How to maintain a positive attitude:-

Attitude is a choice. It is not something you are born with and is not
something that comes easy. You have to work at it to stay positive.
Instructions
Step1
The first step in maintaining a positive attitude is having the desire to be positive.Once
that you have decided that you have the desire to maintain a positive attitude, it is time to
move on to the next step.
Step2
Positive attitudes are achieved through a few avenues.
(1 - Positive Affirmation (2 - Law of Attraction Now
1) Positive Affirmation - Positive affirmations program the subconscious mind to attract
success and improve your life. Affirmations are positive statements that describe a
desired situation, and which are repeated many times, in order to impress the
subconscious mind and trigger it into positive action. In order to ensure the effectiveness
of the affirmations, they have to be repeated with attention, conviction, interest and
desire.
2) Law of Attraction - You get what you think about, whether wanted or unwanted. The
Law of Attraction is neutral.
Step3
Another portion to maintaining a positive attitude is the ability to try. I have never met a
successful person that was afraid of trying. Failure was noted by Thomas Edison as being
1 step closer to success. Think where we would be if he had been negative about all the
times he failed in making the light bulb.
Step4
The last step in maintaining a positive attitude is to surround yourself with positive.
There are a ton of books, DVDs, and tapes out on Positive Attitudes, but for the most
part, you need to be around people, places, and things that ooze the positive vibes.

How attitudes changes:-

How and why attitudes change or don’t change are both theoretically &
practically important. Social psychologists have developed a number of theories to
explain attitude change. Four of the major theoretical approaches are learning theories,
consistency theories, and self-perception theories. We also change our attitude by means
of combination (propaganda & persuasion).

1)Learning Theories:- (Early Learning Theories)

This section might more accurately be called behavioral theories of attitude change.
These theories were also developed during the 1950s and 1960s. During this time,
learning theories reflected behavioral psychology. A major commonality of these theories
was their emphasis on the stimulus characteristics of the communication situation.

Staat's (Insko, 1967) work reflected the ideas of classical conditioning, and focused
almost entirely on the formation of attitudes. Events in the environment create an

1
emotional response in an individual. As new stimuli are consistently paired with old
stimuli (events), the new stimuli develop the power to create an emotional response in the
individual (O'Keefe, 1990).

Learning theories of attitude change received major emphasis by Hovland and his
associates in the Yale Communication Research Program (Hovland, Janis & Kelley,
1953). They proposed that opinions tended to persist unless the individual underwent
some new learning experience. Persuasive communications that both present a question
and suggest an answer serve as learning experiences. Acceptance of the suggested answer
is dependent on the opportunity for mental rehearsal or practice of the attitude response,
and on the number of incentives included in the communication. Hovland and his
colleagues assumed that as people processed persuasive message content, they rehearsed
the message's recommended attitudinal response, as well as their initial attitude. For
attitude change to occur, more than rehearsal and practice had to take place. The Yale
researchers emphasized the role of incentives and the drive - reducing aspects of
persuasive messages as mechanisms for reinforcement, thereby creating acceptance of
new beliefs and attitudes.

In the Yale model of attitude change emphasis is placed on attention, comprehension, and
acceptance. An individual must attend to and comprehend the communication before
acceptance can occur. It is during the attending and comprehending phases that the
individual has the opportunity to practice the recommended new opinion. Practice alone
does not lead to acceptance, but when combined with incentives and recommendations
imbedded in the communication, attitude change is likely. Incentives are broadly defined
by Hovland et al. (1953). They could be direct financial or physical benefits (e.g., money,
improved health), or they could take on more abstract forms such as the knowledge gain
from persuasive arguments, social acceptance by others who are respected, or self-
approval from the feeling that one is correct.

Hovland and his associates identified three classes of variables that influenced the
effectiveness of the message: (a) source characteristics, (b) setting characteristics, and (c)
communication content elements. Research using the Yale model focuses on variables in
one or more of these three classes. Examples include research in communicator
credibility (trustworthiness and degree of expertness), fear-arousing appeals, and the
placement of persuasive arguments within the communication (Himmelfarb & Eagly,
1974; Kiesler et al., 1969; Insko, 1967).

