0.15 Social cognition, personality, and emotion  (Page 14/18)

So basically, take a look and see if someone is having a real impact on their social situations. In this way you could determine if someone is functioning properly socially. You can use this as a way of helping them become better - simply point out if they are actually influencing the situation and the people around them.

One may adopt a similar approach to understanding and investigating the nature of attitudes, values, and preferences. Consider the case of attitudes towards affirmative action. What does it mean to characterize an individual as one who possesses a "positive attitude" toward affirmative action? What does it mean to say that affirmative action action is a prominent feature of that individual's system of "values"? A traditional approach to understanding the nature of attitudes and values might characterize that individual in terms of a set of beliefs (e.g., he or she believes that affirmative action procedures increase the representation of minorities in the work force), a set of feelings (e.g., he or she feels that it is desirable to recruit minorities actively into the work force), and a set of intentions (e.g., he or she intends to take actions that might facilitate the goals of affirmative action). That is, the traditional approach seeks to understand attitudes and values in terms of the specific beliefs, feelings and intentions that are thought to be associated with global attitudes and general values. Moreover, this traditional approach would lead one to construct measures of attitudes and values that focus on the assessment of beliefs, feelings, and intentions.

So by assessing values and attitudes by looking at ones beliefs, feelings and intentions, you are looking at the person internally, what it is they are thinking that goes behind what they value and what attitudes they develop. That would pretty much be all of the thoughts and feelings that go behind developing attitudes and values.

By contrast, an approach that seeks to understand individuals in terms of their social worlds would characterize attitudes and values in terms of the processes of choosing and influencing situations. From this perspective, to the extent that an attitude or value is relevant and important to an individual, the consequences of holding that attitude or value will be reflected in that individual's choices of situations and that individual's attempts to influence his or her situations. Thus, when the individual for whom attitudes toward affirmative action are personally important and relevant is given the choice between spending time with a group of people who will be discussing affirmative action and spending time with a group of people who will be discussing baseball teams, that individual will chose to enter the "affirmative action" situation. Moreover, should that same individual find himself or herself thrust into a group that is looking for a topic of discussion, he or she will attempt to steer the topic of the discussion in the direction affirmative action. As consequences of these activities, that individual would be creating a social world conducive to maintaining and acting upon his or her attitudes and values in the domain of affirmative action.