Good

Attitudes

One of the major influences people have on one another is their changing of each other’s Attitudes. Thus, it is worthwhile to have an understanding of the meaning and function of a person’s Attitude.

Definition

Attitude refers to certain regularities of an individual’s feelings, thoughts, and predispositions to act toward some aspect of his or her environment.

Can have an attitude toward objects (like Coca Cola), towards people, towards things (like a particular style of clothing), towards animate objects (like spiders), or even towards abstract entities (toward fascism or democratic government)

Components of Attitude

1. Affective component—your blood pressure goes up reading about a situation.

2. Cognitive component—you think about a better way of doing something

3. Behavioral component—you go about doing something.

The difference between Opinion and Attitude: Opinion is a belief that one holds about something (object, a person, etc.) in his or her environment. The Cognitive component is central to an opinion. However, it lacks the Affective component central to Attitude.

Attitudes and Value Systems: Attitudes pertain to a single object. Value Systems are orientations toward whole classes of objects (or persons, etc.). A grouping of individual Attitudes may become organized into a Value System in a person’s mind.

Measurement of Attitude

Attitudes are measured at work or in therapy situations using many different tests that are “graded” by using scales such as:

Thurstone type scale: The subject is forced to make a choice of words to describe his or her feelings. The word scores are weighted according to certain values set by the researcher. Using the value totals, the researcher can see if a person is favorable or unfavorable to certain objects, people, etc.

Unidimensional scale: A question on Thurstone may carry more than one area within its meanings—such as economics, hatreds, etc. So measure a...