Attitudes: Formation and Components
An attitude is a value or belief held towards a particular person, object or situation – referred to as the attitude object – and represents a mental and neural state of readiness towards it.
- Attitudes are formed through socialisation, learning values and opinions from significant others such as friends, parents and role models, and through familiarisation, where repeated exposure to an attitude makes it feel normal and accepted
- Positive attitudes are encouraged by reinforcement (e.g. praise from a coach), while negative attitudes can develop from poor role models, a lack of reinforcement, or negative experiences such as injury
- Attitudes are made up of three components, known as the triadic model (remembered using the acronym CAB): the cognitive component (beliefs, e.g. believing in one's ability to win), the affective component (feelings and emotions, e.g. enjoyment of training), and the behavioural component (actions and habits, e.g. attending training regularly)
Changing Attitudes: Cognitive Dissonance and Persuasive Communication
Because attitudes tend to be fairly stable, changing them requires deliberate strategies. Two key methods are cognitive dissonance and persuasive communication.
- Cognitive dissonance involves creating discomfort or conflict in a performer's thinking by challenging one of the three attitude components, motivating them to change their existing attitude – coaches can trigger this by introducing new information or activities that challenge current beliefs, making training more enjoyable, using rewards and reinforcement, or bringing in role models or specialists to encourage participation
- Persuasive communication involves directly trying to talk a performer into changing their attitude – its effectiveness depends on the message being relevant, important and clearly understood; the messenger having high status (e.g. an expert or role model); and good timing, e.g. immediately after a loss or poor performance, when a performer is more open to change