Components of Attitude

Components of Attitude

Broadly, Attitude has 3 components, known as- ‘ABC Components‘:

Affective (Emotional)

Affect means emotion or feeling. Affective component implies the feelings that we hold towards attitude objects. Our emotion set predispose us to behave in certain ways. Emotional component also enables us to evaluate the things we experience. Our psyche judges a thing based on our feeling towards it. Thus, it determines our liking or disliking for a particular object.

Behavioral/Conative

It refers to our behavioral readiness. Our behavior is in a complementary relation to our attitude. This constitutes the visible aspect of our attitude, and becomes a manifestation of our feelings and beliefs.

Cognitive

It implies our beliefs regarding any objects. However, our beliefs are often influenced by our feelings. Thus, the cognitive component is influenced by the affective component, and also influence it, at the same time. It marks the perceptual component of our attitude.

However, sometimes, an individual acts contrary to his attitude. This generally happens because of the environmental and external constraints, which compels us to act in ways that are contrary to our attitude.

Whereas, sometimes there exists a mismatch between our affective and cognitive faculties, and a decision in such situation, often involves a post-decision regret/dissonance. Here, the strength of the cognitive component of the attitude increases as one goes away from the object, while the strength of affective component increases as one moves closer to the object.

The components of Attitude itself, are composed of two degrees-

• Valence– it refers to the degree of positivity or negativity associated with an object. It is the strength and direction of the attitude. Under it, the Cognitive component can vary from extremely beneficial to extremely harmful; affective component can vary from happiness to anger; and behavioral component vary from tendency to support, to tendency to destroy or oppose.

• Multiplexity– it refers to the variation in number and kind of elements making up the component. Thus, it points to the diverse types of manifestation that the component of attitude can make. Cognitive component can be beneficial, altruistic, dependency creating etc; Affective component can be respectful, happy, sadness, hatred, disliking etc; and Behavioral component can have factor like- writing a letter, posting a comment, talking to others, putting pressure etc.

Credits: https://aspirantforum.com/2016/02/02/human-attitude-an-introduction/amp/