Thursday, 17 October 2013

Attitudes

An attitude is an combination of beliefs and feelings about objects, people or situations which predispose us to behave in a certain way towards them.

Triadic Model

Cognitive - What we know about attitude object.
Affective - How we feel about attitude object.
Behavioural - How we behave or intend to behave.

Attitudes are entirely learned from socialisation.

Measuring attitudes

Interviews/observation
Questionnaires

Attitude influences behaviour.

Changing attitudes (2 methods)

Persuasive communication

Persuader - should be expert/role model
Message - should be clear and balanced between emotion and logic
Recipient - needs to be willing to listen
Situation - can affect the attitude

Cognitive dissonance

Dissonance occurs when there is a conflict between feelings - producing negative psychological tension and desire to erase the dissonance. To change an attitude we must create dissonance so the person may change their wider attitude and get back to consonance (high correlation between thoughts and feelings.) To do this one part of the triadic model must be changed.

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