Shahrear 081406

Attitude
An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individuals degree of like or dislike for something. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event, this is often referred to as the attitude object. People can also be conflicted or ambivalent toward an object, meaning that they simultaneously possess both positive and negative attitudes toward the item in question. It may also be abstract and is linked with perception, motivation and learning and is shaped by cultures and sub-cultures.

Definition of Attitude
According to Gordon Allport An Attitude is a mental and neural state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive influence upon the individual responses, to all objects and situations with which it is related. According to Collins Dictionary of Sociology A learnt and enduring tendency to perceive or act towards persons or situations in a particular way. According to Oxford Dictionary of Sociology A relatively enduring organization of beliefs around and object or situation predisposing one to respond in some preferential manner. According to Penguin Dictionary of Sociology A relatively stable system of beliefs concerning some object and resulting in an evaluation of that object.

Features of Attitude
There are some definitive features of attitudes and are > An attitude defines ones position toward a given aspect of his conceptual world. > Attitude is rooted in motivation and emotion of an individual. > Attitude is integrated into and organized system, although this does not exclude the possibility of contradictions of the totality of attitudes and opinions. > Attitude has become part of personality and defines the individuals ego structure.

Elements of Attitude
According to Secord and Backman (1964), there are three basic elements of attitude, namely (a) (b) (c)

A cognitive component beliefs and ideas. An affective/evaluative component values and emotions. An action/behavioral component predisposition to act and actions.
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Philosophical Assumptions
Many of the ideas developed by historical and modern theorists stem from the basic philosophical assumptions they hold. The study of attitude is not a purely empirical discipline, as it brings in elements of art, science, and philosophy to draw general conclusions. The following five categories are some of the most fundamental philosophical assumptions on which theorists disagree:
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Freedom versus Determinism: This is the debate over whether we have control over our own behavior and understand the motives behind it (Freedom), or if our behavior is causally determined by forces beyond our control (Determinism). Determinism has been considered unconscious, environmental, or biological by various theories. Heredity versus Environment: Attitude is thought to be determined largely by genetics and biology, by environment and experiences, or by some combination resulting thereof. There is evidence for all possibilities. Contemporary research suggests that most attitudinal traits are based on the joint influence of genetics and environment. Uniqueness versus Universality: The argument over whether we are all unique individuals (Uniqueness) or if humans are basically similar in their nature (Universality). Gordon Allport, Abraham Maslow, and Carl Rogers were all advocates of the uniqueness of individuals. Behaviorists and cognitive theorists, in contrast, emphasized the importance of universal principles such as reinforcement and self-efficacy. Active versus Reactive: Behavioral theorists typically believe that humans are passively shaped by their environments, whereas humanistic and cognitive theorists believe that humans are more active. Optimistic versus Pessimistic: Attitude theories differ on whether people can change their personalities (Optimism), or if they are doomed to remain the same throughout their lives (Pessimism). Theories that place a great deal of emphasis on learning are often, but not always, more optimistic than theories that do not emphasize learning.

Determinants of Attitude
There are some basic factors that determine human attitude, evolved within an individual, and those are Heredity refers to those factors that were determined at conception. Physical structure, facial attractiveness, gender, temperament, muscle composition and reflexes, energy level, and biological rhythms are characteristics that are generally considered to be either completely or substantially influenced by who your parents were, that is by their biological, physiological and inherent psychological makeup. (B) The Environmental factors that exert pressures on our attitude formation are the culture in which we are raised, our early conditioning, the norms among our family, friends and social groups, and other influences that we experience. The environment to which we are exposed plays a substantial role in shaping our personalities. (C) A third factor, the Situation, influences the effects of heredity and environment on attitude. An individuals attitude although generally stable and consistent, does change in different situations. The varying demand of different situation calls forth different aspects of ones attitude.
(A)

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The Formation of Attitude

An attitude plays a central role in personality formation and social functioning. Hence, we must understand the bases of attitude formation to investigate in regard to attitude. Some factors are integrated to the formation of attitude, such as:
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B)

