Attitude and Behaviour

Attitude

Attitude refers to the standpoint, or the stance one has towards something or someone. Therefore, they are judgments or opinions about a certain subject matter or a person. These standpoints or opinions are formed based on that person’s values and emotions. In brief, attitudes are the personal responses to certain things according to that person’s preference.

Accordingly, several factors such as a person’s life experiences, values, moral attributes, and living environment (family, society) directly influence their attitudes to particular subject matters or persons. More importantly, attitudes differ from one individual to another and from one subject matter to another.

A person’s attitude can be positive, negative or neutral views, which shows one’s likes and dislikes for someone or something. So, the type of attitude we carry, speaks a lot about us, as we get into that mood and transmits a message to the people around us. There is no such thing like ideal attitude, for a particular situation as it is spontaneous and so we always have a choice to opt the right attitude for us.

There is a direct relationship between attitude and behavior. It is evident from the ABC model of attitudes, which describes the components of individual attitudes.

Affective: Refers to the part of the attitude that drives a person’s feelings

Behavioral: Refers to the behavior a person shows or how one reacts with accordance to their attitude in a particular situation

Cognitive: Refers to a person’s opinion, beliefs or thought about a subject matter or a person.

Behavior

Behavior is the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially towards others. Hence, behavior comprises of our actions with concern to the interactions or the relationships we maintain with the external environment. Moreover, a person’s actions and conduct is defined as ‘human behavior’. Human behavior can be of two main categories as innate behavior and learned behavior.

Furthermore, behavior can be described as our immediate response to external stimuli. And, this can be voluntary or involuntary, or conscious or unconscious. Similarly, by proper scrutiny of someone’s behavior, we can deduce a lot of facts about that person’s character and personality.

Thus, several main factors influence the behavior of a person; some of these factors include their surrounding (either they like that surrounding or not), their biology (the physical and mental wellbeing), and their psychological attributes (such as character traits, attitudes etc.).

In short, behavior is an individual or group reaction to inputs such as an action, environment or stimulus which can be internal or external, voluntary or involuntary, conscious or subconscious.