Chapter 3

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Chapter 3

In: Psychology of Attitudes
Editors: C. D. Logan, M. I. Hodges

ISBN: 978-1-62081-194-8
© 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

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THEORIES OF ATTITUDES

Temitayo Deborah Olufemi
Department of Psychology, Lagos State University, Ojo,
Lagos, Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Attitude refers to feelings, beliefs, and reactions of an individual
towards an event, phenomenon, objects or person. Attitudes are not innate
attributes of mankind. They are learnt, relatively stable but can be
modified. Attitudes could be
implicit or explicit, conscious or
unconscious, rational or irrational; extraversion or introversion. Attitudes
are evaluations people make about objects, ideas, events or other people.
Attitudes can be positive or negative. Adewuyi, (2006), remarked that,
attitude is considered to be individualistic, an abstract entity and a kind of
intervening variable
in
behavioural responses. Yale University Communication Research
Program emphasised on
importance variables of attention,
comprehension and acceptance in learning new attitude. Wood and Wood
(1980), agreed that attitude has three components of cognitive, affective
or emotion and behavioural. The need to understand how attitudes are
formed and changed has recently been a major preoccupation of the
social psychologists. Wrightsman (1985) identified five different theories
of attitude change to include; stimulus-response and reinforcement

to explain regularities

in order

imposed

three

 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Lagos State University, Ojo, Lagos,

Nigeria. e-mail: Ddtayo2004@yahoo.com.

62

Temitayo Deborah Olufemi

theories, social-judgement theory, consistency theory, self-perception
theory and functional theory. An adequate theory of attitude change must
be able to predict and explain cases in which attitudes do not change as
well as when it should be modified and it does changed.

Keywords: Attitudes, Types of attitudes, Attitudes and Persuasions and

Theories of Attitude

INTRODUCTION

According to Bruvold (1980), an attitude may be defined as a positive or
negative affective reaction toward a denotable abstract or concrete object or
proposition. Zinbardo (1998), claimed that attitude could be explained as
learned judgements about the actions they are appropriate towards certain
types of people or issues. Attitudes are relatively stable but they could be
modified. According to Kegan, Havemann and Segal (1994), as individual
grows up, acquire strong beliefs and feelings or attitudes towards members of
various ethnic groups, foreigners, rich people, poor people, males, females,
issues, government policy etc. Individual develop strong attitudes towards
political parties, national security and all other issues and institutions in the
society. Attitudes tend to influence us throughout life. People are very much in
favour of things towards which we have positive attitude and very much
against things of a negative attitude.

The concept of attitude arises from attempts to account for observed
regularities in the behaviour of individual persons. The quality of one‘s
attitudes is judged from the observable, evaluative responses that are made.
While one might consult one‘s inner experiences as evidence of one‘s own
attitudes. An attitude concerns something that really matters to us. Hence it is
far more resistant to change than an opinion. According to Kegan, Havemann
and Segel (1994);

―Since attitudes are so enduring and can be powerful forces in
determining behaviour, they have been a key topic in social psychology.
Investigators have devoted considerable study to how people acquire them (
attitudes), cling to them, but sometimes change them, and when, under what
circumstances, and to what the individual will do (Omotoso,2003).‖

This view is supported by (McConnel, 1980) who posited that attitude has
been a subject of great interest to social psychologist for a long time. As a

Theories of Attitudes

63

social psychologist himself, McConnel had an extensive discussion on the
concept of attitude. McConnel saw attitude as a relatively enduring way of a
person thinking, feeling and behaviour towards an object, person, group, an
idea or an event. Hence, McConnel pointed out that:

―In a sense, attitudes are perceptions that involve emotional feelings or

biases and which predispose one to act in a certain way.‖

Wood and Wood (1980) saw attitude as a relatively stable evaluation of a
person, object, situation or issue. According to them, attitude has three
components; cognitive, affective or emotional and behavioural components.

The first cognitive components constitute thoughts and beliefs about the
attitudinal object. In other words, the cognitive component of attitude
represents a person‘s knowledge held with varying degrees of certainty about
what is true or false, good or bad, desirable or undesirable. The second
component of attitude; the emotional component makes up of your feelings
towards the attitudinal objects. It is also called the affective component
because under suitable conditions, the belief is capable of arousing effect of
varying intensity centered around the object of the belief.

The third component of attitude is the behavioural component. It deals
with how we are predisposed to act towards the attitudinal object. It is called
the behavioural component because the belief, being a response, predisposition
of varying threshold, must lead to some actions when it is suitably activated.

In a paper delivered by Buadi (2000), attitude was portrayed as normally
focusing on an object or a situation, which may be either concrete or abstract.
He added that an attitude will certainly lead to a preferential response. Buadi
(2000) further explained that the basis for this preferential response could be
positive or negative due to the fact that the attitudinal object or situation is
effectively evaluated as good or bad.

