Attitude (or attitude) is a generalized tendency to think or act in a certain way in relation to an object or situation, often accompanied by feeling. The cognitive component is part of the entity. This is a logical predisposition to respond consistently to a given object.
The essence of the concept
The cognitive component may include assessments of people, problems, objects, or events. Such estimates are often positive or negative, but sometimes they can also be uncertain. However, unlike other components of the attribute, the formation of a cognitive component suggests the presence of logical factors. What then are the other elements of the attitudes, or relationships?
What is a relation and what does it consist of?
Attitude is a peculiar way of thinking, and it determines how we relate to the world. Researchers also suggest that there are several different components that form it.
This can be seen by looking at the three components of the relationship: cognition, affect and behavior.
So, we can confidently list these three elements in their original form:
- cognitive component;
- affective component;
- behavioral component.
Features of the term
The relationship component described in the article refers to the beliefs, thoughts, and attributes that we associate with the object. The cognitive component is a segment of opinions or beliefs. It refers to the part of the relationship that is associated with the general knowledge of the person.
As a rule, it is found in general terms or in stereotypes, such as “all children are cute”, “smoking is harmful to health”, etc.
Affective component
The affective component is the emotional or sensory segment of the relationship.
This is due to a statement that affects another person.
It deals with feelings or emotions that appear on the surface of impressions of something, such as fear or hatred. Using the example above, someone might think that he loves all children because they are cute, or hates smoking because it is unhealthy.
The element of affect in behavior consists of a person’s tendency to behave in a certain way in relation to the object. This refers to that part of the relationship that reflects a person’s intention in the short or long term.
Using the above example, a behavioral attitude can appear in phrases like “I can't wait to kiss a child” or “we better not let these smokers go to the library”, etc.
Differences
As mentioned earlier, any relationship consists of three components, which include the cognitive component, affective, or emotional component. As well as behavioral. Essentially, the cognitive is based on information or knowledge, while the affective component is based on feelings.
The behavioral component reflects how attitude affects how we act or behave. This helps to understand their complexity and the potential relationship between attitude and behavior.
But for clarity, keep in mind that the term “relationship” essentially refers to the affected part of the three components.
Significance and Importance
In an organization, attitude is important to achieve a common goal or task. Each of these components is very different from the other, and they can lean on each other, shaping our views and, therefore, affecting how we relate to the world.
History
It has long been assumed that relationships have affective, behavioral, and cognitive components. Two hypotheses were obtained from this assumption and tested in three correlation studies. It has been proven that individuals exhibit greater consistency in response to relationship scales measuring the same element than to scales measuring different components.
To test this hypothesis, we used the Campbell and Fiske multiprocessor matrix (1959). Secondly, it was hypothesized that the correspondence between the verbal scales of the relationship and non-verbal behavioral responses should be the highest when both are taken from the same component of the relationship. Indicators of explicit behavior were compared with verbal indicators of affective, behavioral, and cognitive components as a criterion for the second hypothesis.
The construction of verbal measures for the three components required the development of a procedure for evaluating the amount that each oral statement reflected in each component. Attitude scales for the church were prepared using equal interval methods, final grades, rock analysis, and self-esteem. Both hypotheses were confirmed, but the dominant feature was a high cross-correlation between the three components with the uniqueness of each component, introducing very little additional variance.
Other name
The names of the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components usually do not change. However, the former is often called informational. The information component consists of a system of beliefs, perceptions, values ​​and stereotypes of a person about objects of relationship. In other words, this refers to a person's ideas about the subject.
Impact on Opinion
The term “opinion” is often used as a substitute for the cognitive component of a relationship, especially when it relates to a problem.
For example, a job seeker may find out from his sources and other employees working in the company that in a particular company the chances of promotion are very favorable. In reality, this may or may not be correct. Nevertheless, the information that a person uses is the key to his attitude to this work and to this company. The faith, perception, values ​​and stereotypes of this person in relation to the company together constitute a cognitive component that affects the person’s attitude to something.
