Attitudes

Attitudes Essay
Misty Smith
BEH/225
October 8, 2014
Rosie Grindel

Attitude
By definition the word attitude is defined as a mixture of belief and emotion that predisposes a person to respond to other people, objects, or groups in a positive or negative way and directs future actions.   I will be discussing how attitudes are formed and influenced, how individual or group behavior is affected by society and the three main components of attitudes and how they are affected through persuasion, conformity, and bias.  
Attitudes form as you grow up and are directly affected by both experiences and observations.   Attitudes are learned through classical and operant principles and can be formed by association, as well.   For example, advertisers use the classical conditioning principle when trying to win consumers over to try their products by associating their product with something fun and positive, making the consumer gain a positive attitude about the product they are portraying to the potential customer.   This creates a positive attitude in a person.   Operant conditioning can be used to help form attitudes, also.   For example, a smoker can develop a negative attitude about the habit they have picked up, by the feedback they receive from others when they choose to light a cigarette around people who choose not to smoke.   The smoker will eventually get tired of getting chastised all the time, causing him to develop a negative attitude about smoking, and will choose to drop the habit altogether.   Lastly, a person learns attitudes through observations.   When a person admires someone, they will start to form the same attitudes, beliefs, and habits of the person they admire.   An example of this would be a child looking up to his parents so much that he eventually starts to form the same opinions, beliefs, and attitudes that his parents have.  
Behavior can be affected and influenced by society and social settings.   Social influence is defined as changes in a...