By

Dipanjana Chatterjee
Asst. Professor
AUK
An attitude is an expression of favor or disfavor toward a
person, place, thing, or event. Attitude can be formed from
a person's past and present. In Short, An attitude is an
evaluation of an attitudinal object, ranging from extremely
negative to extremely positive.
Attitudes are tendencies to like or dislike something – such as
an idea, person or behaviour – and the object of these
tendencies (the thing being liked or disliked) is often called
the attitude object.
Attitudes indirectly or directly affect behaviour in virtually
every social interaction.
3 Components (ABC) of
Attitude
Multicomponent model is the most influential model of attitude. Where attitudes are evaluations of
an object that have affective, behavioural and Cognitive (ABC) components. These components are
also known as CAB, that will get you where you want to go.

Affective component: The affective component of attitudes refer to your feelings

or emotions linked to an attitude object. Affective responses influence attitudes in a number of ways.
For example, many people are afraid/scared of spiders. So this negative affective response is likely to
cause you to have a negative attitude towards spiders.

Behavioral component: The behavioral component of attitudes refer to past

behaviors or experiences regarding an attitude object. The idea that people might infer their attitudes
from their previous actions. This idea was best articulated by  Bem.

Cognitive component: The cognitive component of attitudes refer to the

beliefs, thoughts, and attributes that we would associate with an object. Many times a person's attitude
might be based on the negative and positive attributes they associate with an object.
Factors affecting Attitude
1. Family: Family is the most powerful source for formation of attitudes. The
parents, siblings provide information about various things. Attitudes developed
by an individual, whether positive or negative are the result of family influence,
are very powerful and difficult to undo.

1. Peers: As the individual develops, he comes in contact with outer world and
peers in first place. Peers include same age friends, neighbours, classmates, etc.
The child tries to internalise the attitudes of these people.

1. Conditioning: When we are conditioned or adjusted to a certain set up of

people, situation, etc., we will be influenced by that. Hence, our associations
lead to develop attitudes. Many times the kind of reinforcement we get from
environment also leads to develop attitudes. On the other hand, negative
reinforcement like punishment, teasing, criticizing, troubling may lead to
develop negative attitude.
 Family and School Environment: In the early years of life, parents and other family
members play a significant role in shaping attitude formation. Later, the school environment
becomes an important background for attitude formation. Learning of attitudes within the
family and school usually takes place by association, through rewards and punishments, and
through observation.

Reference Groups: Attitudes are often developed through reference groups. The influence of
reference group is noticeable especially during the beginning of adolescence, at which time it is
important for the individual to feel that s/he belongs to a group.

Personal Experiences: Sometimes, direct personal experiences bring about a drastic change
in our attitude towards people and our own life. For example, on one critical mission, a soldier
narrowly escaped death although all his companions got killed. He gave up his job in the army,
returned to his native village and started social work.

Media-related Influences: Technological advances in recent times have made audio-visual

