Attitudes
Bobby Folden
April 1, 2015
BEH/225
Ainsley Hendricks
Attitude
Attitudes are the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary social psychology according to Gordon Allport (1935). As social psychologists and behavioral research continues on how attitudes impact both behavior and emotions the above description remains unchanged. Most misunderstand that an attitude is believed to be a belief formed from someone’s own life experiences. In most forms during life, attitudes is a major influence in one’s behavior as this is a combination of one’s strong beliefs in regards to a particular subjects. In this sense, an attitude is more than just a belief it is a motivating force with regard to how to act with regard to specific events or subjects (Feldman, 2010). An example would be someone who has experienced being bullied due to their sexuality could have a very strong attitude of anyone who personally believes that being gay is wrong due to their past experience. Attitudes are also linked strongly to one’s perceptions no matter negative or positive effects from this experience.
When talking about attitudes there are three components that include affective, behavioral, and cognitive areas. A person’s emotions and how they will relate to a certain subject would be the affective component. An example would be when a person is afraid of heights as this shows the emotion in the fear of heights. (McLeod, 2009).
The way someone behaves as a result of attitude is the behavioral component of attitude (McLeod, 2009). A great example of this would be someone with a fear of heights running away from the edge of a high cliff due to their fear of heights. This component will always show a sort of behavior in regards to attitude.
Someone’s belief concerning an action or subject would be considered the cognitive component. Believing that someone is scared of heights is a cognitive attitude. Having a cognitive component does not...