Attitude And Social Cognition — Psychology STD 12 Humanities — Question

By enlarge attitudes are learnt. They are formed on the basis of learning.
Formation of Attitudes: The term ‘attitude formation’ refers to the movement we make from having no attitude toward an object to having a positive or negative attitude.
There are some factors which contribute to the formation of attitudes:

1. Learning: The attitudes are acquired through learning. Many of our views are acquired in situations in which we interact with others or merely observe their behaviour.

1. Classical Conditioning/ Leaming by Association:

• A basic form of learning in which one stimulus, initially neutral, acquires the capacity to evoke reactions through repeated pairing with another stimulus.
• Player often develop a strong liking for the bat by which they made good runs. Many students start liking a subject if they like the teacher.

2. Instrumental Conditioning/ Leaming Attitude by Reward and Punishment: A basic form of learning in which responses that lead to positive outcomes or that permit avoidance of negative outcomes are strengthened.

• It applies to the situations when people learn attitudes which are systematically rewarded by significant others, such as parents, teachers or friends.

3. Observational Learning: A basic form of learning in which individuals acquire new forms of behaviour or through observing others.

• Children are keen observers and learn a whole lot of things from their parents and other family members.
• They learn many attitudes about other ethnic groups, neighbours and idealize simply by observing the behaviours of adults.

2. Learning through Exposure to Information: Many attitudes are learnt in a social context without physical presence of others. Print media, electronic media, biographies of self-actualized people facilitate attitude formations.
3. Learning Attitudes through Group or Cultural Norms: Norms are unwritten rules of behaviour. Gradually these norms may become part of our social cognition, in the form of attitudes, e.g., offering money, sweets, fruits and flowers in a place of worship is a normative behaviour in various religions. People imitate such behaviour shown by others as socially approved and develop positive attitude towards it.