ATTITUDE Attitudes are emotionalised sets or predisposition that influence our behaviour with reference to all situations or objects

to which they are related. It is a predisposition towards a particular cognitive, emotional or behavioural reaction to an object, individual, group, situation or action is called attitude. An attitude is a fairly stable emotional tendency to respond consistently to some specific object, situation, person, or category of people. Attitudes are also much more specific than values, which dictate only broad preferences (Joseph, 2002). There is an agreement among most of the social psychologists such as Breckler (1984), Carlson (1993) that attitudes have three components in it; cognitive, affective and behavioural, and all three components are generally assumed to be inter-related and consistent with one another. The cognitive (thought) component refers to persons system of beliefs about the attitudinal object. The affective component encompasses the intensity of an individuals eval uation or the kind of emotional experience. The behavioural component is a predisposition to act in a certain attitudinal object. Feldman (1985) described that attitudes are organised, both internally (among the three components) and in relation to other attitudes. Bittel (1977) describes that an attitude is a persons point of view. Its a way of looking at something. But even more important, an attitude is a persons readiness to react and to react in a predetermined way. A baseball better ready to swing at a pitch, for instance, sets his feel, cooks his ear, and keeps his eyes on the pitcher. He has learnt from experience that this attitude gives him the best chance of getting hit. In the same way, a teacher and his student learn from their experience to assume a readiness to react when faced with a situation. Attitude serves as an index of how we think and feed about people, objects and issues in our environment. Besides, it is so commonly used in daily conversation that probably all of us have a

good common sense notion of the term. In addition, they provide clues to future behaviour, predicting how we will act when encountered by the objects of our beliefs. People can hold attitudes of varying degrees of favourability towards themselves, and towards any indiscriminate aspect of their environment. There is a wide range of attitude towards relatively abstract goals like courage, freedom, and honesty. It has often been observed that the object of an attitude is frequently perceived as having a goal character, which gives attitudes dynamiting character (Wicker, 1969). Attitudes are systems, which can either involve positive or negative emotions and feelings with reference to social object and issues. A students attitude towards lateness determines how conscientiously he tries to get work on time. Once attitude towards lateness will determine how much emphasis he places on tardiness as a measure of students performance. Generally, when it is said that we have a certain attitude towards something or someone, it is like a shorthand way of saying that we have feelings or thoughts of like or dislike (affect), trust or distrust (cognition), attraction or repulsion (behaviour) towards something and someone. And such feelings will tend to be reflected in what we say and do, and how we react to what others say and do. Eiser (1987) gives following assumptions in the use of term attitudes: 1. 2. 3. Attitudes are subjective experiences Attitudes are experiences of some issues or objects Attitudes are experiences of some issues or objects in terms of an evaluative dimension. 4. 5. 6. Attitudes involve evaluative judgements Attitudes may be expressed through language Expressions of attitudes are in principle intelligible

7. 8. 9.

Attitudes are communicated Different individuals can agree and disagrec in their attitudes People who hold different attitudes towards an object will differ in what they believe is true or false about the object.