What are the main influences of attitude formation?

Question

In other words what makes people prejudice against others? What are the main factors. Can you quote me any psychological theories that can back your argument up? Is it all cause by environmental factors?

Answer 1

Very good question! Just off the top of my head: environment, esp. one's family of origin during the developmental years. I also think that a "weak" character (i.e., one with no intergrity subject to "peer pressure") makes one vulnerable to becoming prejudiced and hateful towards certain groups of people. Below is the URL for a slew of articles on this subject from google scholar. Here's an excerpt from an American Psychological Association article entitled "Are beliefs inherited?" (URL below). Hope this is helpful. Aloha

Research shows some attitudes are rooted in genetics, though environment is still key.

BY TORI DeANGELIS
Print version: page 50

Social psychologists have long held that attitudes--whether about America's role in Iraq or the importance of one's physical appearance--are largely the product of environmental forces, a combination of upbringing and culture.

But a handful of studies show not only that attitudes are partly, though indirectly, heritable, but that attitudes with high heritability influence people's actions more strongly than those with weaker genetic bases. Indeed, highly heritable attitudes, such as political persuasions, may even steer our choices of the social "niches" we carve out for ourselves, such as where and with whom to live, according to one line of psychological research.

"When I first started this work in the 1970s, the definition of an attitude was a response conditioned 100 percent by an individual's experiences," notes University of Georgia social psychologist Abraham Tesser, PhD, who has conducted innovative studies on the social implications of highly heritable attitudes. "I think the zeitgeist has changed since the advent of the Human Genome Project--the idea that a behavioral system has a strong genetic component is hardly an issue anymore."

That said, psychologists who study attitudes agree that environmental factors--in particular, the "nonshared environment," or a person's individual experiences outside the family, usually examined via twin studies (see page 46)--are consistently stronger in predicting attitudes than genetic ones, at least among adults. In addition, it's highly doubtful there are any specific genes for any given attitudes: Instead, attitude proclivity probably funnels through other mechanisms, such as personality, that spring from genes that influence a person's neurochemistry in areas such as impulse control, they say.

And big questions remain. For instance, to what extent does "assortative mating"--people's proven tendency to choose mates with similar attitudes--bias research results, since the partial heritability of attitudes may give children those tendencies? And what explains the fact that people's attitudes often shift as they get older? Is it the result of latent genetic proclivities emerging once a person leaves home, environmental factors, or both?

In the broadest sense, the data suggest an interplay of both genetic and environmental factors in people's attitudes toward, for example, sex, politics and religion, with environment playing a stronger role, according to a major 1999 study in Twin Research (Vol. 2, No. 2) by Virginia Commonwealth University social psychologist Lindon Eaves, PhD, and colleagues.

The team examined data on 29,691 subjects--including 14,761 adult twins and their parents, spouses, siblings and adult children--and concluded that the route to transmitting attitudes within families is complex, probably reflecting a mixture of assortative mating influences and direct parental transmission. The team also found that family environment played a greater role in attitude formation than in personality variables, strengthening the notion that personality has a stronger genetic component than attitudes.

Answer 2

Sources Of Attitude Formation

Answer 3

Actually, your main question does not also mean how do people form predjudices....

First of all, prejudice means a preconceived notion or idea about another person place or things that is either positive or negative.

1. Heuristics. When people think, they do not have the mental resources to draw upon every single fact they know in order to make conclusions. Consequently, they make short cuts. These are known as heuristics (or "rules of thumb"). Examples include the "availability heuristic" whereby people make a judgement based on the most salient thing in their mind. An example of this is that after watching a movie about terrorists, someone thinks that all epople of a particular race are terrorists. Another example is the "represenative heuristics" whereby people make judgements based on similarity between things. An application of this is that people could think that anybody with glasses is a nerd. (look up Kahneman)

2. Implicit Attitudes. Based on Schacter and Hasher's work, Implicit attitudes are just that - they are attitudes that people acquire over time (the methods are still unknown, but significant debate still rages) and that are unknown of them. They can be revealed by such things as the Implicit association Test. For this reason, it can be said that even though some people claim they are not racist, they still make racist claims at one time or another.

3. Upbringing. Clearly the place in which we are brought up have enormus consequences for our personality. As such, we become adults who have a similar ideas to our own culture. For instance, someone brought up as a devout Christian is unlikely to embrace Jewish traditions. Someone who is brought up hating one particular people will likely have a difficult time not hating them.

Other things to look up for you - Festinger (attitude formation and cognitive dissonance), Cacioppo (attitude change and formation).

Answer 4

Our parents. And our experiences. If our parents are racist, there's a good chance we'll develop the same tendencies. If we've had bad experiences with people of colour hurting us in some way, we'll "typeify" it to all of those people.

If we see "a majority" we tend to blanket that majority to everyone. I've got glasses, braces, and I'm weak. I also get a 60-average, not the 80+ most people seem to assume "nerds" get.

Answer 5

"technological awareness with out faith is lame. faith with out technological awareness is blind." Albert Einstein "2 issues are countless: the universe and human stupidity; and that i'm uncertain concerning the the universe." Albert Einstein particular, we could desire to consistently divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. yet to me our equations are far greater significant, for politics are purely an issue of present day subject. A mathematical equation stands invariably" Albert Einstein "He who joyfully marches to music rank and record, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a great ideas by skill of mistake, on account that for him the spinal cord could truthfully suffice. This shame to civilization could desire to be completed away with at as quickly as. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble conflict is; i could fairly be torn to shreds than be a factor of so base an action. that's my conviction that killing below the cloak of conflict isn't something yet an act of homicide." Albert Einstein

Answer 6

I agree with "dustin". Our surroundings as we grow up, which would be our parents, make us who we are today.

HOWEVER we have the capabilities to change what a prejudice parent instilled in us.