Attitude: Components and Functions

Attitude: Components and Functions

By Nikeeta Rathod

UPSC GENERAL STUDIES: Paper IV

Table of content

What is Attitude?

What are components of Attitude?

Functions of Attitude

* Function of Attitude Example

Important Attitude at workplace

Unfavourable Attitude at workplace

Attitude Change Theories

Persuasion

Political Attitude

* Development of Political Attitude

* Politics and Morality

* Morality as a modern Political Divide

You don’t hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.

What is Attitude? 

Attitude is the mental evaluation of the social situation that has the potential to guide the way we think, we feel, and we behave.

What are the components of Attitude?

Attitudes structure can be described in terms of three components.

Affective component: this involves a person’s feelings / emotions about the attitude object.

For example: “I am scared of spiders”.

Behavioral component: the way the attitude we have influences how we act or behave.

For example: “I will avoid spiders and scream if I see one”.

Cognitive component: this involves a person’s belief / knowledge about an attitude object.

For example: “I believe spiders are dangerous”.

This model is known as the ABC model of attitudes.

The Function of Attitudes

Attitudes can serve various functions for the individual.  Daniel Katz (1960) outlines four functional areas:

Knowledge Function

Attitudes provide meaning (knowledge) for life.  The knowledge function refers to our need for a world which is consistent and relatively stable. 

This allows us to predict what is likely to happen, and so gives us a sense of control. Attitudes can help us organize and structure our experience. 

Knowing a person’s attitude helps us predict their behavior.

For example, knowing that a person is religious we can predict they will go to Church.

Self/Ego Expressive Function

The attitudes we express

(1) Help communicate who we are and

(2) May make us feel good because we have asserted our identity. 

Self-expression of attitudes can be non-verbal too: think bumper sticker, cap, or T-shirt slogan. 

Therefore, our attitudes are part of our identity, and help us to be aware through the expression of our feelings, beliefs and values.

Adaptive Function

If a person holds and/or expresses socially acceptable attitudes, other people will reward them with approval and social acceptance. 

For example, when people flatter their bosses or instructors (and believe it) or keep silent if they think an attitude is unpopular.  Again, expression can be nonverbal. 

Attitudes then, are to do with being a part of a social group and the adaptive functions helps us fit in with a social group. People seek out others who share their attitudes, and develop similar attitudes to those they like.

Ego defensive function 

The ego-defensive function refers to holding attitudes that protect our self-esteem or that justify actions that make us feel guilty.

For example, one way children might defend themselves against the feelings of humiliation they have experienced in P.E. lessons is to adopt a strongly negative attitude to all sports.

People whose pride have suffered following a defeat in sport might similarly adopt a defensive attitude: “I’m not bothered, I’m sick of rugby anyways”.  This function has psychiatric overtones. 

Positive attitudes towards ourselves, for example, have a protective function (i.e. an ego-defensive role) in helping us reserve our self-image.

The basic idea behind the functional approach is that attitudes help a person to mediate between their own inner needs (expression, defense) and the outside world (adaptive and knowledge).

Functions of Attitudes Example

Imagine you are very patriotic about being British.  This might cause you to have an ethnocentric attitude towards everything not British.  Imagine further that you are with a group of like-minded friends. You say:

“Of course, there’s no other country as good as Britain to live in.  Other places are alright in their own way, but they can’t compare with your mother county.”

(There are nods of approval all round. You are fitting in - adaptive).  The people in the group are wearing England football shirts (This is the self-expression function).

Then imagine you go on to say:

“The trouble with foreigners is that they don’t speak English.  I went to France last year and they were ignorant. Even if they could speak our language they wouldn’t do so.  I call that unfriendly.

(Others agree with you and tell you of their similar experiences.  You are making sense of things. This is the knowledge function).

Then someone who has never travelled takes things a stage further “I don’t mind foreigners coming here on holiday…but they shouldn’t be allowed to live here….taking our jobs and living off social security. Britain for the British is what I say, so you can’t get a decent job in your own country.”

(Now the others in the room join in scapegoating foreigners and demonstrating the ego defensive function of attitudes).

Important Attitude at workplace

Respectfulness

Respect is a very important attitude in the workplace and deals with the way in which employees interact with management, clients as well as co-workers. 

Pridefulness

It might seem as if being prideful is a good attitude to have in the workplace, but most employees who have a prideful attitude about their work tend to work harder to excel. A prideful attitude mean that for an employee the outcomes of their tasks and how they contribute to the company matter a great deal to him.

Commitment

Employees who have a committed attitude show a willingness to do whatever it takes to fulfill the duties of their positions and via the development of new ideas make the company even better.

Innovation

Employees with an innovative attitude don't shy away from trying something new or finding a different way to do things. Employees with this type of attitude know their ideas might not work out to be the best way to do something, but that the biggest failure is not at least giving new ideas a shot.

Helpfulness

It is important to have a helpful attitude at work, whether that means assisting clients and customers with their needs or helping co-workers accomplish overall company goals.

