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Essay on attitudes
Essays about attitudes
Theories of attitude in social psychology
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Attitudes are reaction that reveals individual’s thoughts or ideas on a particular issue either positive, negative or neutral. Scholars define attitudes in many different ways. Some believe that attitudes are linked to beliefs and behaviors. Others think that they relate to feelings. Allport (1961) referred to attitudes as “the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary social psychology.” Early scholars believed that attitudes related to feeling. Thomas and Znaniecki (1918) claimed that attitude is “a state of feeling continuously constructed by individual experiences, which finally leads to perception towards an object or situation of which a person is related to.” From this definition, it can be seen that attitudes deal …show more content…
Gardner (1986) and Lambert (1980) mention two types: instrumentional and integrative orientation. Instrumentional orientation is motivation for acquiring a language because of social achievement, personal success or economic benefit. For example, a person learns a language because s/he can find a good job. On the other hand, integrative orientation is motivation for learning a language due to social community and communication. For example, a person learns a language for communication with people from other parts of the world. It is believed that integrative orientation tends to be more successful than instrumentional orientation because people have motivation and encouragement to study a …show more content…
Abidin (2012) states that students have negative attitudes towards learning English because they are not aware of the importance of English and they lack any need for English as it is not a compulsory subject in Libya. The researcher suggests that students could see the positive side if their needs were assessed before conducting a class. When students are involved in what they need, they should have more positive attitudes. In addition, educational system also leads to negative attitudes towards English language. When the education system in a country does not focus much on English, the students find it unnecessary to learn. However, the language users must learn English when they became adults to speak with others. Both factors lead them to express significantly negative attitude towards learning English (Karahan,
In human mind structure, the way a person thinks is based on the feeling he has. Thoughts and emotions are related and affected to each other and it will come up with the personal mind or judgment. Haidt tells the readers “thoughts can cause emotion and emotion can cause thoughts. Feelings of sadness blind you to all pleasure and opportunity.” (31) It is important for immigrant students to understand what their emotions are toward their performances in every class.
I did not really believe that it was accurate until I took the tests. I accurately relied on my explicit attitudes that I never thought about what I subconsciously thought of. Taking the IAT’s allowed me to see a different perspective, moreover, even though I had an explicit attitude for both tests, I still got different results. In the textbook, it states that we can have both explicit and implicit attitudes toward the same topic (p. 169). Furthermore, taking the IAT’s allowed me to notice my implicit and explicit attitudes toward the same topic and how it contradicted to what I had initially
By assessing the personal meaning of events, emotion comes up. What’s more, positive emotions have not only a role of marking happiness, but also a function to continue
Attitudes are associated with specific individuals. One’s attitude is not necessarily regarded as collective attitude maintained in the particular society (Lieberman and Fredrick, 157). Each of the individuals affiliated with the social group can chose their won attitudes towards a particular individual or group in the particular social context. The cases of negative attitudes and discrimination in society more often than not prevail on the basis of racial differences. Hence, individuals’ attitudes in the perpetuation of discrimination and racial inequality have lowered significance in
Attitudes are relatively stable positive, negative or neutral person's evaluations that can vary in level of intensity, and has an affective, cognitive, and behavioral component, (Piotrowski, 2005). The main difference between attitudes and a trait is variability. To consider an element as a trait, there should be considered two elements: longitudinal stability and consistency across situations.
Psychologist’s definitions of attitudes include assessing problems, persons, or actions. These assessments are regularly affirmative or adverse, and unclear. Humans have established attitudes about such issues, and these attitudes influence his or her beliefs as well as behavior. Because people are largely unaware of his or her implicit attitudes, they can have difficulty changing these attitudes.
Ideologies are mental systems that organize socially shared attitudes, and these mental systems are social representations that function as “models which control how people act, speak or write or how they understand the social practices of others” (van Dijk, 1995: 2).
