Attitudes
Attitude is a way of thinking, feeling and behaving about something or someone. It is of following types;
- Positive attitude: Confidence, optimism, sincerity, and reliability are traits that represent positive attitude.
- Negative attitude: Hatred, pessimism, resentment, and doubt are traits that represent negative attitude.
- Neutral attitude: Complacence, indifference, detachment, feeling of being disconnected, unemotional represent the neutral attitude.
Factors influencing the development of attitude
- Maturation: The young child has only a very limited capacity for understanding the world and is consequently incapable of forming attitudes about remote, or complex, or abstract things or problems. With the increase in age, people mature. They start reasoning and be able to understand and react to more abstract and more generalized propositions, ideas and ideals.
- Physical factors: Physical health, soundness, malnutrition, diseases, etc. affects normal development and thus affects setting of the attitude.
- Social environment: The environment at home influences the attitude at early days of life. But, with the exposure to friends, associates, and the general social environment, the attitude gets influenced.
- Government: The form of the government seems to be an important factor in determining attitudes both towards government itself and towards other things.
- Movies and pictures: Attitudes are influenced by the movies one sees.
- Curriculum, teacher and teaching methods: The curriculum in the areas should be selected with particular reference to their probable influence on the attitudes formed by the students. The personality of the teacher, their influence, and the teaching methods all affect the attitude of the students.