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The Cultural Bases: The cultural situation sets limits to the shaping and expression of attitudes. For example, if we compare the rigidity of thinking and expression of an autocratic system in compared to a democratic system, we realize that the differences are based on the culture. In addition, attitude is related to various ways to the cultural framework. Attitude may be deliberately cultivated, as in the school or churches, or they may be acquired in non-institutionalized fashion through the primary groups. The Personality Factors: Personality factors, as an influence in attitudes, have been mentioned in connection with cognitive dissonance experiments. Personality traits may operate to determine: > The readiness to change on a given variable to accept the idea of fluoridation in the water system; > The resistance to change on a given variable (relevance to vote for a candidate because of family tradition); or > The preference for a given mode of dissonance reduction rather than another (if we are disappointed in the performance of our candidate once he is in an office, we may rationalize his shortcomings). The Reference Groups: Group living involves roles, status and norms with the proliferation of groups to which the individual belongs in modern urban life. There are strong pressures to conform to a given set of attitudes. The Problem of Consistency: An attitude may be regarded as a Latent Variable as it offers a number of diverse components with potentially wide range of beliefs and feelings as well as a number of consequences for action. While beliefs are almost exclusively cognitive in nature, attitudes have cognitive, affective and behavioral components. For example, attitudes associated with belief in a divinity may not be altogether consistent with ones day to day ethical practices or ones faith in scientific methods. Verbalized Attitudes and Overt Behavior: As mentioned above, considerable discrepancy has been found between publicly expressed attitudes and privately held attitudes, the stability of attitudes and their predictability in every behavior are related to the total value structure of the individual and to the group to which he belongs and it norms. The Role of Values: Values are a type of norms and are closely related to attitudes. At the same time, they are kind of motives. In the broadest sense, we may think of values as attitude-related attributes that are projected upon people, objects and situations. Values can be considered as inclusive attitudes or as dominant clusters of attitudes. Socialization: Since we live in society, we become socialized and socialization helps our attitude to form. It directly builds up our attitudes and the agencies of socialization (family, peer group, school/educational institutions, mass media, state, working place, religion) play an important role in the formation of individuals attitude.

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Theories of Attitude
A number of psychological theories have been suggested to explain how attitudes form and why they change. The theories most frequently employed can be categorized as either
(A)

Learning Theories

Doob was the first researcher to suggest that learning principles could be applied to attitudes. He proposed that the principles of classical and instrumental conditioning could be used to explain the formation and change of attitudes. # Classical Conditioning: On successive occasion, a neural stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus. Over time, the previously neural stimulus may begin to elicit a response similar to that produced by the conditioned stimulus. # Instrumental conditioning: In which the reward consequences of any behavior shape its subsequent enactment is obviously relevant to attitude formation and change. However, instrumental conditioning is especially important in social influence situations involving interactions with others (membership in clubs or groups).
(B)

Consistency Theories

A second group of attitude theories focuses on the individuals attempt to maintain consistency among the numerous attitudes s/he holds. # Balance Theory: It involves the relations between a person and two attitude objects. The three elements are connected by either favorable (good, liking or positive) attitudes or unfavorable (bad, disliking or negative) attitudes. The basic tenet of balance theory is a tendency to maintain or restore balance in ones attitude structures. Unbalanced structures are somehow uncomfortable or unpleasant. # Cognitive Dissonance: Developed by Leon Festinger, it focuses on individuals, who are assumed to strive for harmony (consonance) among the elements in their cognitive, or thought, structure. The creation of dissonance, similar to the creation of imbalance, is thought to be distressful and to motivate the person to restore consonance. The creation of dissonance, however, can occur under a wider set of circumstances than can the creation of imbalance. There are two major ways for a person to reduce dissonance: (a) to change one of the cognitive elements or (b) to add a new cognitive element. The smoker, for example, who hears of the link between smoking and health can stop smoking or can choose not to believe the link.
(C)

Cognitive-Response Theories

Cognitive-response approaches focus on the fact that the recipient does more than react to the external information; the recipient also generates thoughts about the information. These thoughts can increase, neutralizer, or even reverse the intended impact of the information. These approaches also emphasize the role of the persons cognitive organization in determining how information is interpreted, remembered and retrieved. This approach appears to be extremely promising in adding to our understanding of attitude processes.

