Attitude Formation

Sensory Reactions

Any direct experience with an object though seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching will lead to an immediate evaluative reaction. We are experts at knowing whether we find a certain sensory experience pleasant or unpleasant. For example, immediately upon tasting a new type of candy bar, you know whether you like it or not. This also applies to aesthetic experiences, such as admiring the color or composition of an artwork. We form attitudes about objects immediately upon experiencing them.

Values

Some attitudes come from our larger belief system. We may come to hold certain attitudes because they validate our basic values. Many attitudes come from religious or moral beliefs. For example, for many people their attitudes about abortion, birth control, same-sex marriage, and the death penalty follow from their moral or religious beliefs and are highly emotional issues for them.

Operant Conditioning

Operant or instrumental conditioning is when an attitude forms because it has been reinforced through reward or a pleasant experience or discouraged through punishment or an unpleasant experience. For example, a parent might praise a teenager for helping out at an after-school program with little kids. As a result, the teen may develop a positive attitude toward volunteer work. Similarly, many people find that broccoli has a terrible taste, and so they dislike broccoli because of its punishing flavor.

Classical Conditioning

Classical or Pavlovian conditioning happens when a new stimulus comes to elicit an emotional reaction [Page 66]because of its association with a stimulus that already elicits the emotional response. The Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov took dogs, which naturally salivate to meat powder, and trained them to salivate at the sound of a bell by continually ringing the bell as the meat powder was presented. In humans, some of our attitudes have become conditioned in much the same way. For example, some people have a negative attitude towards “dirty” words. Just the thought of a taboo word will cause some people to blush. The words themselves have come to elicit an emotional reaction because their use is frowned upon in our culture in most contexts.

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