History of Attitude in Social Psychology
- The late 1910s and early 1920s were a crucial time for the study of attitudes. By the late 1920s, the attitude had established itself as a distinct branch of social psychology (Baumeister & Bushman, 2017).
- In current social psychology, attitude has emerged as one of the essential ideas.
- With the rapid emergence of strongly cognitive social psychology, attitude issues dropped out of popularity, though the concept recovered its momentum in the 1980s (McDougall, 2015).
- Historically speaking, along with group dynamics and attribution studies, the research on attitudes has played a crucial role in the development of social psychology, gaining possibly more attention than any other domain.
One and Two Component Attitude Model
- According to the one-component attitude model, positive and negative assessments are arranged inside and between the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components of attitudes in this approach (Hogg & Vaughan, 2018). Positive attitudes prevent negative feelings, beliefs, and behaviors from developing.
- The simplest example is that a person with a negative attitude towards a particular football team is unlikely to have positive feelings, beliefs, and behaviors towards it.
- According to the two-component model, value relevance and perceived instrumentality are independent characteristics that play a crucial role in attitude formation (Baumeister & Bushman, 2017). The likelihood of “readiness” of each belief that makes up the connection, and the value of impact connected with each belief, make up this model (Hogg & Vaughan, 2018).
- One example of this model’s is student motivation, which tends to decline with time in school. As the school loses its perceived value to the students, students’ attitude deteriorates.
Three Components Attitude Model
Three components model can also be used to define the attitude structure. One of the model’s basic assumptions is that the link between attitudes and conduct is based on consistency (Baumeister & Bushman, 2017).
- The affective component contains a person’s sentiments and emotions towards the relationship’s object (Hogg & Vaughan, 2018).
- The behavioral component examines how a person’s attitude affects how they act and behave (Hogg & Vaughan, 2018).
- The cognitive component of the connection involves a person’s views or knowledge about the relationship’s object (Hogg & Vaughan, 2018).
Example – the fear of heights:
- Fear of heights is an affective component for a person.
- “I can pass out if I am at the height” is a behavioral component.
- A hypothetical fall from a great height will result in death, which is the cognitive component.
Function of Attitudes
- Social adjustment
- Leads people away from unpleasant, undesirable items and towards pleasant or useful objects. It promotes the utilitarian principles of maximizing rewards and minimum punishments (Hogg & Vaughan, 2018).
- Ego-Defensive
- Relates to attitudes that safeguard one’s self-esteem or rationalize behaviors (McDougall, 2015). People utilize defensive attitudes to shield themselves from psychological injury.
- Utilitarian
- Required to aid a person in acquiring a certain reward or avoiding a punishment (McDougall, 2015). For instance, a buyer could display a positive attitude toward a useful product and a negative attitude toward a low-quality competitor.
- Value-expressing
- Allow people to express their core values, which tend to build an identity and gain popular acceptance (Baumeister & Bushman, 2017).
- Knowledge
- It aids in attributing causes to occurrences and drawing attention to characteristics of persons or circumstances that are likely to aid in comprehension.
- Predicting Behaviors
- Attitudes can only be utilized to predict behaviors when the latter are recurrently stable and reflect one’s inherent values and needs.
Behavioral Approach
- The Theory of Planned Behavior reflects behavioral approaches to attitude development.
- Behavioral intent is an important part of this approach. Attitudes toward the likelihood that the conduct will result in the expected outcome, as well as a subjective appraisal of the risks and advantages of this outcome, impact behavioral intentions (McDougall, 2015).
- Researchers have taken parts of the Planned Behavior Theory features and combined them with other behavioral theories to create a more integrated model in recent years (Hewstone et al., 2018).
Cognitive Approach
- The discrepancies that occur between linked beliefs, knowledge, and judgments are the focus of attitude cognitive consistency models.
- They all have the same aim in mind: to minimize inconsistency and restore balance to the person (Baumeister & Bushman, 2017). This category includes various models.
- The cognitive dissonance model can assist in forecasting a person’s willingness to modify their beliefs and actions.
- The balancing model is linked to a series of judgments about individuals and issues linked by some kind of relationship.
- The congruity model focuses on associative and dissociative statements that cause changes in source.
Heuristic-Systematic Model
The heuristic-systematic model has had a significant influence on practical research and has become a fundamental paradigm in social psychology. The attitude can alter in two main ways:
- Processing is one method in which people carefully evaluate available information before making an opinion (Hogg & Vaughan, 2018). The heuristic-systematic approach, on the other hand, implies that attitudes are often developed swiftly due to people’s lack of time and capacity to think critically.
- Heuristic processing is a simplified kind of relationship evaluation that incorporates the use of heuristics to judge what a person’s relationship should be. According to the heuristic-systematic paradigm, specific reasons or aims might impact attitudes.
Attitude Scales & Covert Measures
Attitude Scales
- By summing the numerical ratings collected by researchers in people’s replies to sets of statements that examine facets of a key issue, attitude scales give a quantitative assessment of attitudes, views, or values (Hogg & Vaughan, 2018).
- Informants are asked to respond to a statement or question using a defined range of levels on an attitude scale. Combinations of their differences can be used to show underlying attitudes that are linked to other social factors (McDougall, 2015).
- For instance, a study exploring the link between religion, civil rights, and gender looked for degrees of agreement or disagreement in statements that intertwined numerous topics.
Covert Measures
- Covert measurements can also be used to assess attitudes, when the attitude is assessed indirectly. Observing behavior such as a person’s body language or tone of their voice is one of the possible options in this case (Baumeister & Bushman, 2017).
- Face electromyography, for example, is a device that evaluates facial muscle activity in connection to emotions and relationships (McDougall, 2015).
- The Implicit Association Test (IAT), which is based on how quickly people respond to pairings of thoughts (McDougall, 2015). For example, continuous gestures can be interpreted as a certain attitude.
References
Baumeister, R. F., & Bushman, B. J. (2017). Social psychology and human nature (4th ed.). Cengage Learning.
Hewstone, M. E., Stroebe, W. E., & Jonas, K. E. (2018). Introduction to social psychology (8th ed.). Blackwell Publishing.
Hogg, M. A., & Vaughan, G. M. (2018). Social psychology. Pearson Education Ltd.
McDougall, W. (2015). An introduction to social psychology. Psychology Press.