Attitude knows no immutable laws

As one wag put it, ‘attitude’ is the most important word in the dictionary! It's no exaggeration if you look deep into the concept of attitude. Attitude has been defined as a positive or negative evaluation of people, objects, events, activities, ideas or just about anything in our environment. The all-embracing definition reminds us that attitude is the most dynamic element in human behaviour, the motivating force behind most of our activities.

When we meet an individual for the first time or when we want to assess a new situation, we pass judgements based on our emotional responses. The judgements reflect our degree of preference for a person or an entity. We form these judgements or attitudes as a result of either direct experience (meeting a person for the first time) or observational learning from the environment.

Among several factors affecting human behaviour, attitude plays a major role. Attitude shows the frame of mind depicting our thoughts and the degree to which we are going to pass either favourable or unfavourable judgements on people or situations. Though unknown to some of us, attitudes are based on various factors such as social norms, perceived behavioural control and social values.

Social norms

Social norms include pressure perceived by the individual or thrust on him by others. The norms force a person either to perform or not to perform certain actions. For instance, a person may kill a snake at once without trying to ascertain whether it is venomous or not. This is because he has been conditioned by his elders or peers that he must not spare the life of a snake because all snakes are venomous. However, an individual who can easily identify a venomous snake would not kill it because he has been conditioned by a different set of social norms.

“Perceived behavioural control”, a term used in psychology, refers to an individual's belief concerning how easy or difficult to display his behaviour. Sometimes, a person may be in a dilemma whether to do or not to do a certain act. The vacillation is caused by a notion that others are watching his actions to pass judgements. On such occasions, he will weigh the pros and cons of a situation before taking any action.

Social values are important because they have an impact on our attitudes. As such values are based on religion and culture of a given society, they tend to differ from one country to another, religion plays a major role in fashioning our attitudes. For instance, the Dutch and British invaders tried to spread their religion among predominant Buddhists in the coastal areas. They knew that if the local people embraced Christianity, they would find it easy to rule the local people.

Culture

Similarly, culture too is a concept embracing a wide variety of topics such as people's beliefs and traditional institutions. For instance, most Buddhists have embraced Hindu rites and practices of worshipping gods and seeking their help to solve mundane problems. Although the Buddha never advocated such ideas, Buddhist culture has absorbed many elements from Hinduism. As a result, even Buddhist temples have statues of Hindu gods mainly to attract devotees.

Apart from religion and culture, our attitudes are conditioned by ethical and ideological values. Most professions have a Code of Ethics to follow. The rules have not been derived from religion or culture. They spell out a guide for proper behaviour for a particular set of professionals. If rigidly followed, their attitudes will be conditioned by the Code of Ethics. Even non-professionals can have a code of ethics. However, in such cases, their code of ethics may be influenced by their religion. For instance, Pancha Seela (The Five Precepts), treated as the cornerstone of Buddhism, was in existence even before Prince Siddhartha attained Enlightenment.

Most of our attitudes are based on a variety of factors. Some of our attitudes are explicit. They reflect more thoughtful responses to our behavioural patterns. For instance, offering a seat to a pregnant woman travelling on a bus or train is an explicit attitude. On such occasions we do not take religion, culture or any other matter into consideration. Sometimes, we may display implicit attitudes towards others. When we meet people we like, we tend to extend our arms to shake hands or to hug them. Such acts are purely reflexive on our part.

Rapport

Attitude is often connected with rapport. Some people have a good rapport with others. They can get anything done and get on with life without any difficulty. However, there are others who cannot build a rapport with anyone. As a result, they tend to behave in an aggressive manner, irritating everybody around. Rapport is one of the most important characteristics of human behaviour. Those who cannot get on well with others need some help from a psychotherapist.

Attitudes cause desire. Recent research suggests that desire is influenced by similarity and dissimilarity in attitude. According to psychologist Don Byrne, people first “sort” for dissimilarity, avoiding those who appear to be different. Then among the remaining group, people are attracted to those who are most similar. This is similar to the proverb, “Birds of a feather flock together”.

Psychologists believe that attitudes are important to us in many ways. For instance, some of us have strong attitudes towards certain people, ideas and things. We get hurt if somebody criticises our favourite philosopher or teacher. Some of our attitudes may be socially acceptable. However, there may be certain attitudes that may be termed anti-social. It is up to each individual to change his attitudes if they pose a threat to harmony in life.