Positive Thinking by: Amit Abraham

Knowing Your Attitude

"This above all; to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night and day, Thou canst not then be false to any man"

It is a well-known fact that attitudes guide behaviour and definitely play a prominent role in our personality make-up. We can to an extent predict a person's behaviour if we know his attitude. But the ways in which attitudes, and other influences effect behaviour have to be considered very carefully.
An attitude is a relatively stable organisation of beliefs, feelings and tendencies towards something or someone called the attitude object. An attitude has three major components: evaluative beliefs about the object, feelings about the object, and behaviour tendencies towards the object. Beliefs include facts, opinions and our general knowledge about the object. Feelings include love, hate, like, dislike and similar sentiments. Behavioural tendencies include our inclinations to act in certain ways towards the object - to approach it, avoid it and so on.
These three aspects of an attitude are very often consistent with one another. For example, if we have a positive feeling towards something, we tend to have positive beliefs about it and behave positively towards it. This, however, does not mean that our every action will accurately reflect our attitudes. What is important is to develop strong positive attitudes so that the same are reflected in our behaviour.

Development of attitudes
Man's attitude develops as he develops. But no man's life develops apart from the lives of his fellows. Just as each man's life intersects the lives of others - but only at certain points - and just as each man's life story is similar to - but not identical with - the life stories of his neighbours, so are the attitudes of his family, friends, neighbours and compatriots.

Attitudes develop in the process of 'want satisfaction'
While coping with various problems in trying to satisfy one's wants, the individual develops attitudes. One develops favourable attitudes towards objects and people that satisfy one's wants. An individual will develop unfavourable attitudes towards objects and persons that block the achievement of one's goals.
An individual's attitudes may come to have' surplus' instrumental value for him/her. He/she develops attitudes in response to problem situations - in trying to satisfy specific wants. In so far as one's attitudes are enduring systems, they remain with one and may be used to solve a number of different problems - to satisty a number of wants. Thus one important factor in the formation of attitudes is ' want satisfaction. Not only do attitudes give meaning to the individual's world, they serve him/her in their attempted achievements of various other goals.
Any given attitude may serve various goals, and different wants can give rise to the same enduring attitude.

The attitudes of an individual are shaped by the information to which one is exposed
Attitudes are not only developed in the service of wants; they are also shaped by the information to which an individual is exposed. In order to satisfy one's various wants, an individual develops certain attitudes that help in achieving one's goal. There attitudes will be formed on the basis of whatever facts the individual can gather from various sources. Living in a complex world, one is at the mercy of various authorities for much of the cognitive content of ones attitude. These authorities are sometimes unreliable, through ignorance or intent. In addition the individual may not be able to distinguish between truth and falsehood or between actual and misleading facts and when he/she does pick up facts by themselves, they again run the risk of being fooled.
Finally, when one can find no facts, one must, invent
'facts' oneself.
All of this suggests that the incidence of superstitions, delusions and prejudices will be related to the reliability of the authorities we must depend upon (teachers, newspapers, books, telecasts, broadcasts), the range of experiences to which we have been subjected, and the degree to which our major wants are adequately satisfied.

The group affiliations of the individual help determine the formation of his attitudes
The group affiliations of an individual play a vital role in the formation of one's attitudes. Both the membership groups with which an individual affiliates and the non-membership groups to which one aspires to belong are important in shaping one's attitudes.
But an individual does not passively absorb the prevailing attitudes in the various groups with which one affiliates. Attitudes, like cognitions, develop selectively in the process of want-satisfaction. An individual will pick and choose among the attitudes offered, those which are want-satisfying. And every individual affiliates with many groups, which may endorse congruent or incongruent attitudes. The effect of group influences on the formation of attitudes is thus indirect and complex.