26. Social attitude of the individual, its formation and change

Every society has a number of specific values ​​that are formed over many years. For example, these include freedom, honesty, nobility, kindness or decency. These postulates will characterize a certain person only if the individual adheres to these rules of behavior. In psychology, this phenomenon is known under the term “social attitude.”

Beliefs

Social attitudes in psychology

In 1918, F. Znaniecki and W. Thomas, studying the adaptation of an individual, were able to establish a dependence, without which it was impossible to describe this process: the relationship between social organization and personality.

Scientists have proposed characterizing this relationship using 2 brief concepts:

1. "Social value". This term began to be called social organization.
2. “Attitude” or “social attitude” - to characterize a person.

After this, the term “attitude” was firmly rooted in foreign psychology, which reflected the state of the individual in relation to one or another social value.

F. Znaniecki and W. Thomas

Attitudes and role behavior

Part of the process of socialization of an individual is the mastery of social roles, which is a prerequisite for the individual to “grow into” society.

Definition 3

A social role is a way of behavior of people depending on the position they occupy, corresponding to accepted norms.

During his life, any person enters into one or another social group, where he occupies a certain position and certain expectations are placed on him. In each group, a person must behave in accordance with the requirements of the group, i.e. act in different roles.

Note 1

A social role is a kind of stable pattern of behavior for a certain status, which answers the question - who is this person, what rights and responsibilities does he have.

Position in society determines only one status - main or integral.

When a person learns his social role, he learns the social standard of behavior and, as if from the outside, learns to evaluate himself and exercise self-control. Each social role leaves its mark on a person’s self-awareness, on his personality, for the fulfillment of which a person mobilizes the resources of his body and psyche.

When performing a role that does not correspond to the individual “I,” an intrapersonal conflict may arise.

Intrapersonal conflicts can be the following:

• the possibilities of one’s own “I” are lower than the possibilities of the social “role”;
• the social role is below the capabilities of the “I” and is unworthy and humiliating for a person

A person is driven mainly by internal motives, needs, and desires to master a particular role.

The social roles performed by a person in real life may have conflicting requirements, and in order to maintain the integrity of his “I”, there is a need for some kind of mechanism.

This mechanism is a functional organ and the personality itself, which allows one to integrate one’s “I”, carry out a moral assessment of one’s actions, and refuse one thing in favor of another. A developed personality can use role behavior as a tool for adaptation to a particular social situation.

A social role is a manifestation of the external “I”, and there is also an internal “I”. External behavior can be exemplary, the person himself can be a law-abiding citizen, but in his inner world he can be a rebel.

Based on social status and its requirements, a person’s role behavior is determined mainly by the social “I”, the demonstrative “I”, also expected by others, the reflected “I” and the real “I” of the individual.

The social roles performed by a person reinforce the corresponding patterns of behavior, opinions, views, attitudes, attitudes, and have a great influence on the style of speech, clothing, and lifestyle.

When social roles change, a change in behavior, attitudes, values, and personal attitudes may occur.

Concept and main types

Social maladjustment in psychology

Modern sociology and psychology include various definitions of social attitudes. Most often, Gordon Allport's interpretation is used to explain this term. According to the American psychologist, a social attitude is a psychological state of an individual in which the person is ready to behave in a certain way, according to past experience of “collision” with an object.

G. Allport

In the socio-psychological literature one can find 5 main types of social attitudes:

1. Perceptual. Attitude is characterized by an individual's readiness to see what he wants to see.
2. Situational, in which a person is ready to behave differently in relation to the same object, depending on the circumstances.
3. Social, aimed at an object. This attitude is characterized by specific actions of the individual, regardless of the current situation.
4. Generalized or general. The emergence of an attitude is influenced by a collection of identical objects.
5. Private or partial. An attitude towards a certain object arises on the basis of the individual’s personal experience.

Depending on the modality, attitudes are:

• positive or positive;
• negative or negative;
• neutral;
• ambivalent.