Relationship with Affectiveness
The affective component of social relations refers to the emotional aspect of relationships, which very often is a deep-rooted element of behavior and most resists change. In the presence of cognitive connections, two elements can be combined and a single cognitive-emotional component can be distinguished.
In simple words, this includes emotions experienced by the object of relationship, say, love or hate, as well as hostility, pleasant or unpleasant things. The emotional component, if it is strong enough, usually stands in the way of changing attitudes. This component can be explained by this statement: "I like this work, and therefore I will take it."
Behavioral component
The behavioral component of social relations indicates a tendency to respond to the relationship in a certain way. They compensate for the partial deficiency of the cognitive component.
In other words, it is a predisposition to act in a certain way in relation to the object of relationship. It becomes known if you observe the behavior of a person, that is, what he says, what he will do or how he behaves, does or reacts.
For example, an interested person in the aforementioned case may decide to get a job because of good future prospects.
Of the three components of the relationship, only the behavioral component can be directly observed. Two other components of a relationship cannot be observed: beliefs (cognitive component) and feelings (affective component).
Interconnection
There is an internal and interconnected organization of relationship components. The above three components are interconnected and uniformly form our attitude. A change in one component can lead to a change in others in order to maintain internal consistency in the overall structure of the relationship.
Research
Studies of relationships as a phenomenon often focused on the cognitive component. Modern thinking regarding pediatric pathology emphasizes the need to consider psychopathology from a developmental perspective. Kicketti and Schneider-Rosen, for example, argue that psychopathology in children should be considered in terms of inability to agree on the important tasks of social and cognitive competence in the sequence of childhood development. Mastering stage tasks is seen as a mechanism by which children move to new levels of cognitive organization and differentiation.
Cognitive reorganization is seen as a process by which previous levels of organization are incorporated into new hierarchies of cognitive structure. Thus, the inability to agree on one development task is related to mastering the subsequent stages and, consequently, to the consequences for the subsequent socially-cognitive competence in adult life. Cognitive component, behavioral component - components of this kind play a very large role in all social processes, which has been repeatedly confirmed by many studies.
Challenges and Further Research
Interpersonal cognitive complexity is one of the psychological constructs that people use to describe others. A psychological construct, for example friendly, is different from a physical construct used to describe someone, for example, bald, and from a behavioral description, for example, eats slowly. It is said that people who use more psychological constructs to describe others have a more differentiated perception of others.
Over 30 years of research in the field of communication literature have supported the link between interpersonal cognitive complexity assessed using the role category questionnaire (RCQ; Crockett, 1965) and personality-oriented communication skills (Burleson & Caplan, 1998). People with a higher level of interpersonal cognitive complexity have more opportunities to understand the views of others, show more empathy, do more situational explanations and can generate more potential explanations for the behavior of others (Burleson & Caplan).
To date, kindergarten workers, nurses, police and organizational leaders have been included in the study (Burleson & Caplan; Kasch, Kasch & Lisnek, 1987; Sypher & Zorn, 1986). One of the goals in this study was to assess the range of interpersonal cognitive difficulties in the CNA student population.
The second goal was to test the predictive accuracy of the RCQ. RCQ includes asking people to describe others they are familiar with. It can be expected that perceivers who used a relatively large number of constructs to describe the people they knew would also use a relatively large number of constructs to describe the people to whom they were just presented. The cognitive component is the very mental constructs.
It was also interesting whether the CNAs, which consider the resident prettier, would use more psychological constructs to describe him. A common conclusion in the RCQ literature is that people use more constructs to describe others that they like and dislike (Crockett, 1965).
It is likely that if the audience likes someone who is represented in the video, this audience will more closely monitor information about this person. This study examined the relationship between human behavior and the number of constructs that CNA students used to describe. The development of the cognitive component of the relationship played a large role in this matter.