A Skinnerian approach (see 2.5) to the study of attitude change was employed by Bem
(1967), whose major assumptions reflected the viewpoint that attitudes were learned as a
result of previous experience with the environment. Bem proposed that since the person
trying to change attitudes usually lacked direct knowledge of the internal stimuli
available to the learner, it was necessary to rely on external cues in order to reward and
punish the individual. It was the combination of external cues and observable behaviors
that produced changes in attitude (Himmelfarb & Eagly, 1974; Kiesler et al., 1969; Insko,
1967).
Today, few attitude change theorists feel that the early research by Hovland and others

2
has direct impact on current procedures (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). Newer research and
theory building is directed toward approaches that emphasize multiple modes of
processing information. However, these early researchers investigated basic issues, such
as reinforcement, incentives, and drive-reduction constructs, that are related to how
motivational states influence information processing and persuasion. Early-learning
theorists' efforts provided a foundation for more modem process models of attitude
change.

2) Consistency Theory:-
This theory attitude change includes Heider’s balance theory and Festinger
cognitive dissonance theory. Common to this is an assumption that people change their
attitudes in order to reduce or remove inconsistency between conflicting attitudes and
behaviors.
Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Model:
It has generated most research. Dissonance is said to exist when a person
possesses two cognitions that are contradictory. Such dissonance is believed to be
uncomfortable and to motivate the person to eliminate the dissonance by changing either
the behavior or attitude.
Research within the cognitive dissonance framework has focused on the
consequences of decision making and the effects of counter attitudinal advocacy. For
example, a smoker who knows that smoking leads to lungs cancer holds contradictory
cognitions :(1) I smoke and (2) smoking leads to lungs cancer. The theory predicts these
two thoughts will lead to a state of cognitive dissonance. The individual will be
motivated to reduce such dissonance by one of following methods: (1) modifying one or
both cognition, (2) changing the perceived importance of one cognition, (3) adding
cognitions (4) denying that the two cognitions are related to each other.

3) Self-Perception:-
In this self-perception theory, Dray Bem has proposed a different view of
attitudes determining behavior, in many cases determines attitudes. For example, if
someone asks you are hungry you probably think that you answer by checking your
internal physiological state. But you may often answer by checking external events rather
than your physiological state. You may look at your watch to see whether it is time to be
hungry. Or you eat two sandwiches rather than one and say “I guess I was hungrier than I
thought”. In these cases and many others, you determine your feeling, attitude or beliefs
by checking your behavior.
Today both theories (dissonance & self-perception) viewed as at least partly
correct, although applying to different situations. Some research indicates that people
may infer their own behavior much as they do for other people’s behavior, so there may
be little validity to beliefs about our own thought process.

4) The communicator, the Message and the Audience:-

Research on attitude change focuses on the communicator, message and the
audience. Many variables interact to determine whether or not audience will change its
mind. The effective communicator is credible, trusted, attractive and similar to audience.
Under some conditions, the use of fear and other emotional appeal might change

3
attitudes. Researches shows that two-sided arguments should be used when the audience
is unfavorable but single-sided arguments work best when the audience is favorable.

5) Compliance:-
Compliance is the type of social influence in which an individual changes his
or her behavior because of direct request from someone else. There are number of
techniques that can be used to obtain compliance, including multiple requests and low-
balling. Most of the techniques work much of the time with most people.

6) Obedience:-
In some cases, requests geared (made) towards producing obedience, a change
in behavior due to the commands of others. Although obedience is considerably less
common than conformity and compliance, it does occur in several specific kinds of
relationship, for example, we may show obedience to our boss, teacher, or parents merely
to reward or punish us.

7) Conformity:-
One major force on people to change their attitudes and behavior comes from
others’ tacit social pressure. Conformity refers to yielding to group pressure when there is
no direct request or order to do so. In this way conformity is change in behavior attitude
brought by a desire to fallow the beliefs of standards of other people.
We often conform for two basic reasons: to be liked by other and to show
appropriate behavior. Because we learn that it is rewarding to be accepted and punishing
to be rejected. If we deviate, we are subjected immediately to group pressure to conform.
Thus, we alter our behavior to meet social expectations.
The classic demonstration of pressure to conform comes from a series of
studies carried in 1950s by S. Asch. In the experiments the subjects had to decide which
of several comparison stimuli were same as a standard stimulus. As example of task
shown in above figure the subject saw three comparison lines and ha to say which was
there comparison and had to say which equal in length to the standard line. In an
experiment there were several people, one bonafide subject, the other confederate of
research. The entire group was shown the line and then answered one by one with the
subway speaking next to last.
Results of Asch’s experiment showed that bonafied subject yielded to group
pressure. He just conformed the groups.