Unfavourable Attitude at workplace

Jugaad:

It seems to exist only within our society. It as a term applied to a creative or innovative idea providing a quick, alternative way of solving or fixing a problem, it misses two important.

First, there is an implicit understanding that because the solution needs to be quick and creative, it is acceptable to make a compromise on the quality of what is produced.

Second, because we focus on making “it” work just-in-time, we never think of making the solution that last. That leads to poor quality.

Chalta hai attitude:

The  notion of chalta-hai  accept that if it is 80 per cent good, works 80 per cent of the time, and does 80 per cent of what it needs to do, it is acceptable. This attitude manifests itself in almost every facet of common life in India

Attitude change theory

Dissonance theory

Attitude can be changed by planting an idea that challenges the contrast in your beliefs.

Example: Tax evasion is same as corruption. So tax evader will either try to justify his action or change his tax-evasion behavior.

Elaboration likelihood model 

If you’re sleepy/just woken up then your cognitive capacity is very low. Your elaboration will be low, but if you’re doing math your elaboration level will be high.

So depending on your place in the elaboration spectrum, your persuasion capacity will change.

Advertisement works on people in low cognitive capacity mode. But it doesn’t have long lasting effect, so today you bought one brand mobile, after six months, another brand.

In governance, people have to be convinced during their high cognitive mode, for long lasting impact.

Learning theory

Attitude change can be made by actively persuading others. Persuasion as an effective means of attitude change is explained below.

Persuasion

Concept

Persuasion is our effort to bring about an attitudinal change in others through the use of various types of messages.

Factors Affecting Persuasive Capability

Attractiveness: Communicators who are attractive in some way (say physically) are more persuasive.

That is why celebrities are invited for TV commercial.

Source credibility: Persuasion is also affected by the credibility of the source/persuader.

This credibility may derive from the expert value of the persuader

For example, toothpaste ads show dentists recommending.
This credibility also depends upon the perceived trustworthiness. For example, a politician talking on ethics may not have any credibility. Mahatma Gandhi had a mass appeal.

Multiplicity of sources: If some message is delivered by multiple credible sources, then it is more persuading in general.

Example, if you are carrying a ring and 10 people say that it is not gold (and they are not experts), we are likely to change our attitude and start suspecting whether the ring is genuine or not. 

Familiarity with the persuader: We are more likely to be persuaded by in-group members than random people. We develop a group bias by the virtue of our membership of a particular group.

Example, we will always prefer a tribal to go and talk to tribal to persuade them.
Common sense: Messages in consonance with the receiver's common sense are likely to be more persuasive.

Design/presentation of the message: This is also very important.
Messages that do not appear to be designed to change our attitude are often more successful that seem to be designed to achieve this goal.

Political Attitude

Political Attitude include knowledge and skills about the operation of the political system, positive and negative judgments about the system

These attitudes determine how people participate, whom they vote for and which political parties they support. The factors which make attitudes are family, gender, religion, race, ethnicity and region. 

Development of Political Attitude 

Political attitude formulation is a learning process by which an individual acquires orientations, beliefs, values and norms and behavior patterns in political system.

Political attitude formulation is a psychological concept as it is concerned with the society in general and with individual in particular. 

Attitude Formulation in Childhood

A child develops his attitude towards the authority and obedience as per the obedience pattern at family. 

A child recognizes authority through particular individual such as parents, policemen and the president of the country.

Adulthood as the next Stage of Attitude Formulation 

In this stage the attitude formulation takes places due to peer groups. The way the peer groups behave that way only patterns of obedience and disobedience are decided. 

Attitude Formulation in Various Directions

The process of attitude formulation have its influence in various directions

Media plays an important role in shaping our political attitudes.

Apart from mainstream media, today, new media provides cheaper and easier ways to influence people’s political attitudes.

New media includes Internet and digital based forms of mass communication, including social media. 

Politics and Morality

Morality is an individual characteristic and determines his or her actions.

Politics on the other hand belong to the public and it is the collective opinion of the public which determines the public policy.

Contributions of morality in politics can be extrapolated to ancient beginnings of government.

Many rulers of the past established their authority based on the personal charisma, ability, charity etc. 

All these qualities were considered essential by people to be wise and just. Morality played a vital role in politics of antiquity.

Morality’s role in modern politics has evolved as morality itself has evolved.

It is the morality which ultimately underlies all discussions of public policy. Areas which were hitherto morally elusive like foreign affairs, health care, economics, etc. have now joined the traditional moral flash points like abortion, biological research etc. 

Morality as a Modern Political Divide

Morality at the center of current political debates is more social than personal and its considerations are manifested in many social issues like gay rights, scientific research, health-care etc. 

Morality also provides a known frame which allows all political arguments and concepts to be learnt and understood. This stands in contrast to all social and economic forces which need specialist analysis.

Such political arguments are open to all interpretations and misinterpretations. Democracy functions well only if there is a healthy divide of opinions.