What is attitude?
Attitude is a word used, reused, overused and abused — irony is that the one who uses that word doesn’t understand its meaning correctly. They mistake it as a persons personality or character.
I have from quite sometime heard this word(attitude) used by many people in conversations. Mostly it is used in the place of accusations. So I had an idea that attitude is used for criticizing people — who are arrogant and disrespectful.
Till yesterday, I had no idea — what attitude really means. I asked a friend of mine who is a psychology graduate — what is attitude?
She gave me a acceptable explanation. For years I have known the definition of the word attitude — but I couldn’t understand or accept the definition, as they use very complicated words to define attitude. Or maybe we need to attain a certain age to understand few concepts.
In either way, I finally got an idea what attitude really means.
Attitude:
Attitude is a belief, emotion or behaviour towards certain people, objects or situation.
It is also defined as “ a settled way of thinking or feeling about something”.
Attitude is not tangible — we can observe the effect of an attitude. But not the attitude itself. Attitudes are directed at certain person or object. They are different to emotions or moods. You may hold an attitude towards alcohol, drugs, abortion, etc.
A person’s attitude varies with different people and social situations. You don’t behave the same way with your friend and a stranger. For example — you are angry, but the way you show it to your friend varies from how you behave with a stranger.
Many times we mistake attitude for headstrong or arrogant. But attitude is a hypothetical construct, representing a person’s like and dislike for an item.
Attitude consists of three components.
Three Components of attitude:
- Cognitive component
- Behavioural component
- Emotional component
Cognitive component:
Cognitive component is associated with values, beliefs, ideas and other information that a person has faith in.
Emotional component:
Emotional component is associated with the feeling of a person. It may be positive, negative or neutral.
Behavioural component:
It reflects the behaviour of a person. It is associated with the impact of various conditions and situations that lead to a person behaviour based on cognitive and emotional components.
Cognitive and emotional components are bases for such behaviour. Former two components cannot be seen, only the behaviour component can be seen. Former two is important because it is a base for the formation of attitude.
Implicit and Explicit Attitude:
Attitudes can be implicit or explicit. Implicit attitudes are unconscious beliefs that can still influence behaviour and decisions. Whilst explicit attitudes are conscious beliefs that guide decisions and behaviour.
Attitude is different from Personality traits.
Attitude and personality trait has a thin line between them. Personality according to the cambridge dictionary is the type of person you are, shown by the way you behave, feel, and think where as Attitude in the cambridge dictionary is defined as a feeling or opinion about something or someone, or a way of behaving that is caused by this.
“My personality is who i am and my attitude depends on who you are”.
