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ATTITUDE3

Attitude:

content, structure,

function; its

influence and

relation with

thought and

behaviour; moral

and political

attitudes; social

influence and

persuasion.”

Attitude Introduction

According to Breckler and Wiggins attitude ishypothetical construct that represents individuals’like or dislike for an item. It is organized throughexperience, exerting influence on behaviour.

Attitudes are positive, negative or neutralviews of an “attitude object”: i.e. a person,behaviour or event. People can also be “ambivalent”towards a target. Attitudes develop on the ABCmodel (affect/emotion, behavioural change andcognition).

“

Triadic Model of Attitudes

This is knownas the information

component

Cognitive Knowledge and beliefs

example: fitness trainingkeeps me fit

This is knownas the emotional

component

This concerns howa person intends to

behave towardsan attitude object

AffectiveFeelings and emotions

example : I enjoy training

Behaviouralintended behaviour

example : I attend trainingsessions regularly

Attitudeto regularexercise

The link between attitude and behaviour exists but depends on humanbehaviour, some of which is irrational. For example, a person who is infavour of blood transfusion may not donate blood. This makes sense ifthe person does not like the sight of blood, which explains this irrationality.

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Uttar Pradesh PSC 2018 Question: Differentiate between the following:

1. Attitude and Value.2. Attitude and Opinion.

Attitude Content

Attitudes have cognitive, affective and behavioural components.

The cognitive component refers to beliefs and thoughts.

Relationship between Three-Components

Heider's Balance TheoryFishbein's Multi attribute Model

Congnitive DissonancePassive LearningDisconfirmation of Expectations

Fishbein's Theory of Reasoned ActionFazio's MODE ModelAttitude

development

AFFECTIVE(ATTITUDES)

INTENTION& BEHAVIOR

COGNITIVE(BELIEFS)

The affective component refers to feelings or emotions associated withan attitude object.

The behavioural component refers to past behaviours with respect toan attitude object.

These components have a “synergistic” relation. That is, when these3 components combine together, then they tend to produce higher effectthan what individual components produce. When an individualpossesses positive beliefs about an attitude object, they typically havepositive affective and behavioural associations with the object.

Further, people differ in the degree to which their attitudes are basedon each of the CAB components.

Attitude Content Example: A series of famous television advertisementsfeatured former professional athletes extolling the virtues of a particularbrand of beer. While some of the athletes noted that the beer was less fillingthan other beers, others said that it tasted great. The first component ofthe message highlighted a positive attribute about the beverage (i.e.,

Attitude 3

its low caloric intake), whereas the second component highlighted apositive affective response associated with the beverage (i.e., its taste).Which part of the message would you find more persuasive? It dependson whether your attitudes tend to be based more upon the content ofyour beliefs or more upon the content of your feelings.

Attitude Content Example: Swachh Bharat campaign involveschanging attitude of people. It targets all three components of AttitudeContent, emotions, thoughts and behaviour.

Huskinson and Haddock considered the degree to which people differin the extent to which their attitudes are derived from their cognitionsor feelings. In the study, thinkers and feelers were randomly assigned toreceive one persuasive appeal about a new beverage. Some participantsread an advertisement highlighting the positive qualities about the drink.This appeal is cognition-based, as it emphasizes the positive attributes ofthe object. Other participants, instead of reading about the drink’s properties,were given the opportunity to taste the beverage. This appeal is affect-based, because of the feelings resulting from tasting the pleasant drink.

Two appeals had different effects on how much thinkers and feelersreported liking the beverage. Specifically, among participants who werepresented with the cognition based appeal, thinkers tended to have morepositive attitudes about the drink than feelers. In contrast, among participantswho were presented with the affect-based appeal, feelers had more positiveattitudes about the drink than thinkers. Thus, this study shows howindividual differences in attitude content influence how we react to differenttypes of information.

Perceptual responsesverbal statementsof belief

Sympathetic nervoussystem responsesVerbal statements of affect

Overt actionsVerbal statementsconcerning behavior

STIMULI (individuals, situation, social issues,

social groups, and other

objects"attitude"

COGNITION

AFFECT

BEGAVIOR

ATTITUDES

More Implicit– or –

"Thoughtless"

MoreExplicit– or –

"Thoughtful"

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Sample Question 69: Define attitude and its components. Explain the

affective component content of attitude. According to you which of the

three, CAB, is most important for an administrator?

Attitude Structure

Another important issue concerns how positive and negative evaluations

are organized within and among the components of attitudes. It is typically

assumed that the existence of positive beliefs, feelings, and behaviours

inhibits the occurrence of negative beliefs, feelings, and behaviours. For

example, this assumption implies that an individual with positive beliefs,

feelings, and behaviours about the Indian cricket team is unlikely to have

negative beliefs, feelings, and behaviours about this team.

