In: Psychology
Discuss the role of learning in attitude formation.
Learning plays an important role in the process of attitude formation. Attitudes are formed through the learning processes as follows:
Classical Conditioning: This involves associating a neutral stimulus with a conditioned stimulus to elicit a conditioned response. For Example. A political campaign promotes their candidate by associating him with helping the poor and underprivileged.. This makes people form a positive attitude about the candidate.
Social Learning theory - In this, the person vicariously learns others behavior through observation when the other person is rewarded. For Example - A child watches a documentary where a animal conservationist is saving animals. This makes the child develop a compassionate attitude towards animals.
Operant conditioning - Here, learning through reinforcement happens. For Example - A sports team does not give up in a match in spite of them almost losing, and they end up winning the match. This gives them the reinforcement to develop the "never say die" attitude in the subsequent matches.