Attitude: concept, structure, functions

The tradition of studying social attitudes has developed in Western social psychology and sociology. The difference between this tradition is that from the very beginning the categorical structure of research and the emphasis placed in it were focused on problems of socio-psychological knowledge. In Western social psychology, the term “attitude” is used to denote social attitudes, which in literature in Russian is translated either as “social attitude”, or is used as a tracing paper from English (without translation) “attitude”. The study of attitudes is a completely independent line of research that has become one of the most developed areas of social psychology.

After the discovery of the attitude phenomenon, a kind of boom in its research began. Several different interpretations of attitude have emerged, and many contradictory definitions have emerged. In 1935, G. Allport wrote a review article on the problem of attitude research, in which he counted 17 definitions of this concept. From these seventeen definitions, those features of attitude that were noted by all researchers were identified. In their final, systematized form, they looked like this. Attitude was understood by everyone as:

a) a certain state of consciousness and nervous system;

b) expressing readiness to react;

c) organized;

d) based on previous experience;

e) exerting a guiding and dynamic influence on behavior.

Thus, the dependence of attitude on previous experience and its important regulatory role in behavior were established.

At the same time, a number of proposals regarding methods for measuring attitudes followed. Various scales first proposed by L. Turnstone were used as the main method. The use of scales was necessary and possible because attitudes represent a latent (hidden) attitude towards social situations and objects, characterized by modality (therefore they can be judged by a set of statements). It quickly became clear that the development of scales was limited by the unsolved nature of some substantive problems of attitudes, in particular regarding their structure; it remained unclear what the scale measured. In addition, since all measurements were based on verbal self-report, ambiguities arose with the distinction between the concepts of “attitude” - “opinion”, “knowledge”, “belief”, etc. The development of methodological tools stimulated further theoretical research. It was carried out in two main directions: as a disclosure of the functions of the attitude and as an analysis of its structure.

It was clear that the attitude served to satisfy some important needs of the subject, but it was necessary to establish which ones. Four functions of attitudes were identified :

1) adaptive (sometimes called utilitarian, adaptive) - the attitude directs the subject to those objects that serve to achieve his goals;

2) knowledge function - attitude gives simplified instructions regarding the method of behavior in relation to a specific object;

3) the function of expression (sometimes called the function of value, self-regulation) - attitude acts as a means of freeing the subject from internal tension, expressing oneself as an individual;

4) protection function - the attitude contributes to the resolution of internal conflicts of the individual.

The attitude is able to perform all these functions because it has a complex structure. In 1942, M. Smith defined a three-component structure of attitude, which distinguishes:

a) cognitive component (awareness of the object of the social attitude);

b) affective component (emotional assessment of the object, identifying feelings of sympathy or antipathy towards it);

c) behavioral (conative) component (consistent behavior in relation to the object).

Now the social attitude was defined as awareness, evaluation, readiness to act. The three components have been identified in numerous experimental studies (the Yale Studies by K. Hovland). Although they produced interesting results, many problems remained unresolved.

First of all, it remained unclear what the scales measured: attitude as a whole or one of its components (it seemed that most scales were able to “capture” only the emotional assessment of an object, i.e., the affective component of attitude). Further, in experiments conducted in the laboratory, the research was carried out according to the simplest scheme - an attitude towards one object was revealed, and it was not clear what would happen if this attitude was woven into the broader social structure of the individual’s actions. Finally, another difficulty arose regarding the connection between attitude and actual behavior.

Basic functions of social attitudes

Social environment - what is it in psychology

Attitudes are characterized by 4 key functions:

1. Utilitarian, adaptive or instrumental. Social installation ranks first among important attitudes. The mechanism of action is aimed at helping the individual achieve his goals. The function also helps the individual adapt to the situation, reduce losses and increase rewards. Attitude influences individual identification in a group.
2. Self-protective. Helps resolve conflicts within the individual. Protects the individual from traumatic information that can negatively affect the psyche. The function allows you to guide a person along a more “gentle” path.
3. Self-realizing. Helps a person to discover his own abilities and organize behavior in such a way as to satisfy the necessary needs. Thanks to attitudes, the individual realizes himself and begins to understand what kind of person he is.
4. Organizational. The main direction of this function is to organize the world around us. With the help of attitudes, an individual evaluates the acquired knowledge and correlates it with his own goals, interests and motives. Attitude helps to learn new information in the process of social cognition. This helps solve many problems.

