The psychology of attitudes is part of social psychology. Attitude used to mean ‘posture’ but nowadays it is attributed to a mental disposition in terms of the predisposition that we adopt towards situations that arise as well as towards a social object.
Social attitudes come from our evolutionary past in which they have been favorable for surviving in the environment. They are constituted in our first contact with the experience that we live but they are also formed even without knowing the situation or not having a precise information or contact with the experience. The usefulness of attitudes is based mainly on the effect they have on social adaptation to the environment.
Specifically, it refers to our mental state to face the situations that emerge in the mountain considered as a social context, that is, our psychological tendency to evaluate a particular situation by expressing our liking or disliking, stating attraction or repulsion.
Our attitude consists of the propensity to act based on our own convictions regarding future action, our functional disposition to respond to the social environment including feelings, evaluations, emotions, reactions, thoughts, beliefs, and our self-concept.
The relationship between belief and attitude is very close: as soon as our belief about something changes, our attitude towards it will also change. To value our own skiing is to have an attitude about it that is reflected in our thoughts, emotions, and actions. It is not the skiing conditions (snow, slope, terrain, weather) that matter but the attitude we adopt in dealing with them.
Attitude is also defined as the way we react to adversity. If we believe we are threatened, our chances of overcoming the situation will be limited because we will feel demotivated, insecure, or nervous; but if we adopt a defiant attitude, we will be motivated, confident, and focused on our motor performance.
According to the philosophy professor Eric Schwitzgebel, having an attitude is oriented towards the adoption of a propositional attitude (believe, desire, hope); a reactive attitude (resentment, appreciation, anger); and other attitudes towards people, things, or situations (trusting the instructor, hating slushy snow, having a proactive attitude towards learning).
The functions of social attitudes are:
- The utilitarian function in terms of approaching and being part of a given social context.
- Perceiving and processing information by exposing ourselves to the social environment.
- Expressing our values and beliefs.
- Defense of our Self referred to the preservation of self-esteem, self-affirmation, self-concept, and self-justification of our own behavior.
The social attitude is applied in:
- The interpretation of how to behave socially.
- The tendency to action.
- The state of mind and anticipated motivation of the development of learning.
- The acceptance of mistakes.
- The use of experiences.
Conclusions
- Our skiing attitude is the tendency that can predict our behavior and influence our way of thinking and acting but does not conclude in action since it is reproduced each time we face the same situation.
- Our attitude remains relatively stable, interpreting it as a propensity or disposition to act.
- The attitudes of others are also a source of motivation to action. It is not only a predisposition to act; it is also a predisposition towards the perception of collective situations generated in a common space.
- The type of attitude predicts behavior and facilitates decisions and in its absence it would be difficult to predict the behavior of others.
- Our attitudes assumed when skiing collaborate in the way we think about it and our attitude determines how we process that information. We have, in general, attitudes towards different stimuli that are presented and even formed, at times, through beliefs that establish in relation to the opinions of others.