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Factors in Attitude Change

The formation and change of attitudes is part of the ongoing process of living. Attitude formation and change occur in the context of existing interpersonal relationships, group memberships, and particular situations; and they span various time, periods. There are some factors of attitude change and these are Source of the Message: Messages must originate somewhere from a person, a group or an institutions. The originator of the message is known as the source, and the characteristics of the source can affect the impact of the message. Credibility The more reasons we have to believe the person sending a message, the more likely we are to be persuaded by it. There are two main aspects of credibility, (a) expertness is special knowledge and skills, and (b) trustworthiness resolves around the truthfulness of the source. Attractiveness It seems intuitively reasonable that increases in source credibility add to messages persuasiveness. A sources credibility provides information about the reliability of the information, but the message must be unique and must attract individual to pursue on. 2. Context of the Message: Messages contain words and other symbols that convey information. However, it has some basic elements/parts, that need to be considered Suggestion Advertisers and propagandist often rely on suggestion, the uncritical acceptance of the statement. They design their message to let people believe in and pursue on, without requiring facts. Appeals to Fear Another method of persuading people is to try to scare them. Political candidates may claim that if the other side wins, the country will suffer high inflation, poorer services, or even civil war. One-Sided Versus Two-Sided Messages To convince people of ones point of view, it is better to present both sides of that issue. During the World War II, US Army conveys both sides of information to let his soldiers to realize the extent and viciousness of the war as well as to encourage them to fight against the GermanItaly-Japan trio to let people live a peaceful, democratic way of living. 3. Receiver of the Message: The whole point of sending message is to get receivers to do something they would not otherwise do. All receivers, however, do not necessarily respond in the same way to a given message. It may be instructive to look at a few of the many receiver characteristics that have been studied. Influenciability Some people are more easily influenced than others and that some people are downright gullible. The latter, bombarded with conflicting viewpoints, will believe the one they heard most recently. Selective Attention and Interpretation Whether a message will influence a recipient depends upon how it is perceived and interpreted. Immunization People who had heard either one or two sided message in favor of a particular topic were exposed to a message arguing the opposite position.
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Measurement of Attitude
The scientific study of attitudes requires that they be measured. This means that peoples evaluation of a given attitude object must be translated into some number system. Many techniques are in current use and they may vary from simple to complex.

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Self-Report Methods: Whenever an individual is asked to express his/her preferences to an interviewer or to write his/her evaluations of something on a long questionnaire, it means s/he is involved in a self-report method for measuring his/her attitude. A public opinion poll is an example of self-report method, which relies on peoples willingness to report their attitudes and opinions. (B) Involuntary Behavioral Measures: Self-report measures are accurate only to the extent that respondents are willing or able to report their attitudes correctly. However, accuracy could be increased if attitude indicators were discover that were not under the voluntary control of the respondents. The search for such measures has often led to studying the bodys physiological responses to attitude objects.
(A)