Structure and components of social attitude

Social anxiety - what is it?

Scientist M. Smith in 1942 defined a three-component structure of a social attitude. It includes:

1. Cognitive component. It is characterized by the subject having knowledge about the area of ​​life to which this or that attitude relates.
2. Affective component. Expressed in emotional assessments, feelings and experiences associated with events, objects or processes.
3. Behavioral component. It is characterized by real actions that a person can perform in relation to the object in question.

Behavioral component

Attitude components can either overlap or exist separately.

Important! If all components of the structure are not in conflict with each other, then the settings can be considered consistent.

For example, the presence of a favorable background, positive knowledge and positive actions indicates the presence of harmonious attitudes. When social attitudes are inconsistent, there will be a chaos of negative information, positive attitudes, and neutral actions.

To take consistent steps, a person requires consistent attitudes. Otherwise, the individual will be tormented by ambivalent feelings, and contradictory actions will begin to dominate his behavior.

Attitudes and actual behavior

Throughout the long history of attitude studies, there has been no doubt that knowledge of attitude is useful because it allows one to predict behavior. It seemed self-evident that an attitude corresponded to a certain behavior. However, difficulties soon arose in explaining the attitude-behavior connection. It was discovered after the famous experiment of R. Lapierre in 1934.

The experiment consisted of the following. LaPierre traveled around the United States with two Chinese students. They visited 252 hotels and in almost all cases (with the exception of one) they received a normal reception that met the service standards. No difference was found in the service provided to LaPierre himself and his Chinese students. After completing the trip (two years later), Lapierre contacted 251 hotels with letters asking whether he could hope for hospitality again if he visited the hotel accompanied by the same two Chinese, now his employees.

The answer came from 128 hotels, and only one contained consent, 52% refused, and the rest were evasive. Lapierre interpreted these data to mean that there is a discrepancy between the attitude (attitudes towards people of Chinese nationality) and the actual behavior of hotel owners. From the responses to the letters, one could conclude that there was a negative attitude, while in actual behavior it was not manifested; on the contrary, the behavior was organized as if it were carried out on the basis of a positive attitude.

This finding was called “Lapierre's paradox” and gave rise to deep skepticism regarding the study of attitude. If actual behavior is not built in accordance with the attitude, what is the point in studying this phenomenon? The decline in interest in attitudes was largely due to the discovery of this effect.

In subsequent years, various measures were taken to overcome the emerging difficulties. On the one hand, efforts were made to improve the technique of measuring attitudes (it was suggested that in Lapierre's experiment the scale was imperfect); on the other hand, new explanatory hypotheses were put forward. Some of these proposals are of particular interest. M. Rokeach expressed the idea that a person has two attitudes simultaneously: towards the object and towards the situation.

One or the other attitude can “switch on.” In Lapierre’s experiment, the attitude towards the object was negative (attitude towards the Chinese), but the attitude towards the situation prevailed - the hotel owner in a specific situation acted in accordance with accepted service standards. In the proposal of D. Katz and E. Stotland, the idea of ​​different manifestations of some different aspects of attitude took on a different form: they suggested that in different situations either the cognitive or the affective components of the attitude may manifest themselves and the result will therefore be different.

The desire to find new justifications for the connection between attitudes and behavior has led to a revival of interest in this issue. In the 1980s, several new explanations for LaPierre's "failure" were proposed.

First of all, the reasons were established that “complicate” the impact of attitude on behavior (40 of them were named!), and at the same time, factors that could counter these reasons: the strength of the attitude (an attitude is considered strong if it occurs immediately in response to a stimulus: “snake” is “evil”!), expected attitude (“I knew it!”). Thus, the conditions were specified under which the provision on the influence of attitude on behavior retained its significance.

