Revision summary
Attitudes are stable evaluations formed mainly by direct, observed, and conditioned experience. Family, peers, caste, media, and unique events are the main factors. The statement is true as a first law and incomplete because power rations experience and propaganda fakes it. Temperament biases what sticks; it does not write the whole attitude. Public ethics can redesign experience at school and counter; “my past” is not a licence to disobey the Constitution.
Model answer
Introduction
An attitude is a relatively stable evaluation — like, dislike, approach, avoid — toward a person, group, or policy. The statement is largely true: we do not download attitudes at birth as finished software. Experience writes them. Evaluation must add that experience is not only a private diary. Family, caste, media, and the State script what we are allowed to live through.
Body
The statement explained
- Direct experience: a rude clerk produces a hostile attitude to “sarkar”; a fair teacher produces trust in school.
- Classical conditioning: a communal slogan paired with fear; a national anthem paired with pride.
- Instrumental learning: a bribe that “worked” teaches that the counter is a shop; a complaint that was punished teaches silence.
- Observational learning (Bandura): a child who watches a parent insult a sanitation worker inherits the attitude without a lecture.
- So the statement correctly dethrones a purely innate story of prejudice or patriotism.
Factors of attitude formation
- Family and early socialisation: the first “we” and “they”; food rules; who may enter the kitchen.
- Peers and school: hostel mixing can soften caste; a segregated classroom can harden it.
- Caste, religion, class, and region: structured experiences, not accidental ones; a lifetime of humiliation or privilege.
- Culture and language: proverbs, festivals, and honour codes as ready-made evaluations.
- Mass media and now platforms: repeated frames of a community as threat or as victim.
- Personal unique events: a riot survived, a scholarship won, a hospital that refused a bed.
- Cognition: beliefs and information — sometimes thin — on which the affective limb sits (ABC model: affect, behaviour, cognition).
- Genetics and temperament: a modest prior for anxiety or openness; they bias which experiences stick, they do not write the full attitude.
- Role and institution: a uniform can form a new professional attitude; so can a party think tank.
Evaluation of the statement
- Strong: without experience, slogans remain words; contact hypothesis shows mixed, equal-status contact can rewrite a hostile attitude.
- Incomplete: not all experiences are equally available. A Dalit child and a landlord’s child do not “have experiences” in a vacuum; power rations experience.
- Incomplete: persuasion and propaganda manufacture vicarious experience — a clip can create an attitude toward a people one has never met.
- Incomplete: values and reason can revise experience (an officer unlearns a childhood communal frame after the oath).
- Risk of fatalism: “my experience made me prejudiced” can become an excuse; responsibility remains to seek disconfirming experience and to obey the Constitution anyway.
- LaPiere and dual attitudes: stated attitude from one set of experiences may not match behaviour in a new scene.
Implications for public ethics
- Administration can design experiences: mixed schools, fair counters, transparent relief — the cheapest attitude policy.
- Hate speech is the industrial production of poisonous vicarious experience; law plus counter-persuasion are both needed.
- Training of civil servants is planned re-experience: attachments, night in a disaster camp, listening to a complainant.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD X[Lived and vicarious experience] --> A[Attitude ABC] F[Family caste media State] --> X R[Reason role new contact] --> A2[Revised attitude]
Conclusion
Attitudes are largely sediments of experience, so the statement is a good first law. The fair evaluation is that experience is social and unequal, that media can simulate it, and that reason and role can rewrite it. A republic that wants better attitudes must offer better shared experiences at the school and the counter, not only better sermons.
Quick related
Students also ask
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A Public Information Officer has received an application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. After gathering the required information, he finds that the information pertains to some of the decisions taken by him, which were not totally correct. Some other employees were also a party to these decisions. Disclosure of the information may lead towards disciplinary action against him and his other colleagues including probable punishment. Non-disclosure of information or partial disclosure of information may result in less or no punishment. The Public Information Officer is an honest and conscientious person but the particular decision regarding which an application under the RTI Act was lodged was a wrong decision. The officer comes to you for your advice. Under the above conditions what will be your advice to the officer? Explain logically.
Next question in the 2018 paper (Q20). View answer →
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Are some prejudices inborn?
Infants show some in-group looking, but adult communal and caste attitudes are overwhelmingly learned. The statement is right enough for public policy.
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If experience formed a bad attitude, can training fix it?
Often partly, if new experience is repeated, equal-status, and backed by rules. A weekend workshop without a changed counter will not.
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