How Attitudes Are Formed - Essay Example

Running Head: How Attitudes are formed How Attitudes are formed [Institute’s How Attitudes are formed The individual’s actionsand responses interpret one’s personality. Behaviors and attitude are responsible for the development of one’s character. Therefore, it is of significant importance to understand how the behaviors and attitudes form. An attitude is the state of mind that is willing to learn from the experiences, which has an impact and can control the positive or negative reactions of an individual towards the subjects, circumstances, and surroundings.

Attitudes once formed play a vital role in governing the behaviors of the people (Albarracin, Johnson & Zanna, 2005). Many factors can have an influence on forming the attitude of the people, which includes learning from social environment, evaluation of social aspects, personal beliefs, cultural and religious norms, heredity factors, and personal or family life experiences. Since the attitude is directly in proportion to behaviors and behaviors have a direct impact on the actions of an individual, therefore, a positive attitude can only come under formation when one’s perception is optimistic.

Cognitive, behavioral, and affective components also help in forming one’s attitude. There can be many theories that define how a person can form his attitude, amongst which two theories – Mere Exposure and Classical Conditioning comes under discussion below (Albarracin, Johnson & Zanna, 2005). Mere Exposure is one theory that defines that a recurring confrontation with an object or a person presides over the fondness of an individual as it influences the perception. For example, if a person is repeatedly watching a television serial or listens to a song repeatedly, each time his understanding of the images he watch or the sound he listen becomes better and his perception transforms into either his liking or boredom (Fiske, 2010).

Classical conditioning is another method that helps in forming one’s attitude. “Classical conditioning can also refer to as Associative Learning or Operant Conditioning. Classical conditioning is the association of unconditioned stimulus and response, and conditioned stimulus and response” (Domjan & Grau, 2009). Unconditioned stimulus is an impulse that unintentionally generates a response. The response that comes automatically in reaction of the unconditioned stimulus refers to as unconditioned response.

An action, response or a feeling that is formerly in connection with the unconditioned impulse is conditioned stimulus and the response that comes under generation as a result is conditioned response. For example, when an individual smell the aroma of the food he likes the most (an unconditional impulse); he would automatically start starving (unconditional response). The mother calling for food when cooked becomes a stimulus that is associated to food; therefore, whenever the person hears the mother call, it will eventually become a conditioned stimulus and the individual will have a hunger feeling, which becomes the conditioned response (Domjan & Grau, 2009).

These two theories are very different from each other as they both present two diverse concepts. The affection component of behavior is of essential importance in Mere exposure theory and plays a foremost part in understanding the fundamentals of this theory. On the other hand, the cognition component governs the principles of Classical Conditioning theory. Mere exposure is a psychological theory that consists of changing the perception of an individual to develop an emotional feeling for an object or a living thing, whereas, classical conditioning is long-established theory that associates several stimuli to initiate a response.

Both the theories are a part of social psychology that helps in the understanding of how the attitudes come under formation (Palmer & Kaplan, 2005). A person can come under judgment for his behavior through his attitude. There are several perspectives and theories, which govern the attitudes of a person. Thoughts, feelings, and intentions are the major constituents of attitude that plays a big part in formation of one’s personality. References Albarracin, D, Johnson, B. T., Zanna, M. P. (2005).

The handbook of attitudes. Routledge. Domjan, M, Grau, J. W. (2009). The Principles of Learning and Behavior. Wadsworth Cengage Learning Fiske, S. T. (2010). Social beings: core motives in social psychology. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Palmer, M, Kaplan. (2005). Kaplan GRE Psychology. Kaplan Publishing.