and sex. Issues given extensive coverage in the media
become foremost in the public’s consciousness.

Theories of Attitudes:

1. Learning theory:

The assumption behind this theory is that we acquire attitudes in almost the same way as
habits. The basic learning process should be applied to the formation of attitudes. We acquire
information and feelings through the process of association.

Learning can also occur through reinforcement and punishment.

Learning attitudes can also be done by imitation. People imitate others especially when those
are strong and important. Imitation is a term used by social learning theorists to describe the
 way in which an individual copies the behavior of a role model. Consequently, a major
source of basic political and social attitudes in early life is the family. Children are likely to
imitate the attitudes of their parents. In adolescence, they are more likely to imitate attitudes
of their peers on many matters.

They are exposed to stimuli; they learn through associations, reinforcements, or imitations.
And this learning process determines the person’s attitude. Learning theory accounts of
attitude change emphasize two main methods whereby attitudes may be acquired or changed:
learning and transfer of affect.

Message learning is regarded as crucial to attitude change. If a person learns a message,

change is likely to follow.

The idea that attitude change depends on the individual’s learning the content of a
communication. Learning theory also suggest that people are persuaded when they transfer
the affect from object to another that is associated with it. As example, imagine a television
commercial for an automobile. To persuade people to adopt positive attitude towards the car,
the advertisers associates the car with many other positive objects such as beautiful women,
handsome men, cute children or lovely dogs in the background. Consequently, you will
associate all these attractive features with the car and your positive feelings toward cars will
be increased. In other words, people will simply transfer the affect they feel about one object
(happy family life) to another (the car).

This transfer of affect idea appears to work better for material which people are relatively
unfamiliar and less well when people are already familiar with the attitude objects.

2. Cognitive Consistency:

The second major theoretical framework for attitudes is cognitive consistency. Cognitive
consistency refers to tendency for people to seek stability and consistency among their attitudes.
People strive for coherence and meaning in their cognition.

Similarly, if their cognitions are already consistent and they are faced with a new cognition that
may produce inconsistency, they will strive to reduce this inconsistency.

The three main components of this theory state that

i- People anticipate consistency

ii- inconsistencies create imbalance and dissonance in individuals
iii- That tension motivates the individuals to create consistency in order to achieve
balance.

There are specific theories that emphasize the importance of cognitive consistency.

i. Balance theory:
The earliest consistency theory is balance theory. Balance theory considers the consistency
among the affects and beliefs held by person are usually described in terms of a person, another
person and an attitude object. An attitude object is the concept around which an attitude is
formed and changes over time. Attitude objects can be a person, place, thing, or idea. Thus
there are three relevant evaluations:

 The first person’s evaluation of the other person

 The first person’s evaluation of the attitude object
 The other’s evaluation of the attitude object.

The basic motive that drives people to achieve balance is their desire for harmonious, simple,
coherent and meaningful perceptions of social relationships. A balanced system is one in which
you agree with a liked person or disagree with a disliked person. Imbalance exists when you
disagree with a liked person or agree with a disliked person.

Imbalanced system produces pressure toward attitude change and continues this pressure until
they are balanced. This attitude change can occur in many ways.

Research on balance theory has supported the idea that people adjust imbalance systems towards
balance in the ways that minimize the number of changes. People prefer balanced system and
they prefer balanced system better. But balance system seems to be weaker when we dislike the
person than when we like him or her.

ii. Cognitive Dissonance theory:

The most influential of the cognitive consistency theories is cognitive dissonance theory,
proposed by Leon Festinger in 1957. This theory assumes that there is a pressure to be
consistent. Dissonance theory deals especially with inconsistencies between people’s attitude and
their behavior.

“A theory of attitude change proposing that if inconsistency exists among our attitudes, or
between our attitudes and our behavior, we experience an unpleasant state of arousal called
cognitive dissonance, which we will be motivated to reduce or eliminate.”