According to this one-dimensional perspective, the positive and

negative elements are at opposite ends of a single dimension, and

people tend to experience either end of the dimension or a location

in between.

This one-dimensional view is opposed by a two-dimensional view.

This view suggests that one dimension reflects whether the attitude

has few or many positive elements, and the other dimension reflects

whether the attitude has few or many negative elements (Cacioppo,

Gardner, & Berntson).

If this view is correct, then people can possess any combination of

positivity or negativity in their attitudes. Some of these combinations

fit the one-dimensional view: attitudes may consist of few positive

and many negative elements, few negative and many positive elements,

or few positive and few negative elements (i.e., a neutral position).

Another combination is inconsistent with the one-dimensional view:

attitudes might occasionally contain many positive and many negative

elements, leading to attitudinal ambivalence.

The two-dimensional perspective explicitly allows for this ambivalence

to occur, whereas the one-dimensional perspective does not.

The 1st diagram in figure depicts the 1-D view of attitudes. The

single axis does not permit a person to have both negative and positive

attitudes.

Attitude 5

Unidimensional View

Not Positiveor Negative

HighPositive

HighNegative

Bidimensional ViewHigh

Negative

Not Positiveor Negative

HighPositive

Y

The bottom panel of figure depicts the 2-D view of attitudes, with oneaxis (from middle to top) representing variability in negative evaluationsand the other axis (from middle to right) depicting variability in positiveevaluations. From this perspective, a person can possess high amountsof negativity and positivity toward an object. For example, Person Yin the figure could be considered highly ambivalent.

Attitude Structure Example: You can have only negative or onlypositive attitude for smoking. You can’t be for and against it at thesame time. This view is 1-D view. For a person with 2-D view, onecan have both positive and negative attitude for smoking. While hehimself may smoke, he would not want his near ones to smoke.

Sample Question 70: Define ambivalence in context of attitude structure.Which structure type is better in context of administration? Also, establishthe relation between solving ethical dilemma and attitude structure.

Which Perspective Is Superior? At first glance, the 2-D perspective seems as though it should be

superior because it allows for the same patterns of positivity andnegativity as 1-D view, while also allowing for ambivalence.

Also, it is difficult to interpret the meaning of the neutral point in 1-Dscales for assessing attitudes (Kaplan). Imagine that people were askedto report their attitude towards eating apple on a nine-point scale thatranged from “1 –extremely unfavourable” to “9 – extremely favourable”as the end points, with “5 – neither unfavourable nor favourable” in the

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middle. If someone indicated that his or her attitude was 5, it is half-way between the most extreme positive response option and the mostextreme negative response option. People could choose this option becauseit is a compromise between many positive and negative elements of theirattitude (e.g., they have many positive and negative thoughts, feelings,and behaviours regarding eating apple) or because they have no positiveor negative elements whatsoever (e.g., they have never eaten apple).

The failure to distinguish between these two reasons for the neutralselection is important, because measures that directly assess attitudinalambivalence predict a variety of outcomes. The best known outcomeis response polarization by Macdonald & Zanna.

People who are highly ambivalent toward an object are more stronglyinfluenced by features of their environment that make salient theobject’s positive or negative attributes. This causes them to behavemore favourably towards the object when the positive elements aresalient than when the negative elements are salient.

In contrast, non-ambivalent people are less strongly influenced by theacute salience of the positive or negative attributes.

At times, when consistency is needed, attitude ambivalence takesthe back seat. This is true for a public servant who should always

keep public interest at top of his priority list. A crystal clearattitude towards same would ensure consistency and clarity.

Attitude AmbivalenceOne reason for the emergence of attitudinal ambivalence as an

important property of attitudes is its potential to explain why peoplesometimes react in polarized ways to controversial groups or issues. Thisnotion was illustrated by Tara MacDonald and Mark Zanna who examinedthe consequences of students’ ambivalence towards feminists.

In an initial set of data, these investigators found that some studentstended to both admire feminists and dislike them. This pattern can belabeled as cognitive-affective ambivalence, because it represents conflictbetween how the individuals think (e.g., admiring feminists for theirperceived courage) and feel (e.g., disliking feminists because of theirperceived stridency). The researchers expected that ambivalent peoplewould be more strongly influenced by an innocuous prior event.