The fundamental question of what attitudes are cannot be answered easily, as many psychologists offer differing definitions. These range from simply describing them as likes and dislikes, to the definition provided by Tiffin and McCormick, in Attitude and Motivation(1971), where they summarize attitudes as being, “a frame of reference that influences the individual’s views or opinions on various topics and situations, and influences their behavior.” It is widely accepted, however, that attitudes include both beliefs and values. Beliefs, although considered to be based on the knowledge gained about the world around us, can vary greatly in their importance and influence, and therefore ibn their resistence to change. For instance, an individual’s belief in God is highly influential, not only on its own but also in its effect on many other beliefs held by the individual, whereas a belief that eating late at night may cause indigestion is far less central and influential in its effect. Beliefs, both major and minor, form the cognitive component of attitu...
Attitudes are formed from learning. Moreover, the effects of home life, school, religious experience, and peers can help develop an individual’s attitude. An example, a child that grows up in a home where parents distrust law enforcement officials may grow up to despise police officers and other authority figures. Trustworthiness is the strongest source because just being an expert does not mean that person is truthful.
People have a tendency to associate their opinions of other people with their current mood. For example, if you meet someone at a comedy club you will likely associate that person with laughter and fun (Heffner, C. (2011).
Social cognition explores sociocultural values (e.g. solidarity, loyalty, ethos), ideologies (e.g. racist, sexist, feminist), systems of attitudes (e.g. multiculturalism), sociocultural knowledge (e.g. society, groups, individuals, language, culture). In its turn, personal cognition is divided into general/context-free cognition, referring to personal values (personal selections from the pool of social values), personal ideologies (personal interpretations of group ideologies), personal attitudes (systems of personal opinions) and personal knowledge (biographical information, past experiences) and particular/context-bound cognition, integrating models (ad hoc representations of specific current actions, events), context models (ad hoc representations of the speech context), mental plans and representations of acts and discourse, mental constructions of text meaning and mental selections of discourse structures
An example of this is when people form judgements about certain events or topics such as the news. When people form judgements they do not come out of thin air; people form judgements using shared and personal knowledge, reason, perspective, and emotions. Depending on the topic, emotions may or may not play a large role in the formation of people’s judgements. This past summer, the Supreme Court legalized same sex marriage which caused a huge controversy among many people. I remember seeing friends having large debates over social media about the court’s ruling. In summer school two people got into a heated argument when discussing the topic in my government class. When people asked me for my opinion on the ruling, I simply refused to comment so that I would not get into a debate with another person. Were people placing a large emphasis on their emotions when forming their judgements? There was a sense of confirmation bias among the people when they were debating. This confirmation bias stemmed from a strong emotional attachment to one’s opinions. It is up to the person to decide whether or not they act on their emotions. Because of my religious background, I felt discontent with the ruling. I began to think, “Was I too quick to come up with an opinion on the ruling?” Like the others, I could not repress my emotions towards the topic. But,
Attitude is everything. Without attitude, it would not define who we are. It is important to see how attitudes can bring people together or how attitudes can also separate people. I thought the author came up with a great explanation of attitude and how there are losers and winners. Losers, of course, will be pessimistic about every situation while winners, will optimist about every situation. The author gave a great analysis of many scenarios and situations. I actually never thought of attitudes beginning as a harmless thought. When I think of attitude, I see it, as a very negative connotation because people are often stating, “Do not give me any attitude.”
Some people do not have the desire to learn English, particularly those who do not use it in their daily lives and business. This situation often occurs where English is regarded as a foreign language.
Second Language learning is necessitated by the different situations of different people. For instance, it can be for social or academic purposes. Learners are affected by many factors in the second language acquisition process such as level of cognitive development, socio-economic and cultural background, age, motivation or ability and intelligence (Gomleksiz, 2001; Wisniewski, 2007). This paper will however concentrate on how intelligence or aptitude and motivation affect the learning of a second language.