Can attitudes be changed?

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We have all wanted to change someone’s attitude at some point. For your sake, for ours. In fact, we are talking about one of the most transversal objectives of advertising. Now, can this change be caused? What tools do we have or do they have to achieve this?

Attitude is mentioned many times in our daily lives. From individuals in our work who “don’t want to change their attitude” to kids in the classrooms whose “attitude is bad.” Nevertheless, What does psychology understand by attitude? Can you have a good or bad attitude? Can these vary? The answer is yes: attitudes can change, but first you have to understand what they are.

In this article, we will see the concept of attitude from different theoretical frameworks to understand what it is. its role in the functioning of the human being. In addition, we will study what may be the best option to change negative or dysfunctional attitudes, if this can be carried out.

What is an attitude?

Allport, an American psychologist, considered attitudes as:

“A mental and nervous state of readiness, organized through experience, that exerts a directive or dynamic influence on the individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it is related.”

Attitudes, beyond simple opinions, are considered from the psychology of persuasion as a mere organization of beliefs, feelings, and behavioral tendencies that remain stable over time. This organization is established towards objects, groups of people, symbols, beliefs or events.

As man is a zoon politikonthat is, a social animal, attitudes also allow the individual have a general evaluation about a person. This evaluation can be negative or positive. Therefore, we can say that attitudes are evaluations. For example, the attitude towards oneself is called self-esteem.

Hogg and Vaughan (2008) concluded that, without attitudes, people would have difficulty constructing and reacting to events. He would also be less skilled at making decisions and functioning socially.

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What is an attitude for?

Katz argued that there are very different kinds of attitudes, but they all fulfill a function. He identified the following:

Knowledge.Instrumentality: Attitudes can be a means to an end.Defense of the self: Attitudes also help protect a person’s self-esteem.Expression of values: allows people to establish and communicate what they like or don’t like or what they identify with most.

Fazzio (1989) studied how The main function of any kind of attitude is utilitarian: the appreciation of an object. Having an attitude facilitates the person’s orientation towards that object and a quick response based on their demands.

On the other hand, an attitude allows us not to invest energy whenever we relate to an object, since we already have an idea of how to do it; we have done it in the past. Therefore, an attitude allows us to be more likely to have positive experiences and minimizes those of having a negative one, since We know which stimuli we like and which we don’t beforehand. We act accordingly to our attitudes born from our experience.

How to change attitudes?

A person’s attitude, and one’s own, can be modified. In fact, the psychology of persuasion finds two great mechanisms to get a person to change their attitude:

Give you what is prototypically considered a persuasive message. This means that a good way to change someone’s attitude is to give them information about something or someone that maintains the attitude to be changed. Request that negative or positive aspects be written about the attitude they hold or we want them to adopt. We can ask the person to generate that information without having to explicitly give it to them. The self-generation of arguments, without the mediation of any other person, can lead to a process of self-persuasion. This self-persuasion can be set in one direction or another.

What you should never do when trying to convince

From the psychology of persuasion they warn us: despite the nature and veracity of the information, we often form an impression that will be the seed of a negative attitude. This is not so much related to the quality of the arguments as it is to the force with which they express themselves.

Thus, it is important use solid arguments; Otherwise, weak arguments can produce the opposite effect to what we intend: that the person does not change their attitude or that they do so in the opposite direction to that intended.

The arguments have to be solid for the person listening, not so much for the one issuing them. If in debate the person begins to counterargue, it means that the force of the persuasive messages has not been sufficient.

Many times those arguments are solid for us, but the person in front of us does not think the same; our arguments are not convincing to her. At that time, it is usually committed the fatal mistake of insisting on similar arguments, because we think that he is not understanding us; he does, but he doesn’t understand them like we do.

Can you persuade someone who doesn’t listen to what you say?

For a long time it was thought that change people’s attitudes It was impossible if those people were not exposed to the message in question and understood it. The latest research has something to say: you can, without a doubt, you can.

We can persuade the person to change the attitudes they have through heuristics. Heuristic information processing responds to the human need for a certain cognitive economy.

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People seek to generate the minimum of effort in their cognitions, and therefore they use attributional biases, heuristics, schemes and categoriessince the effort that would be required to process all the information in the medium is unaffordable.

Playing within the game: the heuristic rules

A tired person will tend to process information less, to pay less attention to an argument. This can happen with a child, a coworker, or even friends.

Thus, We must understand the heuristic processing of the person, especially in low processing conditions. Some examples of heuristic rules are:

“If an expert says it, I agree.” “If the majority says it, it will be for a reason.” “If it’s tall, I like it.” “If Jose wears it, I want it.”

The heuristic rule establishes the change of attitude without even generating thoughts. Therefore, knowing the person’s heuristic processing can be the key to achieving a change in their attitude.

Conclusions: resistance to persuasion

Persuasion may not be enough to generate a change in attitude. In fact, there are certain factors that can make persuasion less effective.

The personal reactance It is a fact that we do not passively accept the influence attempts of others. This defense mechanism is useful against the persuasion mechanisms to which we are continually subjected. Therefore, persuasion must be subtle, and not rude.

Another factor that can influence the effectiveness of persuasion is that the person is warned or detects the persuasion attempt. In this case, the results will be weaker.

Lastly, people also have a selective avoidance of those messages that they know can be persuasive to them. They tend to think that if they do not expose themselves, they will not be convinced – in many cases, it would be better to say manipulated.