Formation of social attitudes in humans

The process of development of social attitudes, according to the research of J. Godefroy, occurs in 4 stages:

1. Up to 12 years of age, children experience the formation of attitudes that are identical to their parents’ models.
2. From 12 to 20 years old, girls and boys learn social roles. Against this background, attitudes begin to take on the most concrete forms.
3. In the period from 20 to 30 years, social values ​​and worldview crystallize, on the basis of which stable mental formations are formed - a number of different beliefs.
4. At the age of 30 years and older, attitudes are characterized by stability and fixity. Therefore, it is much more difficult for a mature person to change attitudes than in his youth.

Thanks to knowledge about the stages of attitude formation, entire programs are built in pedagogy and social science to help guide young people along a comfortable and socially correct life path.

What approaches are used

The following approaches can influence the formation of social attitudes:

• cognitive;
• motivational;
• structural;
• behaviorist;
• genetic.

With the cognitive approach, attitudes are formed as a result of the individual’s desire to resolve internal conflicts that arise due to cognitions and attitudes.

The genetic direction suggests that the development of all attitudes is inextricably linked with innate personality characteristics:

• temperament;
• intellectual abilities;
• biochemical reactions.

Such “innate” attitudes are considered the most durable, in contrast to “acquired” ones.

Congenital and acquired forms of behavior

In the behaviorist approach, attitudes are understood as intermediate variables between the external world and objective stimuli. Therefore, the subject practically does not take part in the formation of attitudes. Development is carried out with the help of:

• observing the behavior of other individuals and analyzing the consequences;
• positive reinforcement;
• formation of associative connections between existing attitudes and stimuli.

Within the framework of the structural approach, the development of attitudes is carried out through comparison with the attitudes of surrounding people. The individual begins to “adjust” his own worldview and value views in order to correspond to one or another social category of persons.

For the motivational approach, the basis for the development of social attitudes is a series of balanced arguments “for” and “against” a particular attitude.

Changing social attitudes

During a person’s life, not only social attitudes are formed, but also they change.

Additional Information. It is this feature that distinguishes attitudes from other psychological characteristics of a person.

Example, formation and change of character, abilities, temperament are carried out slowly and insignificantly throughout life, and the transformation of social attitudes can occur rapidly and repeatedly. Therefore, in order to predict an individual’s behavior, it is necessary, first of all, to pay attention to his attitudes, and not other personality traits.

The main goals of changing attitudes are:

• adding knowledge;
• adjustment of views;
• improving relationships with other people.

The best way to change attitudes is through suggestion. It can be implemented through:

• authoritative personalities;
• parents' beliefs;
• mass media.

To change attitudes, the psychological or social proximity of a particular source of information is of great importance.

Changing social outlook

Important! If a person does not have trust in the subject trying to correct his attitudes, there will be no positive result.

Also, the speed and quality of changes in beliefs are influenced by the order and content of incoming information. The first information has a stronger influence on attitudes than subsequent information. In the event that a person is warned that it is impossible to trust the initial materials, subsequently this primary information will not be taken seriously by the individual.

Additional Information. If a person first received information and then learned that it was unreliable, then in most cases this information will not be able to influence a change in attitudes.

The simplicity of the material presented is an important key to correcting attitudes. An individual will not want to understand complex and distorted information.

Psychological attitudes are an integral part of every individual. To learn how to use them for good, you need to not only be aware of their presence, but also engage in self-reflection. Deep work with your own emotions, feelings and beliefs will help you get rid of internal barriers and improve your life and relationships with society.

Cheat sheets for exams and tests

Page 42 of 48

Social and psychological attitude of the individual

If the process of socialization explains how a person assimilates social experience and at the same time actively reproduces it, then the formation of a person’s social attitudes answers the question: how is the learned social experience refracted by the person and specifically manifests itself in his actions and actions?

