Attitude can be associated with a person's active adaptation to their environment.
The Royal Spanish Academy mentions three definitions of the word attitude , a term that comes from the Latin attitudeo . According to the RAE , attitude is the state of mind that is expressed in a certain way (such as a conciliatory attitude). The other two definitions refer to the posture : of a person's body (when it transmits something effectively or when the posture is associated with the emotional disposition) or of an animal (when it manages to concentrate attention on some issue).
Let's start with three examples with this term: "I don't like the attitude that Manuel is having with the employees" , "If you continue with that attitude, you will be left out of the team" , "The leopard's attitude showed that the animal was not willing to let itself be catch easily .
A state of mind and nerves
Attitude has also been defined as a state of nervous and mental disposition , which is organized from experiences and which guides or directs the response of a subject to certain events.
Therefore, attitude is more of a social motivation than a biological motivation. From experience, people acquire a certain predisposition that allows them to respond to stimuli.
Attitude as active adaptation
An attitude is the way in which an individual actively adapts to his or her environment and is the consequence of a cognitive, affective and behavioral process.
For this reason, social psychology is responsible for studying the attitudes of human beings to predict possible behaviors. When the attitudes of an individual are observed, it is possible to predict their way of acting.
Attitudes fulfill various functions in social life. There may be the case of someone who adopts a defensive attitude and, in this way, becomes predisposed in a particular way to interactions. Attitude may also be adaptive -oriented in an attempt to minimize conflict.
Many times the attitude is reflected in the person's clothing or appearance.
Classification according to type
There are several types of attitudes:
A disinterested attitude is one that leads a person to keep another person in mind not as a means to achieve something, but as an end to achieve one's own benefit. To achieve it, four qualities are needed: availability, openness, acceptance and request.
The manipulative attitude is one that a person exercises to achieve a personal goal and takes into account the other as a means, giving them sufficient attention to achieve their goal.
Interested attitude : it is caused by a situation of destitution. A person is deprived of something they need and seeks by all means to recover or satisfy their needs. Others are also a resource that can help her get out of that situation of helplessness.
An integrative attitude is one that a person has who seeks not only their own benefit but also that of those around them. It is based on close communication between two people whose objective is unification and integration.
Some theories about attitude
Throughout history many theories have been made about attitude, here we present some of them.
In learning theories, attitudes are learned just like everything in life. We capture new information and learn the feelings, actions and thoughts that are related to them. In this line of thought, people are conceived as passive beings where learning is the trigger for the attitude they may take. It depends closely on the amount of positive and negative elements that the subject has learned.
Theories of cognitive consistency affirm that people seek coherence in their lives and that in order to achieve it they vary their attitudes and thoughts to feel a uniqueness in their internal being because the presence of two states of consciousness (incoherence) makes them uncomfortable. . In this case the attitude would have to do with the succession of actions that ensure balance for the individual.
In the theories of cognitive dissonance it is maintained that, as explained in the previous theory, subjects feel uncomfortable when they have ideas or attitudes that contradict each other (dissonance) and as a consequence they seek to reduce said dissonance. The same thing happens when an action is carried out that goes against what the subject believes or is not related to the life they want to lead, to who they are.
The view of psychology
From the perspective of psychology , attitudes can be made tangible in three ways: at an ideational, behavioral or emotional level. We will explain it with an example:
The cashier in a supermarket behaves kindly with a customer (the attitude is expressed behaviorally) but at the same time she has an unseen thought: "I must be kind to this person" (expression at an ideational level); In turn, the cashier is not only doing it and thinking, but she is feeling it (expression on an emotional level). Taking these three parts into account is essential to modify an attitude that does not agree with what we want.
Positive attitude vs. negative attitude
It is also important to establish the difference between positive and negative attitudes . The positive ones are those that collaborate with the individual to confront reality in a healthy and effective way, the negative ones are those that hinder this relationship between the individual and his or her environment. The freedom of the individual lies in being able to choose between one attitude and another at every moment.
Finally, it only remains to say that attitudes not only modify individual behavior, but also group behavior. A person with a positive attitude towards problems can encourage the group to move forward and improve; while one with a negative attitude manages to "infect" him but to guide him in a behavior that will lead him to failure.