By way of summarizing the reviewed literature on attitude, it is pertinent
to say that attitude is an important antecedent of action. Attitude as regard this
book could be used to predict, control and modify human actions towards an
object, issues, situations or abstract entity. It can also be used as independent
variables in formulating research hypotheses.

It can also be used in experimental study as behaviour modification and
evaluation utilizing various psychotherapies of Rational Emotive Behaviour
therapy, Cognitive Behaviour therapy, Transactional Analysis, Psycho-
analysis theory and many others not mentioned in this book.

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Temitayo Deborah Olufemi

ORIGIN OF ATTITUDES

Research has indicated that there are several ways in which we can
acquire and form attitudes. One of our earliest agents of attitude formation are
our parents, later followed by our peers and the media. Other forms of attitude
formation include the following:

 Classical Conditioning: Association behaviours and attitudes as

―good‖ or ―bad‖ (i.e. it‘s good to tell the truth, it‘s bad to steal).

 Operant Conditioning: Being rewarded or punished for behaviour and
attitudes (i.e. being praised for telling the truth or being punished for
stealing something).

 Cognitive Appraisals: Weighing logical arguments in determining

 Observational Learning: Learning attitudes through peer behaviour

 Persuasions: Attitudes could be formed through persuasions from

your attitudes.

and the media.

parents and friends.



TYPES OF ATTITUDES

According to Jung‘s definition of attitudes, there are several types of

attitudes which could be discussed under the following headlines.

Implicit and explicit attitudes: These have to do with how internal
drive and external stimuli affect human actions and attitudinal
changes.

 Consciousness and the unconscious attitude: The “presence of two
attitudes
the other
is extremely frequent, one conscious and
unconscious. This means that consciousness has a constellation of
contents different from that of the unconscious, a duality particularly
evident is neurosis”.

 Extraversion and introversion attitude: This pair is so elementary to
Jung’s theory of type of attitudes that he labelled them the “attitude-
types‖. Some individual are the outgoing type while some are the
quiet type. These traits of individual differences affect individual
attitudes towards an object, events or a given situation or phenomena.
 Rational and irrational attitudes: “I conceive reason as an attitude”.
This shows that attitudes in form of actions can be justified and at

Theories of Attitudes

65

times, they may be no reason accrued to that action or attitude. The
rational attitude subdivides into the thinking and feeling psychological
functions, each with it‘s attitude. The irrational attitude subdivides
into the sensing and intuition psychological functions, each with it‘s
attitude. “There is thus: A typical thinking, feeling, sensation, and
intuitive attitude” which has to do with a particular event or situation.
Individual and social attitudes: This has to do with acceptable
behavioural norms within a given society. An acceptable attitude in
one society may not be acceptable in another society.



ATTITUDES AND PERSUASIONS

The more one is exposed to an attitude, the more that person will like it
(e.g. buying the dress make because you have seen the beauty of it). Attitudes
and persuasion can be divided into two: central truth persuasion and peripheral
route persuasion.

Central truth persuasion has to do with the deeply processing of a message
content (e.g. ―why did you like a particular hair style or hear do‖ ). Peripheral
route persuasion has to do with the other aspects rather than the content ( e.g.
―liking the dress maker or designer of a particular dress‖). Persuasion is an
attempt to change a person‘s attitudes. Research has indicated that there are
several key components that make messages more persuasive are persuasive
communicator and the persuasive audience. Persuasive message has so many
variables which
two sided arguments,
emotional appeals and arguments that run contrary to the communicator‘s
interests.

include: familiarity, repetition;

Familiarity: messages are more persuasive when we are more familiar

with the contents.

the more persuasive it is.

appeal to the emotions.

Repetition: the more a message is repeated (especially if it is complex);

Two sided arguments: both sides of the arguments are presented.
Emotional appeals: commercials especially, are more persuasive if they

Arguments that run contrary to the communicator’s interests: messages
that seem to go against the interests of the person speaking tend to be more
persuasive.

Persuasive Communicator: The persuasive communicators tend to:

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Temitayo Deborah Olufemi

 Show expertise.
 Be trustworthy.
 Be attractive.
 be similar to the audience.
 Come from health professions.

Research has indicated that when food and music are added to messages,

their persuasiveness increases.

Persuasive Audience: The persuasive audience tends to have two
characteristics: low self esteem (i.e low sense of self worth) and high social
anxiety (i.e. a high need to fit into the society).

Compliance Strategies: These have to do with the following:



foot- in -the -door –effect: after getting some one to agree to a small
request, you then follow up with a larger request.
foot-in- the face- effect: after having someone deny a larger request,
you then follow up with a smaller request.



