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Changing Attitudes

Attitudes are evaluations of objects, ideas, and people that can guide thoughts and behaviors, and changing them requires identifying and overcoming barriers such as prior commitments and insufficient information. Strategies for changing attitudes include breaking prior commitments, providing new information, and utilizing methods like classical conditioning and mere exposure. Cognitive dissonance theory explains the discomfort felt when holding conflicting beliefs, motivating individuals to change their behavior or beliefs to alleviate that tension.

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42 views3 pages

Changing Attitudes

Attitudes are evaluations of objects, ideas, and people that can guide thoughts and behaviors, and changing them requires identifying and overcoming barriers such as prior commitments and insufficient information. Strategies for changing attitudes include breaking prior commitments, providing new information, and utilizing methods like classical conditioning and mere exposure. Cognitive dissonance theory explains the discomfort felt when holding conflicting beliefs, motivating individuals to change their behavior or beliefs to alleviate that tension.

Uploaded by

oge rana
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Changing Attitudes

Attitudes are general evaluations of objects, ideas, and people one encounters throughout one’s life (e.g.,
“capital punishment is bad”). Attitudes are important because they can guide thought, behavior, and
feelings. Attitude change occurs anytime an attitude is modified. Thus, change occurs when a person goes
from being positive to negative, from slightly positive to very positive, or from having no attitude to having
one

The first step in trying to change or modify attitudes is to identify the barriers in it and demolish them. The
common barriers are as follows:

Prior Commitment

Prior commitment of people prevents attitudinal change in them. It is actually disposition towards certain
beliefs. For example, a graduate from a foreign university would often be considered suitable for a number
of jobs irrespective of his interest and aptitude, based on the belief that he or she is a foreign qualified
person. This belief may be harmful for the organization. It is actually a prior commitment of the hiring
people.

Insufficient Information

Another barrier to bringing about attitudinal change is insufficiency of information. People do not find

sufficient reasons for changing their attitude which may become a hindrance in changing attitudes.

How to Change Attitudes

Find prior commitment, break it

Probably most overlooked is this strategy. Most often we forget that one of the reasons people don't change
their attitude is that they have made a conscious or subconscious prior commitment. Uncovering those
hidden agendas usually results in an opportunity to change one's attitude about previous commitments.

Provide new/different information

Often, people don't see or feel the need to change. Providing information to support change or the need to
change can often open previously closed doors. Communicating change initiatives prior to implementation
is often scary but almost always better than not doing it until the implementation begins.

Classical Conditioning.
One way to produce attitude change in the absence of effortful thought is to repeatedly associate an initially
neutral attitude object with another stimulus that already possesses a positive or negative meaning. For
example, imagine that every time you saw your uncle as a child he took you to the zoo. Assuming you enjoy
going to the zoo, you will likely start to feel more positively toward your uncle. If, instead, every time you
saw him he took you to the doctor to get your immunization shots, the opposite result is more likely.

Mere Exposure.

Research on the mere exposure effect has found that repeated exposure to an object in the absence of
association can also change attitudes. Quite simply, this process requires only that one is repeatedly exposed
to an attitude object. When this occurs, the attitude toward the object becomes more positive; possibly due
to the fact that the object has actually become associated with the absence of anything negative One
intriguing implication of this phenomenon is that mere exposure might help to account for the preference a
newborn infant shows for his or her mother’s voice.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

It may be defined as the feeling of uncomfortable tension which comes from holding two conflicting

thoughts in the mind at the same time.

Dissonance increases with:

• The importance of the subject to us.

• How strongly the dissonant thoughts conflict.

• Our inability to rationalize and explain away the conflict.

➢ Dissonance is often strong when we believe something about ourselves and then do something
against that belief. If I believe I am good but do something bad, then the discomfort I feel as a result
is cognitive dissonance.
➢ Cognitive dissonance is a very powerful motivator which will often lead us to change one or other
of the conflicting belief or action. The discomfort often feels like a tension between the two
opposing thoughts.

To release the tension we can take one of three actions:

• Change our behaviour.


• Justify our behaviour by changing the conflicting cognition.
• Justify our behaviour by adding new cognitions.
Dissonance is most powerful when it is about our self-image. Feelings of foolishness, immorality and so

on (including internal projections during decision-making) are dissonance in action.

If an action has been completed and cannot be undone, then the after-the-fact dissonance compels us to
change our beliefs. If beliefs are moved, then the dissonance appears during decision-making, forcing us to
take actions we would not have taken before.

Cognitive dissonance appears in virtually all evaluations and decisions and is the central mechanism by

which we experience new differences in the world. When we see other people behave differently to our

images of them, when we hold any conflicting thoughts, we experience dissonance.

Dissonance increases with the importance and impact of the decision, along with the difficulty of

reversing it. Discomfort about making the wrong choice of car is bigger than when choosing a lamp.

Example

Smokers find all kinds of reasons to explain away their unhealthy habit. The alternative is to feel a great

deal of dissonance.

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