How are attitudes formed?

“He has got an attitude”; “Such a bad attitude”

We often use this word for negative behavior. The word is synonymous with rudeness. But if you look up, the primary meaning of attitude is evaluation of humans about everything around them. We often evaluate races, people’s nature, jobs, world issues, environmental issues, countries, etc. The conclusion we put about them is called ‘attitude’.

There are two kinds of attitudes: Explicit and Implicit.

Implicit Attitudes: These are the attitudes we are not consciously aware about and we cannot control them too. We make these attitudes generally in our formative years. Therefore they are ingrained in our unconscious level and we are more emotional about them. For example, a child sees parents differentiating people based on their skin color and so a child too does this behavior in his life.

Explicit Attitudes: These are the attitudes we are consciously aware about and can report about them too. We make these attitudes much later in our lives. Therefore they are in our conscious level and we are less emotional about them. For example a child can report whether they like math or not based on his experience about it.

How are the attitudes formed?

We form attitudes so easily that it is often difficult for us how we formed them in the first place.

1. Classical Conditioning

2. Operant or Instrumental Conditioning 

Let us tackle them one by one.

1. Classical Conditioning

Unconsciously linking two behaviors for a reaction

Here, we learn attitudes by association. Two unrelated stimuli are linked together to form a new response. The Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov discovered this conditioning. Let us look at a small experiment he did.

1. He had seen his dogs salivating when there was no reason to do so such as when their food bowl clattered or when it was time of lunch. This intrigued him.

2. He saw that the food brought was an independent event on its own. The dogs salivated when the food was brought to them, which he found natural.

3. He decided to tweak the routine a little. He decided that when it was time for lunch he would ring a bell, which he did for some days. This lead to no salivation.

4. Then he began to follow the sound of the bell with the food. The dogs knew food as familiar stimuli so they salivated. This went on for some time.

So bell-food-salivation was the routine done.

5. Pavlov saw that after a few days, the sound of the bell itself evoked salivation in dogs. It was the same as dogs salivating at clattering of food bowls.

Through this experiment, we understand how we link two independent stimuli to form our reaction.

Some of the elements you might like to learn would be:

Unconditioned stimulus: Food for dogs was an unlearned event which evoked natural response salivation in dogs.

Unconditioned response: The natural, biological response of salivation on seeing the food is the genetic or unlearned response of dogs.

Neutral Stimulus: The bell which previously did not lead to salivation is a neutral stimulus. The bell became a learned stimulus when associated with food. Since the stimulus became conditioned and it lead to salivation, it can later called Conditioned stimulus.

Conditioned Response: The dogs learnt that bell lead to food. Since they learnt a new response, it will be called conditioned response. This is because the response here is not biological but learnt through several repeated instances.

Real Life examples of Classical Conditioning:

• When we develop a food poisoning for a food item, we automatically have an unconscious aversion to that food and we began to feel sick or gag when we look at that food item since we have associated that item to sickness.
• We saw a large dog coming at us when we were a child and we got scared. We might have developed a fear of dogs due to this. So now also when we see a large dog, we run away from there even though the dog would do no harm. We have associated the large dog with fear.

2. Operant or Instrumental Conditioning

What will I get out of it?

Here, we learn attitudes by consequences. B.F Skinner is considered to be the pioneer of the study of this conditioning. We can divide consequences in four parts:

1. Positive Reinforcement or Consequences

2. Negative Reinforcement or Consequences

3. Punishment

4. Extinction

The terms may sound complicated but their meanings are fairly simple

1. Positive Reinforcement: When we feel our behavior has pleasant consequences, we actively do the behavior often. It is the conscious behavior we do and the understanding of pleasure we get, which leads to repetition of behavior. For example:  We dress up in a certain way and we get compliments, leading us to frequently dress in a similar way; dogs receive treats when they fetch toys for their owners.

2. Negative Reinforcement: When we feel our behavior will lead to avoidance of an unpleasant consequence, we actively do the behavior often. It is too our conscious behavior and we understand that by doing we can avoid a bad situation. For example: We pay our bills on time so that our services are not cut off and we are not deprived of the services; dogs do not go to forbidden places to avoid punishments from owners

3. Punishment: Reinforcement leads to behavior becoming stronger; punishment leads to behavior becoming weaker. Classic example of punishment is a child is spanked for his bad behavior. It can be done in two ways. Punishment By Application means you scream at a child or spank a child for a wrongdoing. Punishment by Removal means the child loses something which he holds dear. The example would be that if he throws tantrums at home, he will not be able to meet his friends.

To specifically avoid such unpleasant circumstances, the child will behave well.

4. Extinction: Extinction is the removal of response when the conditioning stimulus is not there anymore. Simply put, when a desired response is not met, we stop our reaction to it. An example would be: A child got what she wanted when she threw tantrums in public. The parents would stop reacting to her tantrums. When the child understands that her previous behavior is not yielding her result, she would stop the behavior.

Classical Conditioning Image Courtesy : Yerkes, R. M., & Morgulis, S., CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Operant Conditioning Image Courtesy: Kiki12121, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Thumbnail Image Courtesy: scattered1 from USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The post ends here. In the next post I will elaborate how to give reinforcement, what is the actual difference between these two conditioning and one more important way of learning attitude.