The five key assumptions of cognitive dissonance theory can be summarized as follows:

1. Attitudes and behavior can stand in a consonant (consistent) or a dissonant (inconsistent)

relationship with one another.
2. Inconsistency between attitudes and behavior gives rise to a negative motivational state known
as cognitive dissonance.
3. Because cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable state, people are motivated to reduce the
dissonance.
4. The greater the amount of dissonance, the stronger the motivation to reduce it.
5. Dissonance may be reduced by rationalizing away the inconsistency or by changing an attitude
or a behavior
Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort experienced when holding two or more conflicting
cognitions and these cognitions can be ideas, beliefs, values or emotional reactions. There are
three ways to achieve consistency:

 One way is to change or modify behavior, although often it is not feasible.

 In other times, individuals trivialize the dissonance so that they don’t have to change their
attitudes.
 Most often, to eliminate the inconsistency between their attitude and their behavior by
changing their attitudes.

Implications:

a) Decision-Making:

The one of actions that always arouses dissonance is decision making. We must decide
between one or more alternatives and when the decision is done, all the good aspects of un-
chosen alternative and the negative aspects of chosen alternative are consistent with the
decision.

Free choice relates to dissonance in another way when you have to choose between two
mutually exclusive, equally attractive, but different alternatives (e.g., between two cars
or two jobs). After a choice is made, dissonance is experienced. It is important to note
that post decision dissonance is not the same as pre-decision conflict. Post decision
dissonance comes after your decision. Generally, the greater the separation between
alternatives, the less dissonance will be produced after a decision. After all, a choice between
a highly desirable product and an undesirable product is an easy one.

b) Attitude discrepant Behavior:

Actions or behaviors that are inconsistent with a person’s behavior. When a person holds a
belief and perform an act that is inconsistent with it, dissonance is produced.

c) Insufficient Justification

People are more likely to undertake a task that goes against their character or personal beliefs
when offered a small reward versus a larger reward. When there is too much pressure on an
individual or too much incentive to perform the discrepant act, there is no inconsistency and
very little dissonance is produced. This principle is called insufficient justification. The less
incentive one has for performing a counter attitudinal behavior , the more dissonance is
experienced.

d) Responsibility
 Another view suggests that cognitive dissonance occurs only when our actions produce
negative consequences (Cooper & Scher, 1992). The importance of perceived choice is that it
brings with it the perceived responsibility for all consequences and whether or not it is
logical to feel responsible for the, dissonance occurs. According to this view, it is not the
inconsistency that causes dissonance so much as our feelings of personal responsibility when
bad things happen.

e) The Importance of Free Choice

An important condition in the arousal of dissonance is whether behavior is freely chosen

or coerced. In another study of cognitive dissonance, participants were asked to write an essay
arguing a position that ran counter to their real beliefs (Elkin & Leippe, 1986). Furthermore,
they did this attitude-inconsistent act when they felt they had freely chosen it. Dissonance
theorists call this situation induced compliance. The researchers found that when participants
wrote an essay counter to their beliefs, they showed greater physiological arousal than if they
had written an essay consistent with their beliefs. This finding is compatible with predictions
from cognitive dissonance theory, specifically that dissonance increases feelings of tension
(physiological arousal).
This study reinforced the finding that people do not experience dissonance if they do not
choose the inconsistent behavior (Brehm & Cohen, 1962). If they are forced to do something,
the coercion is a sufficient external justification for the attitude discrepant actions.

f) Threats

In principle threat tend to work exactly the same way as incentives and reinforcements. That
is, to get people perform disliked tasks, either you can pay them a lot or you can threat them
with punishment. For example if you donot pay your income tax or you don’t do dishes you
are penalized. Greater threat should produce less dissonance and so less attitude change.

