Attitudes

An Attitude is an individual’s positive, negative, or mixed reaction to another person, an object, or an idea. Everyone has attitudes; lifestyle choices or beliefs, political affiliation, health choices, TV shows/movies, and what brands we use in our everyday life. An individual’s self-esteem is an attitude that they have about themselves, an attraction is a positive attitude toward another person, and prejudice is a negative toward another person, and so forth (Albarracin, Johnson, & Zanna, 2005; Crano & Prislin, 2008; Fazio & Petty, 2008).

People’s attitudes can’t be expressed simply as either loving something or hating something. Attitudes can vary in the intensity or strength of the individual; people can react positively or negatively, people can also react with ambivalence (having strong, but mixed emotions), and or with indifference (Cacioppo et al., 1997). Individuals differ in the extent to which they tend to stimuli whether they generally have strong reactions or low reactions (Bizer et al., 2004; Jarvis & Petty, 1996).

Everyone, no matter who they are routinely forms attitudes toward people, places, objects, and ideas that they encounter in their daily lives. This can’t be help as it tends to be an automatic process; like a reflex (Bargh et al., 1996; Cunningham et al., 2003; Duckworth et al., 2002; Ferguson, 2007).

Attitudes are part of daily life and are unavoidable, but they can also be useful as they enable people to judge quickly and with little thought (Maio & Olson, 2000).

Preexisting attitudes exist for everyone and they can cause some issues. They can cause people to become close-minded, bias in the way they interpret and process new information, and make people more resistant to change (Fazio et al., 2000). 

Personal Example: Diet Coke

Everyone has a strong preference for a brand, whether it be clothing, computer, cellphone, food, or ect. There is that one brand named item, that despite what the statistics may show us, people tell us, and or what the commercials try to sell, we firmly believe that our brand name is the best and we will choose it without a doubt.

While most people don’t feel strongly about every brand item they use, there will be always that one despite other brands or generic versions being just as good.

People may prefer Religion Jeans, Old Navy, Mac, Nike, Burger King, Snapple, Honda, or Coca Cola to whatever else.  

For me personally I am a Diet Coke person. I grew up on it and most of my family drinks it. I have a very strong positive reaction toward Diet Coke in comparison to what I feel as is a moderately negate reaction toward Diet Pepsi. Despite the fact that people tell me they taste the same and there is no difference, I will always choose Diet Coke. It taste better in my opinion, but at the same time I could fabricate the taste in my head to reason my irrational preference. 

I will admit that in a restaurant I will have a Diet Pepsi if I have to. But recently I’ve realized how dedicate I am to getting Diet Coke. 

My parents live in Arizona, so I travel a lot by plane, and because of that I spend a lot of time at airports. In my last recent trips I have notice that most of the restaurants, convenient stores, and even vending machines are Pepsi affiliated. In fact the Airports that I frequent (Texas and Arizona) there seems to be only one type of restaurant that has my Diet Coke. That restaurant is McDonald’s and to be frank McDonald’s is far from my favorite place to eat, but I have (multiple times) walk and extra 15 to 20 minutes in a busy airport to go to McDonalds so I can get a Diet Coke. Despite the fact that there are tons of other places in the airport that are always much closer and have a similar drink.

My preference for Diet Coke or my preexisting attitude towards Diet Coke makes me bias toward Coco Cola, close minded about Pepsi, and to put it frankly unreasonably stubborn at times.

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References

Albarracin, D., Johnson, B. T., & Zanna, M. P. (Eds). (2005). The hand-book of attitudes. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bargh, J. A, Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 230-244.
Bizer, G., Krosnick, J., Holbrock, A., Wheller. S., Rucker, D., & Petty, R. E. (2004). The impact of personality on cognitive, behavioral, and affective political processes: The effects of need to evaluate. Journal of Personality, 72, 995-1027.
Cacioppo, J. T., Gardner, W. L., & Bernston, G. G. (1997). Beyond bipolar conceptualizations and measures: The case of attitudes and evaluative space. Personality and Social Psychology Review, I, 3-35.
Crano, W. D., & Prislin, R. (Eds). (2008). Attitudes and attitude change. New York: Psychological Press.
Cunningham, W. A., Johnson, M. K., Gatenby, J. C., Gore, J. C, & Banaji, M. R. (2003). Separable neural components in the processing of black and white faces. Psychological Science, 15, 806-813.

 Duckworth, K. K., Bargh, J. A., Garcia, M., & Chaiken, S. (2002). The automatic evaluation of novel stimuli. Psychological Science, 13, 513-519.

 Fazio, R. H., Ledbetter, J. E., & Towles-Schwen, T. (2000). On the costs of accessible attitudes: Detecting that the attitude object has changed. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 197-210.

Fazio, R. H., & Petty, R., E., (Eds). (2008). Attitudes: Their structure, function, and consequences. New York: Psychology Press.

Ferguson, M. (2007).  On the automatic evaluation of end-states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92-596-611.

Jarvis, W. B. G., & Petty, R. E. (1996).The needs to evaluate. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 7, 172-194.
Kassin, S., Fein, S., & Markus, H. F. (2011). Attitudes: The study of attitudes. Social Psychology, 8, 81-83.
Maio, G., & Olson, J., M. (Eds). (2000).Why we evaluate. Function of attitudes, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.