Only by studying this mechanism can we resolve the question of what specifically regulates human behavior and activity. In order to understand what precedes the deployment of real action, it is necessary first of all to analyze the needs and motives that prompt a person to act. In the general theory of personality, the relationship between needs and motives is precisely considered in order to understand the internal mechanism that motivates action. However, it remains unclear what determines the choice of motive itself. This question has two sides: why do people act one way or another in certain situations? And what are they guided by when they choose this particular motive? The concept that to a certain extent explains the choice of motive is the concept of social attitude (Obukhovsky, 1972). It is widely used in everyday practice when making predictions about a person’s behavior: “N., obviously, will not go to this concert, because he has a prejudice against pop music”; “I’m unlikely to like K.: I don’t like mathematicians at all,” etc. At this everyday level, the concept of social attitude is used in a meaning close to the concept of “attitude.” However, in psychology, the term “attitude” has its own meaning, its own tradition of research, and it is necessary to correlate the concept of “social attitude” with this tradition.

The installation problem was a special subject of study at D.N.’s school. Uznadze. The external coincidence of the terms “attitude” and “social attitude” leads to the fact that sometimes the content of these concepts is considered identical. Moreover, the set of definitions that reveal the content of these two concepts is really similar: “inclination”, “direction”, “readiness”. At the same time, it is necessary to precisely define the scope of action of the installations, as D.N. understood them. Uznadze, and the scope of “social attitudes”.

It is appropriate to recall the definition of attitude given by D.N. Uznadze: “An attitude is a holistic dynamic state of the subject, a state of readiness for a certain activity, a state that is determined by two factors: the need of the subject and the corresponding objective situation” (Uznadze, 1901).

The very idea of ​​identifying special states of a person that precede his actual behavior is present among many researchers. First of all, this range of issues was discussed by I.N. Myasishchev in his concept of human relations. The relationship, understood “as a system of temporary connections of a person as a personality-subject with the whole of reality or with its individual aspects” (Myasishchev, 1960, p. 150), explains precisely the direction of the future behavior of the individual. Attitude is a kind of predisposition, a predisposition towards some objects, which allows one to expect the revelation of oneself in real acts of action. The difference from the attitude here is that various objects are assumed, including social ones, to which this attitude extends, and a wide variety of situations that are very complex from a socio-psychological point of view. The scope of an individual’s actions based on relationships is almost limitless.

This formulation of the problem does not exclude the concept of social attitude from the mainstream of general psychology, as, indeed, the concepts of “attitude” and “personality orientation”. On the contrary, all the ideas discussed here affirm the right to exist for the concept of “social attitude” in general psychology, where it now coexists with the concept of “attitude” in the meaning in which it was developed in the school of D.N. Uznadze (Asmolov, 1979).

Behavior is a form of interaction of an organism with the environment, the source of which is needs. Human behavior differs from the behavior of animals in its social conditioning, awareness, activity, creativity and is goal-oriented, voluntary in nature.

A social setting (attitude) is a certain state of consciousness, based on previous experience, that regulates a person’s attitude and behavior.

Currently, researchers are actively seeking to study the relationship between attitude and behavior , considering various factors and circumstances surrounding this.

So, in what cases do attitudes determine behavior? Attitudes predict behavior if:

- the personality’s attitude was quite strong and clear,

- the installation is in the field of human consciousness,

- knowledge about the object of this attitude,

- method of forming the installation,

- when other influences are reduced.

When the pressure of the situation is strong, attitudes do not determine behavior as strongly as in cases where such pressure is relatively weak. This is easy to see in LaPierre's study. It is difficult to refuse service to well-dressed, respectable people who appear on the threshold of a hotel or restaurant, despite feelings of prejudice towards this ethnic group. External pressure is stronger, since the rules for accepting clients require appropriate service to anyone who needs it and can pay for it.

Whether attitudes will determine human behavior depends not only on the strength of the attitudes, but also on the personal and situational factors that mediate their relationship.

The ambiguity of the “attitude-behavior” connection can also arise due to the influences exerted on human behavior by situational factors. Situational factors can be understood as global social influences (for example, a situation of social instability, economic and political situation in the country, etc.) and more “private” situational influences.

Situational factors influencing human behavior that are most often mentioned when studying the relationship between attitudes and behavior:

1) The influence of other people’s attitudes and norms on a person’s behavior (the influence of significant others and group pressure).

