Attitudes That Forms the Three Components

Attitudes are stable cluster of feelings, beliefs and behaviour and displays one intention towards specific things like people,situation and work. Example, work related attitudes relates to the aspect of work and work setting and we need to understand that diverse workforce have varying attitudes.

Attitudes form three component which is actively happening in our daily activities. Affective component is the emotional reaction towards something. Peter had been with the company for three years and have always been a role model in the company and is expecting his promotion due today but was shocked by the boards decision to give the promotion to much junior staff who was recognised for his recent contribution which made up 15% of the company's annual profit. Behavioural component looks at how the subject faces and reacts to the matter's attention. Peter was displeased by the board's decision and requested for a transfer out of the department without considering the efforts he had made in his three years, His performance shows he have no interest in working as hard as he used to, giving the boss a low performance impression. Cognitive component is to think and reason but it is the hardest to action among the three components. Think and anaylze before you take your next big step.

Cognitive dissonance is a feeling of discomfort caused by the information received which is affecting your positive self-concept. Leon Festinger suggests that people seek harmony in their attitudes, belief and behaviours and try to reduce the tendency of inconsistency among these elements. Reducing dissonance can be achieved by changing the behaviour or justifying the behaviour with new cognition added. The aim is to established consistency as we are always motivated to avoid inconsistencies. Example, We are always bombarded by influence at work and sometimes we just do not want to go to work because we are not motivated but we have to adapt and cling on to the job because we have a family to feed and that thinking changes the way we look at things which constantly reminds us why we go to work in a motivation way.

The central route to persuasion occurs when one derives from the message with positive understanding and do not require further elaboration to understand what the message is driving. In an advertising world, a commercial message uses part of central route to bring a point to the users to purchase the product. Example, how an asthma suffers decides on purchasing the best medication to reduce the number of asthma attacks would not understand the medical jargons used on the advertisement instead creating a message that elaborate on the benefits which an asthma suffers can receive which reduces the number of asthma attacks would surely sell it's product.

The peripheral Route to persuasion occurs when one is unable to understand what the message is trying to drive but some factors within the message actually gives a positive signal to further the consumer back to the product message which is driven. Example, If Michael Jordan is to do endorse for a brand of batteries, would anyone have purchased the batteries, why on earth would a basketball player be in a battery advertisement. Studies shows that though Michael Jordan plays basketball, the batteries will still sell in the eyes of consumers who are knows who michael jordan is and why should michael be endorsing these batteries, could they be as good as how michael jordan plays his basketball? Jansport backpack introduced an advertisement which had little to talk about but had more visual effects that somehow caught the eyes of a young boy who immediately went to the nearest sports store and purchased the pack and realised it was as good as what the advertisement was trying to put a point across.

The elaborate likelihood model is a combination of central and peripheral route and this two forms do not lead to the same attitude changes. A common question asked in the technology world, " Since you know that windows is not the fastest platform, why are you not switching over to a faster platform?" There are tons of answers to this question but it is the social psychology that have a fairly simple answer to it.

Self awareness theory states that when one looks at themselves more often than not, they tend to evaluate and compare their behaviour against internal values and standards which might be short coming. Example, Telling a lie or being guilty is what your friends will stigma you as being dishonest and not worthy of being friends, once you are exposed to the lies you have been telling, the subject tends to drink, abuse their bodies and even suicide attempts. The subject could have calm down and think of alternative ways to handle stress like this by attending spiritual aids and mental therapy which helps calm one person and resolve your problems and failures in a better way.

Prejudice & Discrimination Reduction In a Social World

Prejudice is an affective component and a negative attitude. Examples like racism, sexism and poor attitudes toward older workers. Prejudice is about how you hold unreasonable pre-conceived judgment and radical evaluation on a particular race or religion group without concrete evidence on their background and distinguishing characteristic. A young black boy was killed in 2005 uk, Liverpool and reports stated that he was hurled with racial insults by his friends and eventually killed by them with a blow on the head with a 2ft icing axe.

Prejudice is accepted by the social world as a virus and could never be eliminated. A word to describe what causes prejudice is "ignorance". Since prejudice is an affective component, there is no way we can eliminate the emotion in ourself. In an attempt to reduce and control the effects of prejudice, contact hypothesis theory was made to prove that prejudice could indeed be reduced with a certain favorable conditions in mind, gathering different social groups who comes from different race and ethics together and creating close bonding enhance their mutual attractions between one another. A successful contact occured!

Communities centres in Singapore was built to cohesively bond different ethics and culture together, this was recognised by the government, in order to seek harmony and prosperity, we need to first create a close bonding between the people of different race and activities were introduced to the community centres which gathers different social groups together and share what their cultures is like.

Discrimination is the behavioural component and is a negative behaviour conjures with fear anger and stress. Discrimination and prejudice works hand and hand and have common negative goals, discrimination and prejudice can still work without either one present and without the target physically, discrimination can still happen with prejudice views.

Example, Microsoft company was a geek dream and paradise to work in the early 1980s and the company have been creating software for computers to function better in those days. Employing a large amount of engineers who were men and minority of females who are workers to the company did not enjoy the fame and recognition that should be given to them, instead gender discrimination took place for over 10 years which the female workers felt it was a norm and did were then in need of money to support their family. As years got by, female workers became more independent and subjective to promotion after serving for the company for years and initial reports have it that microsoft have not promoted a single female workers since 1983 and this discrimination report was filed to the higher authority which heavily fined microsoft for the gender discrimination act.