Attitudes Change Social Problems - Essay Example

A way to eliminate all these prejudicial actions can be through a study of attitude formation and ways to change attitudes. It is the subject of this paper to examine how racial discrimination can be lessened or reduced by a deliberate effort to change people attitudes towards their neighbors and fellow black Americans. Sociologists and psychologists have focused their attention and efforts on how attitudes can be a big barrier towards eliminating societal divisions caused by racial discrimination.

Discussion Social scientists who wanted to study the attitudes of people previously faced a serious quandary as to how to correctly measure something that is internal and can only be inferred. This is because attitudes measurement was thought to be impossible to do as it is largely deductive in nature (or in plain language, involves a lot of guesswork). Furthermore, there are far too many of the definitions about what is and what constitutes attitude itself and social psychologists cannot agree on one exact definition (Reid, 2006, p. 4) that has hampered their research studies on it.

However, it has since been generally agreed that attitude is a mental state of readiness to respond, organized through experience, to have a dynamic influence on behavior (ibid.) and this was further refined to include an evaluative dimension to the usual psychological construct. It is this later refinement which led psychologists to conclude that attitudes have some stability or the degree to which it is semi-permanent that can lead to certain consistent patterns of behavior. This insight is of great importance when it comes to changing people's attitudes because not all of the attitudes can become permanent; in fact, these attitudes can be altered and modified also.

This a bit of insight has significant implications when it comes to social problems like discrimination. The social problem of racial or ethnic discrimination stems from a prejudiced attitude. It means people form their own opinions based on some faulty, incomplete or erroneous knowledge or information regarding a certain minority group of people. It is an assumption or prejudgment of a social minority group that is expressed latently or overtly in writing, speaking, interacting or communicating based from preconceived notions that is anchored on beliefs than on facts.

This has serious consequences and potentially dangerous because it leads to wrong conclusions and a wrong judgment to fit a certain stereotype such as racial profiling. It can cause bigotry and even intolerance on matters of race, religion, personal opinions or making an informed judgment. This leads to social conflicts arising from an irrational fear, hatred, suspicion or biases towards a particular group. The warped mind of a bigot is usually hard to alter but this can still be changed somewhat through more open communication and greater contact with minorities so that wrong notions are corrected.

Prejudicial attitudes can vary in intensity or its manner of being expressed but all forms exhibit a negative sentiment (Brown, 2010, p. 35). Racial discrimination can become an ingrained attitude through a series of experiences in life but this does not have to be a permanent trait. Open communications and constant