Likert Scale Development Social psychological attitudes are perhaps one of the most important determinants of society in that it is the individual’s attitude that motivates his or her behaviour. As Rajecki (1990) summed up this conception: ‘...attitude is seen as the cause and behaviour is seen as the effect.’ (Rajecki, 1990, p.4). Given consideration, it is easy to see that this is in fact the case; for example, why do people aspire to an education? The reason for this is that they perceive an education to be a positive thing and therefore as something to be desired. There are many words which are variations of ‘attitude’ such as beliefs, perceptions, convictions, judgements and opinions. Every day we are forming attitudes and acting according to these attitudes and so it becomes clear that attitudes are the factors underpinning everyday life. Allport (1935) defined attitudes as ‘... a mental neural stateof readiness, organised through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it is related’ (Rajecki, 1990, p.4). Attitudes are normally measured through the use of scales such as Thurstone’s equal appearing interval scale and Likert’s(1932) summated rating scale. The Likert scale is perhaps one of the most widely used scale in attitude measurement (Dyer, 1995). Unlike the other scales, the Likert scale employs only monotone items which are either favourable or unfavourable. Respondents have to indcate their level of agreement with a list of these monotone items on a scale from one to five. The answer format is normally presented in the following order: strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree, strongly disagree (See App1, Figure 1 for ex... ... middle of paper ... ...* 0.6 27 The government should give in and reduce fuel prices r * 0.6 28 The protest should occur again to reduce fuel prices SD High 32 Protestors should have been arrested Mean * 2.5 36 Petrol prices are too high Mean * 2.5 39 Taxes are high to improve public services Increases Alpha Table 2 - Reason’s for item removal at time 2 Item Reason 3 The government should give in to the blockades r * 0.6 6 The government should not give in to bully-boy tactics Mean * 3.5 8 Fuel tax cuts are essential for businesses to survive Mean * 2.5 14 The blockades have achieved good results Mean * 3.5 I would be happy to have a nuclear waste plant in my back garden (please circle one answer) 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Agree Undecided Disagree Strongly Agree Disagree Figure 1. - Example attitude statement
Hogg, M.A., Abrams, D., & Martin, G.N. (2010). Social Cognition and Attitudes. In Martin, G.N., Carlson, N.R., Buskist W., (Ed.), Psychology (pp 646-677). Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
It is believed that a person’s attitude influences their memory. Many researchers have conducted experiments on this hypothesis. It has been determine that attitude does have an effect on memory; however, there has been discrepancies in the research results to what extent am individual’s attitude has on recall of past behavior (Aronson, 2012, pp. 164-165). Research done in 1943 by Levine and Murphy indicated that people tend to remember information that supports their social attitude rather than information that does not (Aronson, 2012, pp. 165). Similarly, earlier research looked at the effect attitude had on behavior and memory and found a negative correlation among the two (Aronson, 2012). Moreover, subsequent research has not conclusively determined that a person’s attitude influences their memory. Aronson reminds us that there is still room for further research to determine exactly the extent to which attitudes effect memory (2012).
Musher-Eizenman, D. R., Holub, S. C., & Arnett, M. (2003). Attitude and Peer Influences on
Wood, W. (2000). Attitude change: Persuasion and social influence.. Annual Review of Psychology, 51(1), 539.
In this part of my essay the results of the questionnaire are presented. The aim of this part is to get a comprehensive picture about people’s opinion in connection with vampires and their images. I am curious about which vampire do today’s people prefer and which characteristics are best known; the classic or the modern type. I would also like to be informed about which literary works and movies have they heard about containing vampires and to what extent is this knowledge in connection with age and gender. This survey is divided into three parts; the first part contains personal information, the second part is about the respondent’s general knowledge of those literary works, which include vampires and the last part is the common people’s opinions and experiences about vampirism. All in all, my goal is to find out; are the issues presented in chapter one are as serious as it is often said?
Contrarily, Positivisms main principle is determinacy; that all behaviour is a result of circumstances. Therefore, the degree of socialisation an individual has in societal values, leads them to be categorised into conformist or criminal on the continuum. However, this is a problem as it denies the freedom individuals have in making choices. The same tension between instinct and the social self exists in Conse...
“Just as emotions provide valuable information to the self, emotional expressions provide information to observers, which may influence their cognitions, attitudes, and behavior” (Van Kleef, Heerdink, and Van Den Berg, p. 2, 2014). A positive feature of attitudes is that they are subject to change over time. According to Van Kleef, Heerdink, and Van Den Berg (p. 2), “We define attitudes as temporary evaluations that are constructed based on a combination of stored representations of an attitude object and information that is currently at hand. This working definition explicitly allows for changes in attitudes over time while acknowledging that certain attitudes have a relatively stable basis in a person’s memory system” (2014). This conceptual definition of attitudes and attitude change is that though attitudes can change based on new information or a different emotional reaction, they can also stay the same or relatively similar to their primary state. Overall, the information that individuals perceive through emotions can influence their attitudes, which can then alter their attitudes towards certain
Attitudes can be formed in a number of different ways. The three component model consists of Affective, Cognitive and behavioural based attitude experiences and has been a main area of focus among social psychologists. These three components are held within most attitudes, however not all attitudes are equal and different experiences can change the ...
Accordingly, for the purpose of this essay I will focus on two schools of personality psychology, the Humanistic school of thought on motivation and Trait Psychology. I will compare and contrast the two theories to determine how they connected and find that there are subtle differences between them. Before I begin my analysis, it will be necessary to explore the definition of human motivation t...
f. The questionnaire is useful in measuring personality traits, but should not be the ultimate definer. There were some test-retest and inter-rater discrepancies that were significant enough to question the validity of the questionnaire on some traits, such as emotional stability.The most common feedback was that the rater did not know how to rate some of the statements because it depended on the situation, and thus the rater gave more moderate scores. However, the generality of the questions cannot be avoided since personality is how these traits are exhibited over time and situations.
During the course of one’s lifespan we learn, develop and grow. Within our life’s we will learn to understand that in reality we are influenced, demanded and obeying rules. Social psychology believes that social influence has a strong sway on influences of one’s lifestyle. Inside the field of psychology, Social psychology includes a large field of knowledge around social influence.The following topic in social psychology looks at how individual thoughts, actions and feelings are influenced by social groups. Throughout the following essay, I will be discussing in my opinion one of the most interesting topic related to social psychology: social influence and its three relations to normative social influence, informative
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...
Your attitudes lead to corresponding images, emotions and actions that affect your life and relationships. Your attitudes are based on your previous experiences and your basic premises about how things are supposed to be.
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.
Our attitude is a learned behavior that can be changed by the individual’s choice to make that change. I agree that a person’s attitude begins with their own personal feelings, values, and beliefs, but the knowledge of the values and norms of our culture also can define who we can be or should be. After all, if a person couldn’t change their attitude, then how could they grow and learn or just simply adapt to ones environment. For some parts of life, the blueprint is drawn by heredity; but for other parts, the individual is a blank slate, and it is entirely up to the individual to change what is written on that slate. You alone can make your density great by doing on simple thing “getting an attitude adjustment”. Attitude is your life, yours affects everybody and everybody’s affects you.