The results of the study showed that participants who exhibited ahigh degree of ambivalence toward, feminists reported stronger intentionsto hire the feminist candidate after seeing the dislikeable male candidate

Attitude 7

succeed than after seeing him fail. In contrast, participants who exhibiteda low degree of ambivalence towards feminists were not affected by thesuccess or failure of the admirable but dislikeable male candidate. Thus,only the ambivalent participants’ intentions were affected by the prime.

When people possess this ambivalence, making them mindful ofeither the cognitive or affective elements of their attitudes causes their behaviourto reflect the salient elements. As a result, ambivalent people might appearto strongly favour a person who is a target of their ambivalence in somesituations, but strongly disfavour the individual in other situations.

Gujarat PSC 2018-19 Question: What is inconsistency of attitude?

Sample Question 71: Attitude ambivalence is not always good or bad.

It depends on the situation. Explain with examples.

Attitude Functions

The most prominent models of attitude functions were developedalmost 50 years ago.

1. Smith’s FunctionsA. Object Appraisal

• It is the ability of attitudes to summarize the positive and negativeattributes of objects in our social world.For Example, attitudes can help people to approach things that arebeneficial for them and avoid things that are harmful to them.

B. Social Adjustment

• It helps us to identify with people whom we like and to dissociatefrom people whom we dislike.

For Example, individuals may buy a certain soft drink becausethis drink is endorsed by their favourite singer.

C. Externalization

• It is fulfilled by attitudes that defend the self against internal conflict.For Example, bad golfers might develop an intense dislike for thegame because their poor performance threatens their self-esteem.

2. Daniel Katz’s Functions The knowledge function represents the ability of attitudes to organize

information about attitude objects.

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The utilitarian function exists in attitudes that maximize rewards andminimize punishments obtained from attitude objects. These functionsare similar to Smith et al.’s object-appraisal function.

Katz’s ego-defensive function exists in attitudes that serve to protect anindividual’s self-esteem, and is similar to Smith’s externalization function.

Finally, Katz proposed that attitudes may serve a value-expressivefunction, such that an attitude may express an individual’s self-conceptand central values. For Example, a person might cycle to work becauseshe values health and wishes to preserve the environment.

Uttar Pradesh PSC 2018 Question: Discuss the functions of the attitude.

Sample Question 72: What roles do the above mentioned attitudefunctions play in public administration? Also, give the application ofobject appraisal and social adjustment function in team building.

Object-appraisal function is highly important, because attitudes cansimplify interaction with the environment. The importance of this functionwas highlighted by Russell Fazio who founded that highly accessibleattitudes (which people recall quickly) increase the ease with which peoplemake attitude-relevant judgements and decrease physiological arousalduring these judgements. These findings support the conclusion that theobject-appraisal function is more strongly served by attitudes that arespontaneously activated from memory than by attitudes that are notspontaneously activated.

Attitude-Behaviour-Situation

Mark Snyder developed personality construct of self-monitoring inorder to describe how people differ in the degree to which they changetheir behaviour to suit the situation. Snyder described high self-monitorsas the type of people who are adept at changing their behaviour acrosssituations, while low self monitors tend to present themselves in the sameway across situations.

Attitude

Intention

Behaviour Habit

Situation

Attitude 9

High self-monitors, given their propensity to change their personalitywhen interacting with different people, might be likely to hold attitudesthat fulfill a social-adjustive function. In contrast, low self-monitors, giventheir propensity to always “be themselves” might be more likely to holdattitudes that fulfill a value expressive function.

Behaviour-Situation Example: A civil servant is expected to adapt tovarious situations and change his/her behaviour accordingly. A civilservant needs to be high self-monitor to be efficient.

Sample Question 73: Many a times people change for good after asudden shock event in their life. But it has exceptions too. Asses the reasonsin context of attitude change. As an administrator, what will you doto change the behaviour of your staff?

Mark Snyder and Ken Debono tested whether individual differencesin attitude function would influence how people responded to differenttypes of persuasive appeals. Snyder and Debono randomly assigned high andlow self-monitors to receive one of two appeals about a new brand ofshampoo. One of the appeals focused on the image associated with theshampoo (e.g., that the product was above average in “how good it makesyour hair look”). The other appeal focused on the quality of the shampoo(e.g., that the product was above average in “how clean it gets your hair”).Snyder and Debono tested whether people who tend to hold social-adjustiveattitudes would be more persuaded by the image appeal than the qualityappeal, whereas people who tend to hold value expressive attitudes wouldbe more persuaded by the quality appeal than the image appeal. Resultsfound that an individual’s willingness to try the shampoo depended uponwhether the appeal “matched” their self-monitoring status.