media and the Internet very powerful sources of information that lead to attitude formation and
change. These sources first strengthen the cognitive and affective components of attitudes, and
subsequently may also affect the behavioural component.
4. Social adjustment functions: This is otherwise called balance theory. Every society has
majority of people who prefer to lead a harmonious life. They try to avoid
unnecessary friction of conflicts with people. Naturally, they are inclined to develop
positive attitudes towards most of the people and issues. Our attitudes may facilitate
and maintain our relationships with members of positively valued groups. Usually we
want to go with significant others to us, and rebel against those unwanted.
5. Direct instruction: Sometimes direct instruction can influence attitude formation. For
example, somebody gives information about a hair dye or usefulness of some fruit,
we develop an attitude about that product, may be positive or negative.
6. Modelling: This has been influential in developing attitudes toward a wide range of
issues from alcohol to various kinds of dress, shoes, etc.
7. Satisfaction of wants: Individual develops favourable attitudes towards those people
and objects which satisfy his wants and unfavourable attitudes towards those who do
not satisfy.
8. Prejudices: Prejudices are preconceived ideas or judgments where one develops
some attitudes on other people, objects, etc., without proper information. For
example, disliking a doctor or a nurse without knowing their abilities, just because of
their caste, religion, region, nationality, etc.
Types of Attitude
Self Perception Theory of
Attitude
"Individuals come to know their own attitudes, emotions and
internal states by inferring them from observations of their own
behavior and circumstances in which they occur. When internal
cues are weak, ambiguous, or uninterpretable, the individual is
in the same position as the outside observer".
Self-perception theory is counterintuitive. Common knowledge
would have us assume that a person’s personality and attitudes
drive their actions; however, self-perception theory shows that
this is not always the case. In simple terms, it illustrates that
“we are what we do.” According to self-perception theory, we
interpret our own actions the way we interpret others’ actions,
and our actions are often socially influenced and not produced
out of our own free will, as we might expect.
Self Perception Theory of Attitude:
Application
In the marketing and persuasion industry, self-perception
theory has led to a variety of tactics based on acquiring a
small commitment from a person that will lead to a greater
possibility that the person will agree to larger requests from
the seller/marketer. This is the basis behind the foot-in-the-
door tactic, in which a salesperson might ask a person for
something relatively small, such as filling out a
questionnaire, which would make it easier to ask the
person for a larger commitment, since the act of fulfilling
the small request would likely lead to the person altering
their self-image to explain their decision (i.e. I filled out the
survey, therefore I must be the kind of person who likes
their products).
 Attribution Theory of
Attitude
 Attributions are explanations for events and behaviour. Heider differentiated
between two types of causal attribution – personal and situational. Personal
attributions refer to factors within the person, such as their personality
characteristics, motivation, ability and effort. Situational attributions refer to
factors within the environment that are external to the person. For example, if
we were discussing why a particular student has failed an important university
examination, we would consider personal factors (such as her academic ability
and how much effort she invested in preparing for the exam). But we might
also look at situational attributions (such as whether she had good tuition,
access to library facilities and sufficient time to study).
 Heider noted that we tend to overestimate internal or personal factors and
underestimate situational factors when explaining behaviour. This tendency
has become known as the fundamental attribution error.
 Ross (1977) defined the fundamental attribution error (FAE) as the tendency to
underestimate the role of situational or external factors, and to overestimate
the role of dispositional or internal factors, in assessing behaviour.
Jones and Davis (1965) found that we tend to make a
correspondent inference about another person when we are
looking for the cause of their behaviour. In other words, we tend
to infer that the behaviour, and the intention that produced it,
correspond to some underlying stable quality. For example, a
correspondent inference would be to attribute someone’s
aggressive behaviour to an internal and stable trait within the
person – in this case, aggressiveness.
Jones and Davis argued that this tendency is motivated by our
need to view people’s behaviour as intentional and predictable,
reflecting their underlying personality traits. But in reality, making
correspondent inferences is not always a straightforward
business. The information we need in order to make the
inferences can be ambiguous, requiring us to draw on additional
cues in the environment, such as the social desirability of the
behaviour, how much choice the person had, or role
requirements.
Like Heider, Kelley (1967) likened ordinary onlookers to naïve scientists who weigh
up several factors when attributing causality. Kelley’s covariation model of
attribution states that, before two events can be accepted as causally linked,
they must co-occur. The covariation of events and behaviour was assessed
across three important dimensions:
1. Consistency – does the person respond in the same way to the same stimuli
over time?
2. Distinctiveness – do they behave in the same way to other different stimuli, or
is the behaviour distinctively linked to specific stimuli?
3. Consensus – do observers of the same stimuli respond in a similar way?
 Kelley argued that we systematically analyze people- and environment-related
information, and that different combinations of information lead to different
causal attributions.
It is well known that people tend to accept credit for
success and deny responsibility for failure. More
generally, we also tend to attribute our success to
internal factors such as ability, but attribute failure to
external factors such as bad luck or task difficulty. This is
known as the self-serving bias.
When individuals observe behavior, they attempt
to determine whether it is internally or externally
caused
Attribution Error
1. Self-Serving Bias
The tendency for individuals to attribute their own
successes to internal factors while putting the blame for
failures on external factors
2. Fundamental Attribution Error
The tendency to underestimate the influence of external
factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors
when making judgments about the behavior of others
Harold Kelley is one of the originators of attribution
theory,
The concept of balance, proposed by Fritz Heider is described in the form of
the ‘ P-O-X’ triangle, which represents the relationships between three
components of the attitude. P is the person whose attitude is being studied, O
is another person, and X is the topic towards which the attitude is being
studied (attitude object).
The basic idea is that an attitude changes if there is a state of imbalance between
the P-O attitude, O-X attitude, and P-X attitude. This is because imbalance is
logically uncomfortable. Therefore, the attitude changes in the direction of
balance.

