HOW WE ACQUIRED THE ATTITUDES WE
POSSESS ?
Attitude
formation is a very long and dynamic process. Attitude formation starts right
from the birth of a child. Our environment and culture plays a crucial role in
forming our attitudes. Attitudes are formed in three ways; (1) Social and cultural practices.
(2)
Social cognitive learning.
(3)
Personal experience.
(1) Social and cultural practices: If a person continuously experiences a
particular process or belief, he adopts that as a basic attitude. Continuous
teachings also make us to adopt certain trends as attitudes. We see people
following many social norms and we develop a belief that
we should do the same and thus inculcate that practice as an attitude.
For example, we never
seen gods but, we believe in gods and thus believe in worships and make
different rituals and fasting. We observe different festivals only because from
our childhood we have seen our parents, relatives and people around us doing
such things. A child never seen a ghost and never experienced what it is, but
feels afraid when told about ghost and takes its food. T his is because from a
very early time it is taught and made to believe that there is something like
ghost and that is very cruel and furious.
The way, we greet others. The
way, we show gratitude and respect to our elders and relatives are also
acquired from social practices. In our country we show respect to our elders by
bowing our head and making namaskar
. In western countries children
greet their elders by saying ‘good morning’ or ‘good evening’. So many of the
attitudes we posses are acquired through social norms and cultural practices.
(2) Social learning: Social learning is also a major factor in
making our attitudes. Many things we learn from our society directly or
indirectly. We observe and obey certain social norms and hence these become our
attitudes. For example, we learn how to behave with our teachers, how to behave
with elders, how to talk with opposite sex. All these things we learn from our
society. We see some persons involving in anti-social activities and getting
punished. Thus we make a strong dislike for these activities. We see people
making bad remark about smokers and drunkards, thieves and robbers and ergo we
develop a strong dislike about these activities. We see people helping each
other in work and get the work done easily. We see people working cooperatively
to attain a common goal and achieve that in less time. So we inculcate these
virtues as attitudes. In such way many of our good as well as bad attitudes are
acquired through social learning. Sometimes we ourselves change our attitudes by
social learning. It is a very good tool to inculcate good attitudes in a person
by making him to live in a good society or environment.
(3) Personal experience: Attitudes learned through personal experience
are the strongest attitudes and very immune to persuasion or change. We
inculcate some attitudes by our personal experiences in certain situations. We
very strongly rely upon such attitudes and hardly accept any change or effort of persuasion about these attitudes.
We very strongly rely upon our senses and the things we see, hear or feel by
our own senses make great impact on us. So we don’t accept a counter argument
about these things. For example, a person doesn’t know anything about yoga. Suddenly
an unknown person started talking about yoga before him. He told the benefits
and importance of yoga in making a healthy body and healthy mind. At first the
first person may accept something but will never believe strongly the other’s
views about yoga. But if he himself will practice yoga for some days and will
experience its benefits then definitely he will develop a very strong belief
about the worthiness of yoga and also advise others to practice yoga to
maintain good physical as well as mental health.
Here in this case the
first person developed a liking for yoga by self experience and hence his
belief in its effectiveness is very strong. And it is very difficult to
convince the person that yoga is not so effective as he himself experienced the
benefits of it. Similarly we acquire many attitudes from our personal
experiences in different situations and we strongly rely on such attitude and
don’t easily accept a counter argument by someone else about these attitudes.
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