Attitudes and Behaviors Essay

So let’s start by saying that attitudes have two main components those happen to be beliefs and values. Beliefs are statements while values are judgments. When it comes to persuasion a person might have their own attitude and have it rub off so to speak onto another person or several other people. We tend to use this on a daily basis for things that we want whether that be for ourselves or from other people. When it comes to conformity many individuals will change their behaviors to fit in with other people that they involve themselves with. This could potentially mean that you could lose your own identity and become someone completely different from whom you truly are. When it comes to bias we are all wired to have judgments and prejudice many times people will use this judgment and have a set attitude on people, places and things. Only people can change their behaviors. Psychologists define attitudes as a learned tendency to view things in certain ways. This can include people. Places, issues and events that occur in a person’s life. Attitudes form from the experiences that you go through, they could direct from personal experiences or from the observation of other individuals. Attitudes can be learned in several different ways. Classical conditioning can impact your attitude to different products. Operant conditioning can also help in how attitudes are developed. When someone you like has a different attitude your attitude more than likely will change to be the same as the other individual. Researchers have come to the belief and conclusion that people behave according to their attitudes under a lot of circumstances. Cognitive dissonance is when an individual experiences, psychological stress caused by conflicts from thoughts and beliefs in a person’s everyday life whether that be from work, relationships, money problems. In order to gain back control people often change their attitudes based on actual behaviors. Attitudes can change just like people can. You can turn your thought process around just  like you can with many other things. Classical conditioning can create positive emotional reactions. Operant conditioning can be used to strengthen attitudes and behaviors that you are lacking or that are weak. People can also see how negative people act and decide that they don’t want to be that way and that can drastically change a person’s mind on how they think. Life events such as death, sickness, relationship loses and other important things can make a person realize what they have and what they need to be grateful for but also can help them understand their thought patterns were incorrect and that they need to change that in order to have a better life for not only themselves but the people that they associate themselves with. The theory of persuasion says that people can alter their personal attitudes in two ways. They can be motivated to listen and to think about what is being said to them which can make them open up to different ideas and thoughts or they could simply be influenced by good positive people that they are around on a daily basis. In order to change a individual s behavior you must change your thought process completely. http://www.examiner.com/article/bias-attitude-and-prejudice http://www.cios.org/encyclopedia/persuasion/Aintroduction_4nature.htm http://psychology.about.com/od/socialinfluence/f/conformity.htm