“Ooohoo pizza. I love it!”, “Yuck! I can’t stand vegetarian food”.The above two statements signify our reaction to an environment in an evaluative manner. We are constantly making judgments about any objects, events, and others that are favourable or unfavourable, likeable or unlikeable, good or bad. This falls in the domain of attitudes. Social psychologists who study attitudes investigate factors involved in such evaluations: how they are formed, changed, and so on.
Attitude is a learned predisposition or a tendency to respond consistently towards an object favourably or unfavourably. It can also be defined as a predisposition to react to a certain stimulus in a particular manner.
Further, this tendency or predisposition is ‘learned’ and shaped by society, and it is enduring, i.e., attitudes do not change easily.
In this unit, we will peruse the concept of an attitude, how attitudes are formed, Moral and Political attitudes, Influence in Thought and Behaviour, Social Influence and Persuasion, and what functions are served by holding attitudes. After you have finished learning this unit, you will definitely have some understanding of attitude and its relevance in daily life.
