Social Psychology and Attitude - Essay Example

? Social Psychology and Attitude Section/# The following analysis will seek to provide the reader with a baseline of understanding with regards to the overall importance and multi-directional relationship that attitude and psychosocial groups can have upon one another. As a function of performing such an analysis, prior research will be referenced and the existence of best practices and oversights with regards to how this relationship has been defined over the past several decades will be discussed. One of the dangers when dealing with the definition of key psychological terms is that the definitions themselves come with so many preconceived aspects that any further definition will draw upon these ill-conceived and oftentimes incorrect understandings. This is precisely the case when one considers the means by which attitude can impact upon social psychology and ultimately change the way in which a person or a group of individuals choose to engage or behave within a given situation. It has long been assumed, and rightly so, that attitude has a powerful impact upon the way in which the individual integrates with a particular situation and ultimately frames the context of further interactions; up to and including their own future. However, evidence of this has been circumstantial at best and oftentimes inferred as the result of unscientific studies or extrapolating the results of a single scientific study far beyond the bounds that they were intended. As a function of this miscalculation, the following analysis will consider the case of attitude and the means by which it impacts upon both the individual and the group in helping to formulate and develop key changes to the way in which they engage in the future. Though a full length response to such a research question could easily constitute a dissertation length response, the following analysis will briefly engage with the relevant scientific literature as a means of outlining the issue and seeking to define it with regards to the research question to a more actionable degree. Firstly, it should be understood that even at its most basic level, attitude is not a term whose definition is agreed upon by all social psychologists; or even by all psychologists for that matter. However, for purposes of clarity and simplicity, the following analysis will loosely consider attitude to be a subset of positive, negative, or neutral feelings concerning individuals, inanimate objects, events, ideas, or activities. Unfortunately, with such a broad and overarching definition, the reader can quickly become aware of the fact that this particular understanding promotes the idea that attitude in fact engenders and helps to contribute to such things as frame of mind, world view, and awareness/definition of reality (Conway, 2012). Due to a broad range of impacts, the importance that attitude plays in furthering and developing social interactions and integration is profound. Recently, researchers have noted that even small attitude s, such as preference of a particular co-worker over another, can directly impact not only upon the larger attitude of the work at hand, but ultimately spill over into many of the other professional and non-professional engagements that the individual makes during their time within such a particular situation (Magallares, 2006). One term in particular that has been analyzed recently is with regards to the “attitude imprint” that is oftentimes formed as the result of a particularly influential experience. Researchers have long surmised and alluded to the fact that attitudes are based not only on preference but can be severely impacted upon by defining moments. However, the “imprint” of attitude relates to the fact that strong emotions (whether likes or dislikes) can affect the given situation as well as the attitude that other individuals have; thus representing a type of evolutionary growth by which other individuals understand and/or engage on certain topics (Molinsky, 2011). The greatest difficulty that researchers have experienced over the past several years is not whether or not attitude impacts directly upon social behavior and/or interactions/perceptions (this can be tacitly assumed to be the case); rather, the most difficult component is seeking to place something of a uniform measurement with regards to attitude. Due to the fact that each and every individual approaches a situation, relationship, or object by a different means and utilizing different behavioral mechanisms, research into this topic has oftentimes been stymied as a function of the methodology and measurement issues that researchers have experienced (Frye et al,, 1994). This is not to say that researchers have avoided the topic and have not produced any actionable or useful information regarding the impact of attitudes upon the psychosocial environment; rather, it merely denotes the fact that a level of standardization has been forced to be accepted in order to integrate the data and inputs that have been tabulated by the researchers. Without such a level of standardization, these inputs would be so disparate as to be useless (Sechrist & Young, 2011). Yet, the converse of this situation is the fact that by forcing these definitions and determinations of how attitudes should be defined and how they are expected to impact universally, key levels of inference are necessarily lost to the researcher/reader. Although recent scholarship has helped to underscore this shortcoming, it is without question that prior scholarship into the way in which attitudes were informed and impacted upon by greater society were nearly wholly contingent upon constrictive and rather useless definitions of a particular behavior and/or attitude; thereby constraining the inference that the researcher could draw from these analyses – regardless of how well they were initially crafted (Johnson & Grier, 2012). However, perhaps the most interesting aspect of research that has been conducted into attitude and the means by which it is affected is with regards to how interpersonal groups and/or social dynamics impact upon attitude. Whereas the inverse relationship has long been surmised and partially proven to exist, the way in which the group and/or society is able to impact upon attitude is nonetheless salient. The reader need look no further than the means by which popular culture impacts upon the stakeholder of society to ascertain why the impact that the group has upon the way in which key attitudes are represented within the individual (Owuamalam et al, 2003). Pertinent examples of this can be found to relate to the exhibition of the term and integration with the concept of “political correctness”. The concept of political correctness ultimately is one that is based on providing a standardized measurement of attitude and/or mores or norms with regards to a particular issue or understanding. The individual’s attitude, regardless of class, ethnicity, or political affiliation, is then worked towards this “medium” so that a level of “averageness” is accommodated. Although the process itself may seem as somewhat insidious, the fact of the matter is that the accommodation of the individual to unique mores of attitude that are required by society is a norming process by which a level of morality, ethics, and acceptability is conferred upon individual attitudes (Jie, 1999). Without such a process, key racial slurs would still be widely accepted, sexism would be more prevalent, and stereotyping in general would doubtless be more prominent. Within such a unit of understanding, it must be noted that attitude is not a unidirectional factor that impacts upon the individual nor is it a unidirectional aspect of human behavior that impacts upon society alone. Rather, something of a bilateral means of interaction perennially takes place between the individual and society/the group. Thus, from the information that has been presented, apart from an understanding of the fact that attitude is not a unidirectional force, the reader has also been presented with the understanding that many of the pitfalls of recent research into this topic are with respect to the fact that so many researchers have failed to categorize these attitudes and/or measure them appropriately. Whereas this particular research did not attempt to measure any one attitude, it must be understood and appreciated that any attempt to do this places the research at a key risk for generalizing the results and not placing a high enough level of importance with regards to the individuality of the personality that contrived and informed these attitudes. References Conway, S. (2012). Death, working-class culture and social distinction. Health Sociology Review, 21(4), 441-449. Frye, G., Lord, C. G., & Brady, S. E. (1994). Attitude change following imagined positive actions toward a social group: do memories change attitudes, or attitudes change memories?. Social Cognition, 30(3), 307-322. doi:10.1521/soco.2012.30.3.307 Jie, Z. (1999). The power of affect and cognition in predicting group attitudes toward supervisors. Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal, 41(2), 215-221. doi:10.2224/sbp.2013.41.2.215 Magallares, A. (2006). Social risk factors related to eating disorders in women. Revista Latinoamericana De Psicologia, 45(1), 147-154. Molinsky, A. L. (2013). The psychological processes of cultural retooling. Academy of Management Journal, 56(3), 683-710. doi:10.5465/amj.2010.0492 Johnson, G. D., & Grier, S. A. (2012). What about the intended consequences?. Journal of Advertising, 41(3), 91-106. Owuamalam, C. K., Farrow, C. V., Tarrant, M., & Zagefka, H. (2003). The effect of metastereotyping on judgements of higher-status outgroups when reciprocity and social image improvement motives collide. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 45(1), 12-23. doi:10.1037/a0030012 Sechrist, G. B., & Young, A. F. (2011). The influence of social consensus information on intergroup attitudes: The moderating effects of ingroup identification. Journal of Social Psychology, 151(6), 674-695. doi:10.1080/00224545.2010.522615 Read More