Theories of Attitude Organization

Various theories of attitude organization are as follows:

• Learning Theory: Approach that assumes that a person’s attitudes are based on principles of reinforcement association, imitation and punishment.
• Theory of Cognitive consistency: This theory states that tendency for people to seek consistency among their attitudes.
• Balance theory: A Theory addressing the need to maintain consistency among our feelings and beliefs about what goes together.
• Cognitive dissonance Theory: Inconsistence between two cognitive elements produces pressure to make these elements consonant.

 Heider’s balance theory

Balance theory considers the consistency among the affects and beliefs held by a person and are usually described in terms of a person, another person, and an attitude object.

There are three relevant evaluations:

1. The first person’s evaluation of the other person
2. The first person’s evaluation of the attitude object, and
3. The other person’s evaluation of the attitude object.

Balanced relations between people fit; they go together; they make a sensible, coherent, meaningful picture. The main motive that drives people to achieve bal­ance is their desire for harmony, simple and meaningful perceptions of social relationships.

A balanced system is one in which “you agree with a liked person or disagree with a disliked person, Imbalance exists when you disagree ‘with a liked person or agree with a disliked person.

The inconsistency lies in the fact that we expect those we like to have attitudes similar to ours and we expect those we dislike to have attitudes” that are different from ours.

People do adjust imbalanced systems toward balance, and in ways that minimize the number of changes that must be made. People prefer balanced systems, and they remember balanced systems better. But Balance pressures seem to be weaker when we dislike the other person than when we like him or her.

In general Imbalances occur when the system has an odd number of negative relations.

Balance theory maintains that imbalanced configurations tend to change toward balanced ones. This assumption gives the model its importance. Imbalanced systems produce pressures toward attitude change and continue this pressure until they are balanced.

This attitude change can occur in many ways. Balance theory uses a least-effort principle to predict the direction of change. People tend to change as few affec­tive relations as they can to produce a balanced system. Any of the relations may be altered to produce balance. The important point is that various possibilities exist.

Kellman’s theory of attitude organization

Kellman identifies three different processes of influence and he distinguished: them as compliance, identification, and internalization.

Changes in the attitudes and actions produced by social’ influence occur at different levels. It is proposed that these differences that take place correspond to differences in the process whereby the individual accepts influence.

Compliance occurs when an individual accepts influence because he hopes to achieve a favourable reaction from another person or group. He adopts the in­duced behavior not because he believes in its content but because he expects to gain specific rewards or approval and avoid spe­cific punishments or disapproval by con­forming. Thus the satisfaction derived from compliance is due to the social effect of ac­cepting influence.

Identification occurs when an individual accepts influence because he wants to establish or maintain a satisfying self-defining relationship to another person or a group. This relationship may take the form of classical identification, in which the individual takes over the role of the other, or it may take the form of a reciprocal role relationship. The individual actually believes in the responses which he adopts through identification, but their specific content is more or less irrelevant. He adopts the in­duced behavior because it is associated with the desired relationship.

Internalization occurs when an individual accepts influence because the content of the induced behaviour, the ideas and actions of which it is composed and is in­trinsically rewarding. He adopts the induced behavior because it is congruent with his value system. Behavior adopted in this fash­ion tends to be integrated with the individu­al’s existing values. Thus the satisfaction derived from internalization is due to the content of the new behavior.

These determinants can be summarized by the following proposition: The probability of accepting influence is a combined func­tion of

• The relative importance of the anticipated effect.
• The relative power of the influencing agent.
• The prepo­tency of the induced response.

For each process, however, these determinants, take a qualitatively different form. Thus the deter­minants of the three processes can be distinguished from one another in terms of the nature of the anticipated effect, the source of the influencing agent’s power, and the manner in which the induced response has become prepotent.