The Journal 1 – 19th November 2013

Today we are learning something that are common among ourselves. Attitudes which was

defined simply as a positivity or the negativity evaluation of subject of thoughts. Such subject

includes the categories such as social issues or consumer’s product and more. Attitudes

contains three possible components; Cognitive which are affected by belief and ideas,

Affective which are affected emotionally and Behavioral which are mainly a tendency or a

preparation to act upon the subject. The lecture continues with three theories of attitude

changes; Evaluative Conditioning, Operational Conditioning and Observational Learning.

Operant Conditioning states that a person’s behaviour are affected by the consequences they

receive after a creation of response. Operational Conditioning were founded by two

psychologists with a Law and Principle respectively; Edward L Thorndike’s Law of Effect

which states that associationg will strengthen should the consequences are satisfying and B.F

Skinner’s Principle of Reinforcement which states that action will repeat itself followed by

favourable consequences. In Observational Learning, which were defined as a form of

learning through observation, we were taught that there were four key processes; Attention,

Retention, Motivation and Reproduction. Observational Learning are also affected by

Cognitive Dissonance which exist when cognitions contradicts one another. Our lecturer

showed us Festinger and Carlsmith’s study on cognitive dissonance with the hypothesis

stating that higher dissonance about counter attitudinal, or in simple term the state of

psychological tension, changes the attitude of the subject. The conclusion proved the

hypothesis correct.