Attitude Scales
Psychologists and sociologists had developed scales for the measurement of attitude of the individuals. An attitude scale attempts to obtain a precise measure of the extremely of peoples attitudes. (1) Thurstones Scale Louis L. Thurstone and E.J. Chave (1929) in their classic study of attitudes toward the Church developed an interval scale by using the method of equal-appearing intervals. To construct the Thurstone scale, a large number of statements is collected which express various possible opinions about the issue or object of study. These statements, after an editing for relevance and clarity, are given to judges, who are to independently sort them into eleven sets along a continuum that ranges from most unfavorable, through neutral, to most favorable. The eleven sets of statements are to occupy positions in the continuum in such a way that the positions are at equal intervals; that is, the difference between any two adjacent positions is the same as the one between any other two adjacent positions. For the final form of the scale, only those items are retained that have high interjudge agreement and fall at equal intervals. The judges are to assign the statements to appropriate positions on the scale only on the logical basis of how favorable or unfavorable an opinion every statement expresses by itself and not how far the judges personally agree or disagree with the statements. The average judged position of a statement on the eleven-point continuum is the scale value for that statement. Thus, when a Thurstone scale is ready, every statement in it (there are usually about twenty statements) has a numerical value already determined. When administered, the respondent just checks the items s/he agrees with and her/his attitude score is the mean value of the items s/he checked. (2) Likerts Scale For the Likert scale, various opinion statements are collected, edited and then given to a group of subjects to rate the statements on a five-point continuum: 1=strongly agree; 2=agree; 3=undecided; 4=disagree; and 5=strongly disagree. The subjects express the degree (one to five) of their personal agreement or disagreement with each of the statements. Only those items which in the analysis best differentiate the high scorers and the low scorers of the sample subjects are retained and the scale is ready for use. To measure the attitude of a given group of respondents, this scale is given to them and every respondent indicates whether s/he strongly agrees, agrees, is undecided, disagrees, or strongly disagrees with each statement. The respondents attitude score is the sum of her/his ratings of all the statements. For this reason, the Likert scale is also known as the scale of Summated Ratings.
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In the Thurstone scale, the respondent checks only those items with which s/he agrees, whereas in the Likert scale s/he indicates her/his degree of agreement or disagreement for all the items in the scale. Further, the development of a Likert scale does not require a panel of judges. It may also be noted that Likert did not assume equal intervals between the scale points. His scale is ordinal and, therefore, can only order respondents attitudes on a continuum; it does not indicate the magnitude of difference between respondents. By and large, a great majority of researchers prefer the Likert technique to Thurstones. In many current research studies we come across seven-point scales being used, which bear the appearance of the Likert scale. It must be noted that the typical Likert technique requires an item analysis to establish that all the items in the scale measure the same attitude -- no matter whether the scale has five or more points. (3) Bogardus Social-distance Scale Back in 1933, E.S. Bogardus developed an attitude scale, called the social-distance scale, which became a classic instrument to measure attitudes toward ethnic groups. Different nationalities or racial groups are listed and various possible relationships with them are also given: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Close As As As As As Would exclude kinship by personal neighbors colleagues citizens visitors from my marriage chums country American -------Chinese -------English -------French -------Negroes -------The respondent is asked to indicate the relationships to which s/he is willing to admit members of each group. Her/his attitude is measured by the closeness of the relationship s/he chooses. The social-distance scale implied that a respondent who admitted a stimulus person to a particular relationship would also admit him/her to all other relationships which are related and are less close than the chosen relationship. Thus, if a person says that s/he would take a member of a given group as spouse, s/he would also have him/her as a friend or neighbor. But, such an assumption about the cumulative nature of the items in the scale would hold good only if all the items expressed one and the same aspect or dimension of the attitude in question. A person may be willing to marry a member of a particular group purely for the advantages such a marriage might entitle her/him to, but s/he may not be ready to have a member from that group as friend or neighbor. (4) Guttmans Scalogram With a view to ensuring a cumulative measure of attitudes, Guttman developed a more refined Scalogram to measure unidimensional attitudes. The scalogram consists of a set of statements related to the attitude in question and arranged in increasing order of difficulty of acceptance. It is based on the same logic as the one in the Standford-Binet test of intelligence: if a person solves a difficult item, s/he should be able to solve all simpler items. The same way, if a person agrees with a statement that expresses a higher degree of a given attitude, s/he must be agreeable to all other statements which express lower degrees of the same attitude. Obviously, this logic holds good only
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if all the items in the scale are from one and the same universe, that is, the scale measures the same aspect of a particular attitude. To construct the scalogram, opinion statements are collected and arranged in such a way that most people would accept the first statement and, going down the list, fewer and fewer persons would accept the subsequent statements. The list of statements, thus arranged, is given to sample subjects in order to test the increasing degree of acceptance. Based on the "accept" responses of respondents, the items are accordingly modified, arranged, and tested again on sample subjects. This process continues till a scalable (i.e., empirically tested for increasing degree of acceptance) set of items is developed. The final set of statements with their particular order is the scalogram. When this instrument is used for measuring a persons attitude, the person checks all the items s/he accepts. The persons score is the total number of successive or nearly successive items s/he has checked. In practice, however, it has been observed that rarely respondents check items without skipping one or more items. This phenomenon confirms the difficulty involved in preparing a perfectly unidimensional scale. It may also point to the probable fact that people in real life respond not to a single dimension of reality, but to peculiar combinations of them. (5) The Semantic Differential The now-classic research by Osgood and his colleagues, based on extensive factor-analytic studies across cultures, has shown that people understand, or give meaning to, words or concepts along three dominant dimensions--the evaluative (good-bad) dimension, the potency (strong-weak) dimension, and the activity (active-passive) dimension. It has also been found that scores on the evaluative dimension correlate highly with other measures of attitude toward a particular social object. The Semantic Differential, developed by Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum, can be used to measure attitudes from the meaning (semantic = meaning or psychological significance) which people give to a word or concept that is related to an attitude object. This instrument consists of a series of bipolar adjectives such as fair-unfair, pleasant-unpleasant, good-bad, clean-dirty, valuableworthless, etc. Each pair constitutes a continuum of seven points, the endpoints being the opposites of the adjective pairs and the midpoint being the neutral position. A sample of the bipolar continuum is given below: Fair. 1_______2_______3______4______5_______6_______7 Unfair Valuable 1_______2_______3______4______5_______6_______7 Worthless Good. 1_______2_______3______4______5_______6_______7 Bad Suppose, by means of the Semantic Differential, you want to measure an individuals attitude towards legalized abortion. The respondent is given a set of bipolar adjectives (such as the ones sampled above) and s/he is asked to indicate as to where for her/him the given attitude object (legalized abortion) falls in each continuum. The numeral corresponding to the position checked by the subject is her/his score for that continuum. Ones overall attitude score is the sum (or the mean) of the scores on all the continua.