A person who wants to be in agreement with the group, with other people, can give up his attitudes and behave the way the majority wants. In this case, a person’s behavior may be determined not by his own, but by other people’s attitudes. S. Milgram's no less famous experiment showed that people, contrary to their beliefs, values ​​and attitudes, can cause pain to others, following the experimenter's instructions. At the same time, the influence of surrounding people is not constant and can change depending on the situation.

2) Lack of an acceptable alternative.

In addition to social factors, variables such as the lack of an acceptable alternative and exposure to unpredictable events may also influence the relationship between attitudes and behavior. The lack of an acceptable alternative lies in the fact that the discrepancy between attitude and behavior is determined by the inability to implement the attitude in practice, in reality. For example, people may be forced to buy those goods towards which they have a negative attitude, since there are simply no others.

3) Exposure to unpredictable events.

The impact of unpredictable events is that an unexpected situation forces a person to act, sometimes even contrary to his own attitudes. For example, a lonely person who does not like his neighbor (negative attitude), having fallen ill, is forced to turn to her for help.

4) Lack of time.

Finally, another situational factor that can change the attitude-behavior relationship is a lack of time caused by a person being busy or trying to solve several problems at once.

The structure of a social attitude

The concept of attitude and related issues were actively developed in the social psychology of the twentieth century. M. Smith defined a social attitude as “the disposition of an individual, according to which the tendencies of his thoughts, feelings and possible actions are organized taking into account the social object.”

In his approach, Smith conceptualized the social attitude as:

1) cognitive component (awareness),

2) affective component (evaluation)

3) conative, or behavioral component (behavior in relation to a social object).

Currently, due to the special interest in the study of attitude systems, the structure of a social attitude is defined more broadly. Attitude acts as “a value disposition, a stable predisposition to a certain assessment, based on cognitions, affective reactions, established behavioral intentions (intentions) and previous behavior, capable in turn of influencing cognitive processes, affective reactions, the formation of intentions and future behavior " Thus, the behavioral component of a social attitude no longer appears only as direct behavior (some real, already completed actions), but also as intentions. Behavioral intentions can include various expectations, aspirations, plans, plans of action - everything that a person intends to do.

As for the cognitive component, it may include beliefs, ideas, opinions, all cognitions formed as a result of cognition of a social object. Affective reactions are various emotions, feelings and experiences associated with the attitude object. The attitude itself acts as a total assessment (evaluative reaction), which includes all of the listed components.

Functions of social attitudes. The relationship between social attitudes and real behavior. Lapierre's paradox

Attitude functions:

1) automatic – simplification of consciousness control over activities in standard, previously encountered situations;

2) adaptive – directing the subject to those objects that serve to achieve his goals;

3) protective – contributes to the resolution of internal conflicts of the individual;

4) cognitive – the attitude helps to choose a method of behavior in relation to a specific object;

5) regulatory – a means of freeing the subject from internal tension;

6) rigid – the attitude makes it difficult to adapt to new situations;

7) stabilizing - the attitude determines the stable, consistent, purposeful nature of activity in changing situations.

For the first time, the discrepancy between the attitude and the actual behavior of a person was established in the experiments of R. Lapierre in 1934. He traveled with two Chinese students around the United States, checking into many hotels and everywhere meeting a normal reception.

However, when, after the trip, he again turned to the hotel owners with a written request to accept him with Chinese students, in 52% of cases he was refused (which indicated the existence of negative attitudes, which, however, did not manifest themselves in real behavior.

The problem of discrepancy between social attitudes and real behavior is one of the central problems in attitude research.

In subsequent years, various measures were taken to overcome the emerging difficulties. On the one hand, efforts were made to improve the technique for measuring attitudes (it was suggested that in Lapierre’s experiment the scale was imperfect), on the other hand, new explanatory hypotheses were put forward . Some of these proposals are of particular interest. M. Rokeach expressed the idea that a person has two attitudes simultaneously: towards the object and towards the situation.

One or the other attitude can “switch on.” In Lapierre’s experiment, the attitude towards the object was negative (attitude towards the Chinese), but the attitude towards the situation prevailed - the hotel owner in a specific situation acted in accordance with accepted service standards.