Attitudes and Behaviors in Psychology

Running head: ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS IN PSYCHOLOGY
ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS IN PSYCHOLOGY
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ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS IN PSYCHOLOGY
Introduction:
In the field of psychology, an attitude can be defined as the set of emotions, beliefs as
well as behaviors that an individual possess towards a particular object, person, event or thing.
Researchers are of the opinion that attitudes are the result of experience or upbringing in
individuals and they have a powerful influence over the behaviors of the influence (Kruglanski et
al., 2018). Hence, the essay will mainly depict the detailed explanation of importance of studying
the concepts of attitudes and behaviors in psychology. They can influence the productivity as
well as behaviors of a person and hence studying the concepts will help in analyzing different
individuals successfully.
Discussion:
Psychologists have defined attitudes as a learned propensity for effectively evaluating
different aspects in a particular ways. This can be seen to comprise effective evaluation of
people, events, issues as well as objects. These evaluations can be described as constructive or
negative however they can be also considered uncertain in specific times. Lee et al. (2018) are of
the opinion that the concept of attitudes can be broken into three important components. The first
one is the cognitive component that mainly includes thoughts and beliefs of a person about a
particular subject. Another is the affective component that mainly shows the ways by which the
object, issue, person as well as an event makes the person feel. The third component is the
behavioral component that shows how the attitudes influence the behaviors. Maio et al. (2018)
had discussed that attitude can be explicit as well as implicit. Explicit attitudes can be explained
as those that the individuals are deliberately aware of and those that undoubtedly influence the
beliefs and behaviors of the person. On the other hand, understood attitudes are mainly seen to be

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ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS IN PSYCHOLOGY
unconscious but they are still seen to have effects on the behaviors and beliefs of the individuals.
Healthcare professionals need to be aware of the concepts of the attitudes and behaviors in
individuals so that they can provide good solutions and coping strategies after identifying issues
of attitudes and behaviors in clients.
Montano & Kaspryzyk (2015) different types of factors can help in influencing the ways
and the reasons for which specific types of attitudes are formed. The first one is the experience.
Attitudes can be formed directly because of the experience. These attitudes might emerge
because of the straight personal experiences or they might also come up from different
observations. The second one is the social factor. Social norms and social forms are seen to have
very tough influences on their attitudes. Studies suggest that social roles relate to ways how
individuals are expected for behaving in a definite role or contexts. Social norms are seen to
involve the rules of the society for the specific behaviors that are appropriate.
Another important factor is the learning. Studies are of the opinion that sttitudes can be
learned in various ways. Often advertisers utilize the classical conditioning approaches for
influencing their attitude towards a particular object. Many of the advertisements show young
people enjoying their day on a tropic beach along with a sports drink (Sheeran et al., 2016). This
form of attractive as well as striking descriptions causes one to develop a positive association
with those particular beverages. Operant conditioning is also seen to influence the ways by
which attitudes develop. This can be explained with the help of the example. A man can be
considered who has just started smoking. When he lights up a cigarette, it might happen that
people starts complaining about him asking him to leave the vicinity and chastises him. Such a
form of negative feedback will result in development of an unfavorable opinion about the habit
of smoking making the person to give up the habits. Individuals are also seen to train attitudes by