ATTITUDE FORMATION

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.