Imbalance is found when

(i)all three sides of the P-O-X triangle are negative, or

(ii) two sides are positive, and
(iii) one side is negative.

Balance is found when

(i)all three sides are positive, or

(ii) two sides are negative, and one side is positive.
The concept of cognitive dissonance was proposed by Leon Festinger.

As its name implies, this concept emphasises the cognitive component.

Cognitive dissonance is a state of unpleasant tension that people

experience when they hold contradictory attitudes or when their behavior
is inconsistent with their attitudes

The theory of cognitive dissonance states that contradicting or clashing

attitudes cause discomfort. That is, we have a need for consistency in our
thoughts, perceptions and images of ourselves because inconsistency in thought,
perception and behaviour cause cognitive dissonance.

For example, holding the two following ideas will cause cognitive dissonance.
Idea I : Cigarette smoking is injurious to health .
Idea II : I am a chain smoker.

Holding these two ideas will make any individual feel that something is ‘out of
tune’, or dissonant.
 Cognitive Dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs
or behaviors. This produces a feeling of discomfort leading to an alteration in
one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore
balance etc.
 For example, when people smoke (behavior) and they know that smoking
causes cancer (cognition).
 Festinger's (1957) cognitive dissonance theory suggests that we have an inner
drive to hold all our attitudes and beliefs in harmony and avoid disharmony (or
dissonance).
 Leon Festinger (1957) proposed cognitive dissonance theory, which states that
a powerful motive to maintain cognitive consistency can give rise to irrational
and sometimes maladaptive behavior.
 According to Festinger, we hold many cognitions about the world and
ourselves; when they clash, a discrepancy is evoked, resulting in a state of
tension known as cognitive dissonance. As the experience of dissonance is
unpleasant, we are motivated to reduce or eliminate it, and achieve
consonance (i.e. agreement).
According to cognitive dissonance theory, there is a tendency
for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions (i.e.,
beliefs, opinions). When there is an inconsistency between
attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to
eliminate the dissonance.
Dissonance can be reduced in one of three ways:
First, individuals can change one or more of the attitudes,
behavior, beliefs etc. so as to make the relationship between
the two elements a consonant one. When one of the dissonant
elements is a behavior, the individual can change or eliminate
the behavior. However, this mode of dissonance reduction
frequently presents problems for people, as it is often difficult
for people to change well-learned behavioral responses (e.g.
giving up smoking).
 A second (cognitive) method of reducing dissonance is to acquire new
information that outweighs the dissonant beliefs. For example, thinking
smoking causes lung cancer will cause dissonance if a person smokes. However,
new information such as “research has not proved definitely that smoking
causes lung cancer” may reduce the dissonance.
 A third way to reduce dissonance is to reduce the importance of the
cognitions (i.e. beliefs, attitudes). A person could convince themself that it is
better to "live for today" than to "save for tomorrow." In other words, he could
tell himself that a short life filled with smoking and sensual pleasures is better
than a long life devoid of such joys. In this way, he would be decreasing the
importance of the dissonant cognition (smoking is bad for ones health).
 Notice that dissonance theory does not state that these modes of dissonance
reduction will actually work, only that individuals who are in a state of
cognitive dissonance will take steps to reduce the extent of their dissonance.
One of the points that dissonance theorists are fond of making is that people
will go to all sorts of lengths to reduce dissonance.
 In order to reduce cognitive dissonance, one of these ideas will have to be
changed, so that consonance can be attained.
Theory of Planned Behaviour: This theory was proposed by Icek Ajzen
and Martin Fishbein (1977). They showed that has shown that one’s (a)
attitudes, (b) perceived social norms, and (c) feelings of control together
determine one’s intentions, which guide behaviour.
Attitude & Time
Management
Time management refers to the development of process
and tools that increase efficiency and productivity.
When we think about time management, however, we
tend to think about the personal time management,
loosely defined as managing our time to waste less time
on doing the things we have to do so that we have more
time to do the things we want to do.
Therefore, time management is often considered or
presented as a set of time management skills; the theory is
that once we master the time management skills, we’ll be
more organized, more efficient, and happier.
A positive attitude helps you cope more easily with the daily
affairs of life. It brings optimism into your life, and makes it
easier to avoid worries and negative thinking. If you adopt it as a
way of life, it would bring constructive changes into your life,
and makes them happier, brighter and more successful.

