ATTITUDES

 ·         Attitude - the tendency to respond positively or negatively to social value.

·         Attitudes affect perception, thinking, feeling and acting.

·         Attitude is formed by experience.

·         Formed attitude tends to persist.

Attitudes characteristics

• Polarity - Attitude can be positive or negative.
• Intensity - Attitude has some distinctiveness. It may be mild or strong.
• Intentionalty - Attitude always has an object. It concerns something: attitude to work, attitude towards money, attitude to premarital sex…

Example: You are college students. I suppose you have a positive (polarity) attitude to education (intentionality). However, your attitude may vary in intensity. You may like it a bit, but you can love it.

Structure of the Attitude

The attitude is made up of three parts. cognitive, emotional, acting.

1. Cognitive part - information, knowledge, experience and opinions about the object.
2. The emotional part - the emotional relation to the object, whether we like it or not.
3. Component - acting - a tendency to act, something to do with the object.

For the attitude to be formed, it must have the same polarity in all parts.

Example: If you have a positive attitude to education, it means that you know that education is important (cognitive part), you like to learn new things (emotional component) and you are learning (acting component).

 

Changes in the Attitude

The formed attitude can be changed. Changes in attitude: congruent, incongruent.

Changing congruent means increasing the intensity of attitude. The attitude still has the same polarity. It's fairly easy.

Example: In the case of a positive attitude towards education, just to add more information about why education is important.

Changing the incongruent means turning the attitude and changing its polarity. It is much more difficult because the emotional part has to be changed first. Incongruent change in attitude can therefore make only one whom you love.

For example, if you crazy fall in love with a person who does not like school, you can change your positive attitude towards education.