Definition of Attitudes

Definition of Attitudes

Attitudes have two components: belief and feeling

Cognitive and affective

1. beliefs: mental association with a concept

2. affect: a feeling component

Attitudes are normative.
Very important forms of attitudes are about social identities.

The first Component of an Attitude: Belief

Beliefs associated with an identity are often stereotypical:

A) sociodemographic differences of a person.

B) personal experience

Norm Formation (Sherif 1936)

How are the standards for a norm set?

Figure: Norms arise following a Funnel effect or Convergence effect

Norm Conformity (Asch 1953)

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Ash conducted follow-up interviews with the same subjects. He concluded that there are three possible conditions under which naive subjects complied with the majority:

1. Distortion of judgment

2. Distortion of perception

3. Distortion of action

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Interpretations of Ash’s experiment by Scheff

Two groups that report overt shame

Comments

· I felt like a silly fool

· I suspected the others would see me as crazy

1. One group that yielded to the influence of the group avoided overt shame

· People with low self esteem are unable to manage shame in a way that leads to acknowledgment and discharge.

· If a situation evokes the threat of shame, this situation is overwhelmingly painful. People will turn the world upside down to avoid pain.

2. Another group that stayed independent from the group

· People with high self esteem are able to deal with overt shame.

· They acted upon their judgment despite their feelings of shame.

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The group that does not report shame

Comment

· I felt normal

According to Ash, these people

· granted the majority the power to see correctly

· allowed themselves to become confused

· adapted the majority judgments without permitting themselves to know of their activity.

According to Scheff, this speaks for avoidance of conflict, denial of feelings, and self deception. These are all indicators of unacknowledged or bypassed shame.

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