Linking Attitude Content, Structure and Function

There are inexorable links among content, structure, and attitude function:The Link between Content and Structure Synergy among the CAB components should cause an individual to

have a 1-D rather than 2-D attitude. If an individual has positive cognitions, affective responses, and past

experiences with an attitude object, they should also have aunidimensional positive attitude about the object. In this case,synergistic content influences the structure of the attitude.

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The Link between Content and Function

Consider attitudes towards a car that are based on a need to conservefuel. These attitudes should be based on beliefs about the extent towhich the car obtains good fuel economy. Similarly, if attitudes towardsa style of clothing fulfill a psychological need to enhance social relations,then these attitudes should be based on beliefs about the extent towhich the style is preferred among one’s friends.

In both cases, attitudes that serve different functions often differ inthe content of the beliefs that support them.

Link between the Structure and Function

Object appraisal function should be served more strongly by 1-Dattitudes than by 2-D attitudes, because the 2-D attitudes evoke moredecision conflict.

It is possible that social norms make it occasionally desirable to havehigh ambivalence in an attitude, such as when an issue is controversial.In this situation, people who appear ambivalent may give the impressionof being fair and knowledgeable. These individuals may also beinoffensive to others because they “agree” with everyone to some extent.

Attitude Formation

Unlike personality, attitudes are expected to change as a function ofexperience. Tesser has argued that hereditary variables may affect attitudes.There are numerous theories of attitude formation and attitude change.These are:

1. Experience

Attitudes form directly as a result of experience. They may emergedue to direct personal experience, or they may result from observation.

Attitude 11

2. Social Factors

Social roles and social norms can have a strong influence on attitudesas they relate to how people are expected to behave in a particularrole or context.

3. Learning

Classical Conditioning: It happens when a stimulus elicits anemotional reaction. Advertisers use classical conditioning to influenceattitude toward a particular product. For Example, in a televisioncommercial, you see young people having fun on a tropical beach.This appealing imagery causes you to develop a positive associationwith beach vacation.

Operant Conditioning: Operant or instrumental conditioning is whenan attitude forms because it has been reinforced through reward or apleasant experience or discouraged through punishment or an unpleasantexperience. For Example, imagine a young man who has just startedsmoking. Whenever he lights up a cigarette, people complain and askhim to leave their vicinity. This negative feedback from those around himeventually causes him to develop an unfavorable opinion of smoking.

Evaluative Conditioning: It occurs when we form attitudes towardan object or person because our exposure to them coincided with apositive or negative emotion. For Example, a couple may come tofeel positive toward a particular song that was playing on the radioduring their marriage.

Observation: People also form attitudes by observing the peoplearound them. For example, children spend a great deal of timeobserving the attitudes of their parents and usually begin to demonstratesimilar outlooks.

4. Other Factors

Other factors include family, prejudices, media, educational andreligious institutions.

CSM 2014 Question: What factors affect the formation of a person’sattitude towards social problems? In our society, contrastingattitudes are prevalent about many social problems. Whatcontrasting attitudes do you notice about the caste system in oursociety? How do you explain the existence of these contrastingattitudes? (150 words | 10 marks)

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Ans. According to Breckler and Wiggins, attitude represents individuals’ like

or dislike for an item. It is organized through experience and exerts

influence on behaviour. Attitudes can be neutral or ambivalent as well.

Factors that affect the formation of a person’s attitude towards

social problems:

1. Family and teachers by shaping foundational moral values.

2. Society, peers and friends affect attitude formation. Example: while

parents would teach non-stealing, a child may end up in wrong

company and this may change his attitude towards it.

3. Past experience with respect to a social problem like crimes against women.

Example, experience of wrongdoings in Nirbhaya case shaped attitudes.

4. Other factors: media, social media, culture, region, religion, etc.

Contrasting attitudes about caste system include:

1. Many people justify it because of ignorance or prejudice.

2. Many believe against differentiating people on basis of caste.

3. Few believe that caste has been replaced by class.

4. For many, caste system has only negative effects on our society.

5. Some favour while others disapprove caste-based reservation.

Good upbringingand schooling

Moral Valuestaught

Moral valuesmay change/remain

same/change forgood or bad

Differentattitudes

Society, Peer,Friends, social

media

Contrasting attitudes exist because:

1. Upbringing and schooling differs from person to person, bringing contrast.

2. Conditioning of attitudes by region, religion and culture leads to differences.

3. Morals differ not only between societies but also within.

4. Some people get more affected by views of peers, friends or social

media than others.

5. Past experiences, self-efficacy and issue involvement are other reasons.

Hence, there are contrasting attitudes with respect to social issues

in a society, including India.