14 Social Behaviour · 14.1 Social behaviour
14.1.1 Attitudes and attitude scales
An attitude is a learnt, fairly lasting state of mind towards an object, person, group or idea, made of feelings (A), action tendencies (B) and beliefs (C); attitudes form through association, reward, modelling and group norms, change through balance, dissonance and persuasion, predict behaviour only under some conditions, and are measured by scales such as Thurstone (1929), Likert (1932), Bogardus (1925), Guttman (1944) and the semantic differential (1957).
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Core facts
- Attitude: a state of mind, a set of views or thoughts about some topic (the attitude object), with an evaluative feature (positive, negative or neutral) and a readiness to act. It is learnt, not inherited.
- ABC components:
- A, Affective: the emotional part (like, dislike);
- B, Behavioural (conative): the tendency to act in a certain way;
- C, Cognitive: beliefs and thoughts about the object.
- Attitude vs belief (only the cognitive part) vs value (an attitude or belief with a "should / ought" element, wider and more central).
- Features of attitudes (NCERT):
- Valence: positive or negative direction;
- Extremeness: how strongly positive or negative;
- Simplicity / complexity (multiplexity): how many attitudes sit inside one broad attitude (e.g. "health");
- Centrality: how central it is in the person's attitude system.
- How attitudes are learnt: association (classical conditioning), rewards and punishment (operant), modelling (observing others), group or cultural norms, and exposure to information (including media).
- Sources: family and school, reference groups, personal experience, mass media.
- Change theories:
- Balance theory: Fritz Heider (first stated 1946; book 1958); the P-O-X triangle (person, other person, object); imbalance (odd number of negative sides) pushes attitude change.
- Cognitive dissonance: Leon Festinger (1957); two cognitions that clash create discomfort, which we reduce by changing one of them.
- Two-step concept: Indian psychologist S.M. Mohsin; the target first identifies with the source, then the source shows a change of attitude and the target follows.
- Factors in attitude change: features of the existing attitude, the source (credibility, attractiveness), the message (rational vs emotional, one-sided vs two-sided, amount of information) and the target (persuasibility, self-esteem, intelligence, prejudices).
- Attitude-behaviour gap: Richard LaPiere (1934) travelled the USA with a Chinese couple; almost every hotel and restaurant served them, yet most later wrote that they would not serve Chinese guests.
- Attitude scales (who, when, type):
- Thurstone: method of equal-appearing intervals, 1928-29 (with Chave, attitude towards the church / religion); judges sort statements into 11 piles.
- Likert: method of summated ratings, 1932; items chosen by item analysis; 5-point agree-disagree.
- Bogardus: social distance scale, 1925; how close a relationship a person accepts with members of another group; a cumulative scale.
- Guttman: scalogram analysis, 1944 (published 1944-50); cumulative, unidimensional.
- Semantic differential: Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum, 1957; bipolar adjective pairs on a 7-point scale; three factors Evaluation, Potency, Activity.
Explained
1. The ABC model with one example. Attitude towards protecting the environment:
- Cognitive: "Plastic harms rivers and animals."
- Affective: "I feel upset when I see plastic in a lake."
- Behavioural: "I carry a cloth bag and refuse plastic covers."
The three usually agree, but not always: a person may believe and feel strongly yet not act (the attitude-behaviour gap).
2. Features in practice
| Feature | Question it answers | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Valence | for or against? | positive attitude to yoga |
| Extremeness | how strongly? | "strongly agree" vs "agree" |
| Simplicity / complexity | one attitude or many inside it? | "health" covers diet, exercise, doctors |
| Centrality | how much it steers other attitudes? | religion central for some people |
3. How attitudes are formed (NCERT's four processes plus information)
- Association: a student likes a subject because of a loved teacher.
- Rewards and punishments: praised for eating healthy food, the child comes to like it.
- Modelling: a child copies a parent's respect for elders.
- Group / cultural norms: offering prayers at a place of worship because the group does so; repeated, it becomes an attitude.
- Exposure to information: books, media, the internet; positive or negative.
4. Balance theory (Heider). Take P (a student), O (her friend) and X (a political party). P likes O (+), O supports X (+), P dislikes X (−). One negative sign (an odd number) means imbalance, felt as tension. P may change her view of X, of O, or decide O "does not really" support X. Balanced triangles have zero or two negative sides.
5. Cognitive dissonance (Festinger). "Smoking causes cancer" and "I smoke" clash. To reduce the dissonance the person can quit, doubt the evidence ("not proven"), or add a cognition ("it relaxes me"). Festinger and Carlsmith (1959): students paid $1 to tell others a dull task was fun later rated the task as more enjoyable than those paid $20; with too little reward to justify the lie, they changed their attitude.
6. Mohsin's two-step concept. Step 1: the target (a learner) identifies with the source (a respected doctor). Step 2: the source shows a change in attitude, by actually behaving in a new way (say, choosing millets); the target, liking the source, changes too.
7. Persuasion: the Yale (Hovland) findings
| Element | What helps change |
|---|---|
| Source | high credibility (expertise, trustworthiness), attractiveness |
| Message | two-sided for an educated or opposed audience; one-sided for a friendly one; moderate fear with a clear remedy |
| Channel | face to face is more powerful than print |
| Target | low self-esteem, less strongly held or less central attitudes change more easily |
Sleeper effect: a message from a low-credibility source gains influence over time as people forget the source.
