Stories as Attitudes

Stories as Attitudes

Curiosity seems to be innately part of the human experience. With this propensity towards curiosity comes our seemingly insatiable need to search for answers to the world's many unanswered (and conceivably unanswerable?) questions. Perhaps the most important of these questions regard the origin of the world, of life, and of us as human beings. The need to account for our own beginnings can be seen throughout history, as multiple explanations have been offered from diverse cultures, religions, philosophies and disciplines. For example, "the folklore of even the most primitive human tribes indicates that they had given some thought to questions about the origin and history of the world" (Mayr, 2001, p.1). This "urge to account for a beginning" has indeed led to many different answers and justifications throughout time, the most popular and noteworthy being the stories of creationism and evolution (Mayr, 2001). These two accounts at first appear to be entirely irreconcilable, thus sparking centuries of heated controversy and debate. The purpose of this discussion is not to attempt to resolve the age-old arguments among creationists and evolutionists, but instead to investigate the psychosocial reasons behind the power of each side's assertion that they and they alone are "right".

According to the definition of an "attitude" (i.e., "any cognitive representation that summarizes our evaluation of an object, which may be the self, other people, things, actions, events, or ideas"), the stories/explanations that we come up with to account for the world around us are nothing more than attitudes (Smith & Mackie, 2000, p. 247). Evaluating the inherent characteristics of attitudes will allow us to gain insight into new (and more useful?) ways of thinking about persuasion (i.e., "the process by which attitudes are developed, reinforced, or changed by communications"), thereby allowing us to further understand why conflicting stories, specifically the stories of creationism vs. evolution, can be perceived as tremendously threatening (Smith & Mackie, 2000, p. 248).

People form attitudes/ create stories because they are useful in mastering the social environment and in establishing important connections with others. It is a well- known fact in psychology that once an attitude is formed, it becomes very closely linked to the representation of the object to which that attitude has been ascribed (i.e., the attitude object) (Smith & Mackie, 2000). This cognitive connection helps us to negotiate our interactions with these attitude objects in two ways: through the "object appraisal or knowledge function" and/or the "instrumental or utilitarian function".