Attitude formation process.

1. unconditional stimulus

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   • Unconditional stimulus leads to negative, unhappy feelings in a child. If a spanking is applied everytime that the child reaches for or touches a valuable vase, the vase will sonn become an unconditional stimulus which itslf produce neagtive feelings (an attitude). Of course, positive attitude can also be created in the same way by using unconditioned stimuli, like food or hug, which make the child feel good. 

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• Generalization is process which occurs after an Stimulus- Reaction has been established by conditioning.

1. Example:

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   • In attitude formation might be the establishment of a negative reaction to one particular black man, an attitude which would then generalize to other men and women having similar skin color or appearance.

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• It is called as operant conditioning because organism is allowed to operate freely on it's environment, instead of being constrained to make one particular response to one particular stimulus. It is instrumental in the sense that the organism's behaviour is instrumental; that is, the behaviour is the means by which reward or punishment is achieved.

1. Example:

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   • In human attitude formation, the reinforcer is apt to be verbal - either praise or criticism - or nonverbal sign of approval or disapproval. For instance: a child may say "dirty people"  and be rewared by an approving smile from the parent. As a result, the child would not only be likely to say "dirty people" more often in the future, but aslo form a negatice attitide toward other people. 

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• In this situation the organism has several alternative responses, and they are differentially reinforced by using different degrees of reward or punishment. As aresult the more- reinforced responses increase in their liklihood of being emitted.

1. Example:

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   • In the attitude area might be a youthful baseball fan who has expressed liking for several baseball teams on different occasions. If one attitude, (I like the dodgers) was reinforced more quickly, more strongly, or more frequently than his statements favourable to other teams, his favourable attitude toward the dodgers would gradually selected as his dominant attitude on the topic of baseball.

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• A common type of learning that can occur without ant external reinforcement is imitation of the behaviour of another person who serves as a model.  Parents are often disconcerted to find that their children imitate not only their admirable behaviour (e.g. Helping to feed the baby) but also their anti social acts (e.g. Swearing at the disliked neighbors). 

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• Persuasive communication is probably the most common way of trying to change a person's attitude. It can aslo be used to form attitudes for the first time, as when a friend tells you the good or bad point about a local political candidate of whem  you knew nothing before. The typical content of such a persuasive message include one or more suggested conclusions or recommendations for action, usually together with some supporting facts or arguments (e.g. "He is a good candidate because he is honest and won't make any political deals to get elected"). The format of persuasive messages can be infinitely varied; long or short, logical or emotional, organized or disorganized, etc.  they are apt to influence the cognitive aspect of attitudes most directly, and sometimes also the behavioural aspect.

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• Information integration theory believes that a person's attitude toward an object is based on the beliefs that he/she holds about it, some which maybe favourabl and some maybe unfavourable. In forming their attitudes, people must integrate the beliefs about the object which are salient to them into an overall Impression.   

1. Example:

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   • Your friend may tell you that an unfamiliar political candidate is honest, not a good speaker. To form an attitude toward the candidate, you then have to combine those beliefs ( and perhaps also your opinion of your friend's political judgement) in some way.