Explain the nature and characteristics of attitudes.

 NATURE OF ATTITUDES

In the beginning psychologists defined attitude in terms of one dimension i.e. attitude is a learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favourable or unfavourable manner with respect to a given object. Thus the essence of attitude was a person’s intensity of feelings toward some object. However, some psychologists tried to explain attitude in terms of two dimensions namely, affective and cognitive components.

Cognitive component refers to a person’s opinions and beliefs toward some object or event. For example, a person’s beliefs and opinions regarding widow remarriage. Affective component means how strongly and a person feels for the event or object in question. This feeling may be for or against. Some were of the view that attitude has three dimensions i.e. affective, cognitive and behavioural. This approach is known as ABC of attitude. Behavioural component indicates action a person would take in favour of or against the event or object of attitude. As said earlier a person having favourable attitude towards widow remarriage may organise meetings, give lectures in favor of widow remarriage or even go to the extent of marrying a widow.

These three components of attitude have some characteristics, understanding of which is imperative, in order to understand the nature of attitudes.

Valence— it refers to the degree of favorableness or unfavorableness to the object or event in question.

Multiplexity— components of attitude have the characteristic of multiplexity. It means the number of elements a component has. Higher the number of elements in a component the more complex it would be.

Consistency— it is found more among the valence factors than among multiplexity.

Characteristics of Attitudes

a) Attitude is learnt: A person is not born with attitude but he or she acquires it through the process of becoming an acceptable member of the group he/ she belongs to. Also a person develops attitude form the experiences of life. These experiences and process of socialisation may predispose a person favourably or unfavorably to the object or event in question.

b) Attitude gives direction: Attitude directs our behaviour in either away from an object or toward the object. For example, a favourable attitude toward education will impel the person to send his children to school for formal education for the betterment of their life, while an unfavourable attitude may prompt him for not sending children to school.

c) Relative permanacy: It means attitudes are stable over time and changes in them take place only gradually.

d) Attitude is always related to some issue, object or thing: This means for the development of attitude occurrence of some event, thing or person is a must. Attitudes do not take place in vaccuum.

e) Attitude has motivational properties: Attitude motivates a person to do some behaviours more readily than others. For example an individual having positive attitude for sports may readily go for play than pass his time reading some book.

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