Attitude: content, structure, function and its influence and relation with thought and behaviour

General Studies- IV: Ethics, Integrity, and Aptitude

Attitude: content, structure, function; its influence and relation with thought and behaviour; moral and political attitudes; social influence and persuasion  

Attitude

Attitude is the evaluation of various aspects of the world. It can be evaluation of an idea, object, action (eg: playing cricket or watching football match etc) or about a person (eg: towards mahendra singh dhoni or sachin tendulkar). The attitude may be strong (eg: attitude towards drinking behaviour – people usually have strong opinion for or against drinking) or weak. The formation of an attitude may be associated with a belief system (eg; attitude towards eating a particular food may be related to religious beliefs – here the belief system rather than rational thought creates attitude).

The attitude may be formed by direct experience or observation. Eg: You see the new ad of ford ecosport you develop a particular attitude towards it. Then you go for a test drive. (attitude towards the vehicle created by ad leads you to do a particular behaviour). Your attitude towards it may change after the test drive!. That means by direct experience you have gained a new attitude.

Functions of attitude

The attitude helps to form a self-concept about us. You like a particular type of movies or music or hobby. All these add up to create an image about yourself in your mind. Eg: When you tell to your girlfriend, “I like playing guitar, i love rugby and love to chill!”, then it’s all ways in which your attitude is shown. These attitudes help create an image of you in her mind and yours.[value-expressive function]

It helps in guiding our actions towards people, ideas, objects etc. Eg: Negative feeling about certain cities as dirty or crowded is an attitude that guides us in taking a particular action. It acts as a protective mechanism in some cases – by avoiding the negative impact.[instrumental]

Attitude can serve knowledge function. It can also serve ego-defensive function.

Relation between attitude and behaviour

Does attitude always lead to behavior  The answer is “NO”. Attitude always doesn't lead to behavior  Eg: Three friends Arun, Varun and Tarun always talk about the evil practice of corruption in their hostel room in Delhi. It was during that time Anna hazare gave a call for Action against corruption. Arun bunked his class and went to Jantar Mantar to protest. Varun’s action against corruption was limited to pressing “like” button in facebook seeing the picture shared by Arun. Tarun enjoyed a pizza with gf, taking care to avoid the road through Jantar Mantar. The three guys hold attitude against corruption but chose to act in different ways [Attitude always doesn’t get converted to behaviour]

An interesting study on the relation between attitude and behaviour was done by Lapierre. He visited around 184 restaurants with Chinese couple. They weren’t turned away (in a area where negative attitude exists against the Chinese) by any of the restaurants. After around 6months, Lapierre did a survey in the same restaurants. The survey enquired whether they would serve Chinese customers. The reply from restaurants was negative. [Attitude against something may not get converted to action always]. When someone is turned away, think how strong the attitude must be. In places like Mumbai, certain community members of society are turned away from accommodation or sale of property by another and vice versa. This shows that prejudice exists to a real dangerous level and that a silly simple event may trigger problems. The whole exercise of healing work is done only when trouble erupts. In fact work should have been done eons back to avoid the trouble. Only when it boils out, a solution is searched. [Prevent/reduce prejudiced attitude for community harmony]

Eg: A voter is highly against corruption and he hates corrupt people. But during election he votes for a very corrupt person who belongs to his community!. Here his attitude towards the corruption has been washed away by another attitude. Here two attitudes competed and one won.[One attitude may be overcome by another]

Thus we see that relation between the attitude and behaviour is rather not so simple. The theory of planned behaviour is an attempt to explain this. The factors other than attitude that affects behaviour are shown in the diagram.

click on pic to enlarge