 Norms of reciprocity: after doing something nice to someone, you

expect them to reciprocate.

THEORIES OF ATTITUDE

A theory can be defined as a system that is comprised of empirical data,
derived from observation and/ or experimentation and their interpretation
(Luthans, 2008). In another words, a theory must grow out of systematic
analysis of the past events. A theory could be likened to a map where a few
points are known while the road between them are inferred.

A theory is an interconnected statement (Adewuyi, 2006). A theory can be
defined as a way of organizing and systematizing what is known about a given
phenomena say substance abuse. A theory is a plan of attack, a frame work
upon which the information central to the solution of an issue can be arranged.
Theory is an unsubstantiated hypothesis or a speculation concerning
reality that is not known to be seen as a set of conventions created by the
theorist. Steffix and Mathany (2005), concluded that a theory is derived from
personal, historical, sociological and philosophical bases.

Shertzer and Stone (2001), posited four functions of a theory as follows:

 Summarizes and generalizes a particular body of knowledge;

Theories of Attitudes

67

 Facilitates understanding and explanation of a complex phenomena

such as substance abuse and peer relation;

 Theory serves as a predictive function by helping researchers to

estimate what will happen under certain conditions, and;

 Stimulates further research study and facts finding.

Theories as regard this book are to guide individual in their behavioural
actions in life and it is also good for research studies in social behavioural
sciences. It is to guide individual in attitude formation; attitudinal and
behavioural changes. There are several theories of attitude formation and
attitudinal/behavioural changes bur the following:

Wrightsman (1985) identified five different theories of attitude change to

include;

 Stimulus-response and reinforcement theories;
 Social-judgement theory;
 Consistency theory;
 Self-perception theory and;
 Functional theory.

Other theories include:

 Dissonance theory;
 Theory of individual differences;
 Persuasive theory;
 Conformity theory;
 Balance theory;
 Attribution theory;
 Personal space theory;
 Learning theory;
 Social perception theory and;
 Dual process theory.

Stimulus-Response and Reinforcement Theories: Stimulus

is a
psychological term for an object, event, or person and the plural is stimuli.
This is a kind of feature of classical conditioning. This is where we learn to
respond only to a stimulus that is the same as the original conditional stimulus.
Stimulus generalisation is our associated behavioural response to similar
stimuli we come across in our environment. If an object, event, or person is
similar to the original stimulus to which we were conditioned, we behave

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Temitayo Deborah Olufemi

towards that similar stimulus in the same way fashion. According to the
behaviourist approach we learn, or become conditioned, to behave the way we
do. We form learnt behaviours as a result of associating a particular stimulus
with a particular response. If we want a bus to stop, on seeing it, we stick out
our hand. Very often reinforcement helps in the formation of stimulus-
response units of behaviour. Stimulus-response and reinforcement theories
make the assumptions that attitudes are changed only if the incentives for
making a new response are greater than the incentives for maintaining the old
response. The intensity with which some attitudes are held may be increased
through the use of verbal-conditioning procedures.

Social-Judgement Theory: Social influence refers to the way people affect
the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of others. Two examples of a social
judgement theory of attitude change are Sherif and Hovland‘s, (2002),
assimilation contrast theory and Helson‘s (2001) adaptation level theory.
Assimilation-contrast theory conceptualizes attitudes along a reference scale.
Within this scale, there is an area called the latitude of acceptance of which the
boundaries are the limits of the attitude statements with which the respondent
would agree. Attempts to shift attitudes must pose new positions that are
within this latitude of acceptance.

According to assimilation-contrast theory, the stronger the person‘s degree
of ego-involvement with an attitudinal object the narrower his latitude of
acceptance and the broader his latitude of rejection. Little solid evidence exists
for the acceptance of an assimilation-contrast theory of attitude change as of
the time of publication of this book.

Consistency Theories of Attitude Change: Psychology has a family of
consistency theories that helps explain attitude organisation and change and
these include, Helder‘s (2001) balance theory, Osgood and Tanenbaum‘s
(2000) congruity theory, Festingers (2000), cognitive dissonance theory and
Brehm‘s (2001) reactance theory. Common to these theories is the assumption
that people change their attitude in the direction of removing inconsistencies
between conflicting attitudes and behaviours. Of all
the consistency
approaches to attitude change and attitude formation, Cognitive-dissonance
theory has stimulated the most research and controversy. Cognitive-dissonance
is said to exist when a person possess two cognitions, one of which is
contradictory to the other.

Our attitudes are organised and changed as a result of the principle of
cognitive consistency. This principle suggests that we strive to achieve
consistency between our beliefs, values and attitudes; attitudes and behaviour;
and different attitudes. Organising attitudes, beliefs and behaviour into