With a positive attitude you see the bright side of life, become
optimistic, and expect the best to happen. It is certainly a state
of mind that is well worth developing.
A positive frame of mind can help you in many
ways, such as:
1.Positive thinking.
2.Constructive thinking.
3.Creative thinking.
4.Optimism.
5.Motivation and energy to do things and accomplish
goals.
6.An attitude of recognizing opportunities in life and
thereby leading to success and happiness.
 A positive attitude influence behavior in many ways, such as:

1.Expecting success and not failure.

2.Making you feel inspired.
3.It gives you the strength not to give up, if you encounter obstacles on your
way.
4.It makes you look at failure and problems as blessings in disguise.
5.Believing in yourself and in your abilities.
6.Enables you to show self-esteem and confidence.
7.You look for solutions, instead of dwelling on problems.
8.You see and recognize opportunities.
9.A positive attitude leads to happiness and success and can change your whole
life.
10.Positive attitude increases your faith in your abilities, and brings hope for a
brighter future.
1.Choose to be happy. Yes, it is a matter of choice. When negative thoughts
enter your mind, do your best to substitute them with happy thought
2.Look at the bright side of life. It's a matter of choice and repeated attempts.
3.Choose to be optimistic.
4.Find reasons to smile more often. You can find such reasons, if you search
for them.
5.Have faith in yourself, and believe that the Universe can help you.
6.Associate yourself with happy people.
7.Read inspiring stories and quotes.
8.Visualize only what you want to happen, not what you don't want.
Negative attitude can cripple the person you are meant to
be. A self-defeating negative attitude will have a negative
impact on every aspect of your life and if you allow it to it
can alter your physical and mental well-being.
A negative attitude is the result of negative thinking and
consequently poor performance
It is a lack of mental discipline and causes excessive stress
which impairs performance
It focuses on the problem and stops looking for solutions or
opportunities and consequently performance gets affected.
A negative attitude affects you physically. Chronic stress
from negative attitudes and feelings of helplessness upsets
the body's hormonal balance
People with a negative attitude are stuck in a doom loop
and don’t find any solutions to improve on.
1. Wrong belief: Wrong belief about life or certain aspects
of it. People see and evaluate their lives through negative or
wrong beliefs and see their lives as unhappy.

2. Negative family/friends: It seems that your friends and

family affect how you feel and if your family is negative,
they cause your bad attitude.
3. Negative environment: Negative environment causes
negative attitude.
4. Unsatisfying circumstances/life: If you find yourself
complaining about how unhappy you are, it’s exactly the
reason you have such a negative attitude. Your complaining
alone can keep you stuck in the circumstances that you find
unsatisfying.
1. The best way to change your mental state is by
understanding the outcome of negativity. Carefully read the
consequences of negative attitude and they will serve as
reminders as soon as your mood goes down.
2. Try to interpret the negative aspect of the situation
with some positive aspect. For example, if you oversleep,
you will think that you will be late for work. Instead try to
find something positive that you gain from over-sleeping.
You may realize that your efficiency will increase
significantly because of the extra hours of sleep.
3. Try to understand what causes your negative attitude. It
might be related to your past that upset you deeply
THANK YOU