Attitude: content, structure and function

The first principle

An attitude is a lasting evaluation of something, whether a person, a group, an idea or a policy, as good or bad, liked or disliked. It sits between our values and our behaviour, so it is the point where character turns into conduct. Two officers with the same rules and the same training can serve citizens very differently because their attitudes differ.

The core

• Content: every attitude has an object, such as migrants, women officers or the Right to Information, and a direction (for or against) and an intensity (mild or strong).
• Structure: the ABC model says an attitude has three parts: an affective part (feelings), a behavioural part (actions or intentions) and a cognitive part (beliefs). They usually agree, but when they pull apart the attitude is ambivalent and easier to change.
• Function: Daniel Katz argued in 1960 that people hold attitudes because attitudes do a job for them, and that you change an attitude by addressing that job.
• Relation to behaviour: attitudes guide behaviour, but the link is weaker than common sense suggests, and behaviour can also change attitudes.

Dimensions

• Explicit and implicit: explicit attitudes are those we report, while implicit attitudes are automatic and can include biases we would deny, such as unconscious caste or gender bias.
• Strength: strong attitudes resist change and predict behaviour well. This is why a deep prejudice is hard to shift with a single lecture.

In practice

• Attitude to behaviour, the gap: in a study published in 1934, Richard LaPiere travelled across the United States with a Chinese couple and was refused service at only one of the roughly 250 places they visited. Yet when he later wrote to the same establishments, 118 of the 128 that replied said they would not serve Chinese guests. Stated attitude and actual behaviour came apart.
• Theory of planned behaviour (Icek Ajzen, 1991): behaviour follows from intention, and intention depends on three things: attitude to the act, subjective norms (what important others expect) and perceived behavioural control (whether one feels able to do it).
• Cognitive dissonance (Leon Festinger, 1957): when beliefs and actions clash, the discomfort pushes a person to restore consistency, either by correcting the action or by rationalising it.
• Administrative examples: a campaign that only gives information about toilets changes beliefs but not use; one that also changes community norms and makes the toilet easy to use works on all three drivers of Ajzen's model.

Issues and way forward

• Small compromises snowball, because each rationalisation makes the next lapse easier. Officers should treat the discomfort of dissonance as a warning signal and correct the action rather than the belief.
• Hidden biases distort decisions, because implicit attitudes act without our noticing. Structured procedures, such as written criteria and panels for selection, reduce their effect.
• Training targets only beliefs, because lectures are easy to run. Field exposure and contact with affected groups work on the affective and behavioural parts too.

Common confusions

• Attitude and value. A value is a broad belief about what is important, such as equality. An attitude is an evaluation of a specific object, such as a reservation policy.
• Attitude and aptitude. Aptitude is the ability to do something. Attitude is the inclination with which one does it.
• Attitude and opinion. An opinion is a stated view, often on a single question. An attitude is a deeper and more lasting evaluation that may or may not be stated.

For the exam

• Keyword bank: attitude object, direction, intensity, ABC model, affective, behavioural, cognitive, ambivalence, Katz, utilitarian, knowledge, ego defensive, value expressive, cognitive dissonance, theory of planned behaviour.
• Previous year questions: Practise the previous year questions on this topic →
• Introduction lines:
  • LaPiere's study of 1934 showed that people who said they would refuse Chinese guests had in fact served them, which is the classic evidence that attitude and behaviour can diverge.
  • Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance explains why a person who takes a small favour often ends up believing small favours are harmless.
• Conclusion lines:
  • Since attitudes have feelings, beliefs and actions in them, lasting change must reach all three.
  • An officer's attitude decides whether a rule becomes a wall or a door for the citizen.