Attitude

Attitude

The main aim of education is modification of one’s behavior according to the expectations of the society. One’s behaviour to a larger extent, depends upon one’s attitude towards the things,idea, person, or object in his environment. The entire personality and development of an individual is influenced by his attitude.

Definition

An attitude has been defined as a predisposition or tendency toward a particular congnitive, behavional or emotional reaction to objects or people.

Meaning of Attitude

An attitude is a readiness to respond in such a way that behavior is given a certain direction-Travers, 1973.

An attitude is a predisposition or readiness to respond in a pre-determined manner to relevant stimuli. –Whittaker, 1970.

Nature of Attitude

•               Attitude is concerned with the relation of an individual with the specific persons, groups, values or norms related to his environment.

•               Attitude are learnt and acquired.

•               They are not innate and inherent in an individual.

•               It is the state of readiness to respond to a certain stimuli.

•               Attitude have definite motivational characteristics.

•               It ranges from strongly positive to strongly negative attitude.

Factors influencing the development of Attitude

Attitudes are learnt and acquired. Heredity does not play any role in the development of attitudes. Environment plays an important role in the development of attitude. An attitude at any stage is essentially a product of the interaction of one’s self with one’s environment. So the factors can be classified as

•   Factors within the individual himself

•   Factors within the individual’s environment

Factors within the individual

Physical growth and development: Poor physical health and growth are responsible for poor emotional and social adjustment. The colour of the skin, weight of the body, or biochemical changes in the body tissues and fluids. for example, sex hormones have a vital effect on the development of attitude through their connection with social adjustment.

Intellectual development: Intelligence influences the attitude formation. The components of intelligence like memory, understanding, thinking etc play a significant role in formation of attitude.

Emotional Development: Emotions play a dominant role in overt or covert (hidden) behavior manifestation and behaviour is related to attitude.

Social development: Social interaction and group processes is the key to attitude formation at any stage of human development. Children having poor social adjustment are more likely to have antisocial attitude.

Ethical and moral development: Each individual develops certain ideals, values and concept of the self in which he takes pride. For enhancing his feelings of self esteem, one tries to develop those attitudes that suit his values and ideals.

Factors within the individual’s environment

Home and Family: A healthy family environment and positive attitude of the parents and other members bring desirable impact on the children in picking up desirable attitudes. Many antisocial attitude are said to be the product of the faulty upbringing and unpleasant environment at home.

Social environment: Contact with the people in neighbourhood, school, community, society and norms, traditions etc influences attitude formation and its reshaping. For example, in schools factors like teachers and their behaviours, class mates or school mates and their behaviours, teaching methods and discipline all contribute towards attitude formation.

Attitudinal changes

Attitude can be changed. It is not fixed one. They can be changed through the acquisition of new experiences. The following are the ways and means of attitudinal changes:-

•               Providing proper education

•               Making use of the propaganda machinery (eg, family planning, sanitation, road safety)

•               Using fear inducing mechanism (eg. Rules and legal laws against dowry, child marriage, child abuses)

•               Using modeling technique (eg. Imitating the behaviours of the heroes and heroines)

•               Direct personal experience ( eg. Lack of exercise leading to obesity and diabetes in a person will develop favourable attitude towards exercises).

•               Using cognitive dissonance mechanism (eg, In smoking, making a person to think rationally instead of criticizing his negative attitude towards smoking).

•               Bringing desired changes in beliefs and values.

Implications for Nursing

•               Nurses can help patients to develop positive and desirable attitude towards the things and persons

•               She can help patients and their relatives to bring about attitudinal changes.

•               She can use the techniques of attitudinal change whenever and wherever applicable.