g) Effort

The more effort one expends in executing acts that have aversive consequences, the more
dissonance is likely to be aroused. If you volunteer for the armed forces and the very basic
training is exhausting, painful and stressful, dissonance will probably be created. The
individual is more likely to persuade himself that he has made a right choice and love the
forces. The attitude change helps to justify the effort you have expended.

iii. Self-Perception Theory:

A theory suggesting that we learn about our motivations by evaluating our own behavior
useful especially in the area of attitude change.
People observe their own behavior and assume that their attitudes must be consistent with
that behavior. If you eat a big dinner, you assume that you must have been hungry. If you
take a public stand on an issue, the rule of self perception theory is, “I said it, so I must have
meant it.” We donʼt look at our motives; we just process the information and conclude that
there is no inconsistency.
The point of self-perception theory is that we make inferences about our behavior in much
the same way an outside observer might. If you were observing the experiment, you would
infer, quite reasonably, that whatever anyone said when the light was red was a lie and
anything said under the green light was true. The participants assumed the same thing.
According to self-perception theory, something does not have to happen “inside” the person
for inconsistencies to be resolved—no tension, no motivation to reconcile attitudes and
behavior, just information processing.

Attitudes and Behavior

Our behavior is determined by many attitudes, not just one. findings did not mean there is
little relationship between attitudes and behavior. They just indicated that the presence of the
attitude object. is not always enough to trigger the expression of the attitude. Other factors
can come into play.There are several reasons why attitudes arenʼt good predictors of
behavior. Another reason why attitudes and behaviors may not relate strongly is the fact that
a behavior may relate to more than one attitude. For example, whether you vote for a
particular candidate may depend on how she stands on a range of issues (e.g., abortion,
health care, defense spending, civil rights). Measuring any single attitude may not predict
very well how you vote. However, if the entire range of attitudes is measured, the
relationship between attitudes and behavior improves. Similarly, if only one behavior is
measured, your attitude may not relate to that behavior very well. It is much better if a
behavioral trend (several behaviors measured over time) is measured. Attitudes tend to relate
better to behavioral trends than a single behavior.

Theory of Planned Behavior

Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) proposed the theory of planned behavior. This theory sensibly
assumes that the best predictor of how we will behave is the strength of our intentions
(Ajzen, 1987). The theory is essentially a three-step process to the prediction of behavior.
The likelihood that individuals will carry out a behavior consistent with an attitude they hold
depends on the strength of their intention, which is in turn influenced by three factors. By
measuring these factors, we can determine the strength of intention, which enables us to
predict the likelihood of the behavior.
The first factor that influences behavioral intention is attitude toward the behavior. Be
careful here: We are talking about the attitude toward the behavior, not toward the object. For
example, you might have a positive attitude about exercise, because you believe that it
reduces tension. Exercise is the object of the attitude. But toward the behavior, which
includes sweating, is a better predictor of your actions than your attitude about exercise,
because it affects your intentions.
The second factor, subjective norms, refers to how you think your friends and family will
evaluate your behavior. For example, you might think, “All my friends exercise, and they
will think that it is appropriate that I do the same.” In this case, you may exercise despite
your distaste for it. Your friendsʼ behavior defines exercise as normative, the standard.
Wellness programs that attempt to change dietary and exercise habits rely heavily on
normative forces. By getting people into groups, they encourage them to perceive healthy
lifestyles as normative (everyone else is involved).
Perceived behavioral control, the third factor, refers to a personʼs belief that the behavior
he or she is considering is easy or hard to accomplish. For example, a person will be more
likely to engage in health-related preventive behaviors such as dental hygiene or breast self-
examination if he or she believes that they can be easily done (Ronis & Kaiser, 1989).
In summary, the theory of planned behavior emphasizes that behavior follows from attitudes
in a reasoned way.
Strength of the Attitude According to the theories of planned behavior, specific attitudes
combine with social factors to produce behavior. Sometimes attitudes have more influence
on behavior than do the other factors; sometimes they have less influence. In large part, it
depends on the importance, or strength, of the attitude.