8. When does attitude predict behaviour? (NCERT) Consistency is higher when the attitude is strong and central, the person is aware of it, there is little external pressure to behave otherwise, the behaviour is not watched or judged by others, and the person thinks the behaviour will have a positive result.
9. The five scales compared
| Scale | Year | Technique | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thurstone | 1928-29 | judges rate statements on 11 piles; equal-appearing intervals; respondent's score = median of scale values agreed | differential, interval-like |
| Likert | 1932 | 5-point agree-disagree; item analysis keeps items that separate high and low scorers | summated (aggregate) rating |
| Bogardus | 1925 | 7 levels of accepted closeness (marry into family → exclude from country) | social distance, cumulative |
| Guttman | 1944 | items ordered so agreeing with a stronger item implies agreeing with all weaker ones; coefficient of reproducibility ≥ 0.90 | cumulative, unidimensional |
| Semantic differential | 1957 | concept rated on bipolar adjective pairs (good-bad, strong-weak, active-passive), 7 points | evaluation, potency, activity |
10. Bogardus's levels of social distance (closest to farthest): admit to close kinship by marriage; to my club as personal friend; to my street as neighbour; to employment in my occupation; to citizenship in my country; as visitor only to my country; exclude from my country.
11. Confusable pairs
| Pair | First | Second |
|---|---|---|
| Affective vs cognitive | feeling | belief |
| Behavioural vs conative | same thing (action tendency) | same thing |
| Thurstone vs Likert | judges, equal-appearing intervals | respondents, summated ratings |
| Bogardus vs Guttman | social distance, 1925 | scalogram, 1944; both cumulative |
| Balance vs dissonance | Heider, P-O-X triangle | Festinger, clashing cognitions |
| Attitude vs value | evaluation of an object | "ought" principle, more central |
Common traps
- ✗ "Attitude is inherited." ✓ Attitudes are learnt (association, reward, modelling, norms, information).
- ✗ "'Effective' is a component of attitude." ✓ The component is affective (feeling); the three are affective, behavioural (conative), cognitive.
- ✗ "Conative is not part of attitude." ✓ Conative = behavioural component; it is one of the ABC.
- ✗ "Likert used factor analysis (1932)." ✓ Likert used item analysis; method of summated ratings.
- ✗ "Thurstone measured attitudes to politics." ✓ Thurstone and Chave measured attitude towards the church (religion).
- ✗ "Bogardus scale is a summated scale." ✓ It is a social distance, cumulative scale.
- ✗ "Guttman scale = semantic differential." ✓ Guttman = scalogram (cumulative); semantic differential = Osgood, bipolar adjectives.
- ✗ "Cognitive dissonance was given by Heider." ✓ Dissonance = Festinger (1957); balance (P-O-X) = Heider.
- ✗ "Balanced triangle has one negative side." ✓ Balanced = zero or two negatives; one or three = imbalance.
- ✗ "In Festinger and Carlsmith, those paid $20 liked the task more." ✓ The $1 group liked it more.
Quick revision
- Attitude = learnt state of mind towards an object; ABC = affective, behavioural (conative), cognitive.
- Features: valence, extremeness, simplicity/complexity (multiplexity), centrality.
- Formation: association, reward/punishment, modelling, group norms, information.
- Change: Heider balance (P-O-X), Festinger dissonance (1957), Mohsin two-step (identify, then follow).
- Persuasion: source credibility, message sidedness, target self-esteem; sleeper effect.
- LaPiere 1934: attitudes said "no", behaviour said "yes".
- Thurstone 1928-29: equal-appearing intervals, attitude towards church.
- Likert 1932: summated ratings, item analysis, 5 points.
- Bogardus 1925: social distance, cumulative; Guttman 1944: scalogram, cumulative.
- Semantic differential: Osgood 1957, evaluation, potency, activity.
Go deeper: Deeper (beyond what APPSC Paper I usually asks)
Deeper Advanced
1. Elaboration likelihood model (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). Persuasion takes the central route when people are motivated and able to think: strong arguments matter and change lasts. It takes the peripheral route when they are not: cues such as an attractive speaker or many arguments matter, and change is short-lived.
2. Self-perception theory (Daryl Bem, 1967). An alternative to dissonance: we infer our own attitudes from watching our own behaviour, as an outsider would, especially when the attitude is weak.
3. Theory of planned behaviour (Icek Ajzen, 1985/1991). Behaviour follows intention, which rests on (a) attitude towards the behaviour, (b) subjective norms and (c) perceived behavioural control. It grew out of the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975) and explains why LaPiere's general attitudes predicted specific behaviour poorly.
4. Explicit vs implicit attitudes. Scales measure explicit attitudes, open to faking and social desirability. Implicit attitudes are measured indirectly, for example by reaction time (Implicit Association Test, Greenwald and colleagues, 1998).
5. Limits of the scales. Thurstone's method is slow and its scale values may depend on judges' own attitudes. Likert scores are ordinal, and the same total can come from different answer patterns. Guttman's cumulative pattern is hard to achieve beyond a narrow attitude. Social distance scores depend on the group named.
Practise this topic. Questions on Attitudes: nature, formation, change and attitude scales, with answers explained.
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