- E2/P1: Video Lecture by Kavan Limbasiya (AIR-198/CSE’14)
- Attitude: Meaning & types
- Attitude: Salient Features
- CAB Model of Attitude
- Attitude Structure #1: Uni-Directional
- Attitude Structure #2: Bi-directional
- Potential vs felt ambivalence
- Attitude: Functions
- Belief + Value = Attitude
E2/P1: Video Lecture by Kavan Limbasiya (AIR-198/CSE’14)
Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/7IuEfKdc_Qs
Attitude: Meaning & types
- Attitude is always about “Something”. It’s a state of mind- your positive/negative feeling towards a person, object, event, idea, environment.
- It determines how people will arrive at a correct judgement.
- Attitude AND Aptitude are different- Surviving terminal disease depends on your ‘attitude’ towards life rather than ‘aptitude’ in physical training. We’ll discuss more on this during next lecture (E3)
Positive attitudes | Negative attitudes |
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Optimism, persistence | Pessimism |
Jealous | Content (satisfied) |
Tolerant | intolerant, rigid |
Modest, humble | Inferiority, superiority |
Cooperative | Condescending, hostile |
Cheerful | Cynical |
Attitude: Salient Features
- Attitudes are directed towards an object, event, person or organization and give specific reaction to them.
- Attitude affects group behavior e.g. Jury service, racial prejudice, work environment, voting pattern and more.
- They help us understand ourselves and others.
- They can be explicit – formed by recent events
- They can be implicit- derived from past memories and traumatic experiences.
- They protect us from acknowledging harsh realities of life and thereby help coping up with emotional conflict.
- They’re situational.
- Some thinkers say Attitude is permanent, forms habit and becomes predictable
- Some thinkers say Attitude is tentative- a person will form attitude from his past experience but if new situation comes he’ll evaluate and change attitude. Thus, Attitudes are spontaneous reaction to environment.
- Persuasion can change attitude of a person. If a trustworthy, expert, likable person says, “rich people’s love for fur-clothes has led to extinction of xyz. Species”. Then next time you see a rich lady, you’ll feel repulsed. We’ll discuss more on persuasion and attitude change in third session of this lecture (E2/P3).
Physiology: Age | Physiology: Disease |
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Some thinkers don’t agree with above, and believe that Social factors determine a person’s attitude.
CAB Model of Attitude
C: Cognitive |
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A: Affective |
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B: Behavioral |
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CAB has synergy- each component is independent, but they will strengthen each other.
Attitude Structure #1: Uni-Directional
- Like a number-line, attitude has two ends negative (left hand) and positive (right hand).
- Our attitude towards death penalty? It can be positive or negative.
Component | What do you think about snakes? | Positive/negative |
---|---|---|
Cognitive | Snake is poisonous. (your belief) | Negative |
Affective | I fear snakes (your feeling) | Negative |
Behavior | I’ll run away. (your behavior) | Negative |
Overall | Negative attitude towards snake. |
Limitation of uni-directional structure?
Difficult to distinguish between neutral and ambivalent attitude.
- e.g. do you like chocolates?
- Neutral: A poor illiterate person in remote island may say “I’ve never heard of this term so I don’t have any positive/negative feeling about it.”
- Ambivalent: an intelligent person may say “yes I know chocolates bad for teeth (negative cognitive) but still I love them (positive affective). So +1 – 1 = 0
Attitude Structure #2: Bi-directional
If we plot negative attitude on Y-axis and positive on X-axis, we can show neutral / ambivalence as per following graph:
So, what is the implications?
Neutral attitude |
Difficult to change his behavior. |
Ambivalent attitude |
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Potential vs felt ambivalence
Felt | e.g. chocolate example- you know there is inconsistency (it’s bad for teeth yet you like it). Such ambivalence will give you dissonance. |
Potential |
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Sequence is potential => felt =>cognitive dissonance. Result?
- either person will stop wrong-behavior OR
- he’ll begin justifying his wrong behavior.
That’s how attitude changes. We’ll discuss more on this in E2/P3.
Attitude: Functions
Object appraisal | Attitudes help us approach beneficial things and avoid harmful things. |
Social adjustment | Attitude helps us identify with people we like e.g. I love SRK, so I’ll buy frooty, because he is endorsing it. |
Utilitarian |
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Knowledge |
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Ego-defensive |
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Externalization | Similar to ego-defensive. By blaming external factors we try to defend our internal conflict e.g. “I got low marks in interview because panel was biased.” |
Value expressive |
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An advertisement / marketing guru must be observant about above functions. Only then he can make a successful ad.
Product | Ad-concept |
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Detergent | Utilitarian. So ad must show that given brand is cheap and yet cleans the clothes efficiently. |
Gold | Value expressive. I’ll purchase more gold to show I’m of higher status. Company will even use photos of Goddess Laxmi. |
Shoes | Ego defensive mechanism must not be trigged. So, No gods/goddesses must be shown in ad. |
Politics |
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Belief + Value = Attitude
Belief |
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Value |
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Attitude |
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Mock Questions and Case studies after three-part article series on “E2” is over. In the next part (E2/P2), we’ll take a look at moral and political attitudes, and role of social media.
Visit Mrunal.org/Ethics for more study material on Ethics.
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