Revision summary
Attitude is belief plus feeling plus readiness to act toward a social problem. It is learned from family, caste, class interest, peers, media, religion, and State example. Dissonance and authoritarianism harden blame of the weak. Equal-status contact and lived postings can soften a stereotype; master–servant contact may worsen it. Swachh Bharat and a PHC posting show that toilets, law, and experience move attitudes more than a lone sermon.
Model answer
Introduction
An attitude toward a social problem is a lasting mix of belief, feeling, and action-readiness — for example, toward beggary, caste violence, or open defecation. It is formed, not downloaded at birth. Family, peers, media, class interest, and contact with the sufferer all write on that slate.
Body
Psychological building blocks
- Affect, cognition, and behaviour (ABC): fear of “the other,” a story that they are lazy, and a vote or a donation that follows.
- Learning: classical pairing (a riot image with a community), operant reward (praise for a “tough” post on crime), and modelling of parents who sneer at a domestic worker.
- Cognitive dissonance: a person who exploits a farm labourer may harden the attitude that labourers “drink their wage,” to protect the self.
- Personality and moral development: authoritarian submission (Adorno) and Kohlberg’s stages shape whether a problem is seen as order, loyalty, or rights.
Social and structural factors
- Family and caste socialisation: a child taught that a Dalit well is impure forms an attitude to untouchability before any textbook.
- Class and material interest: a landlord’s attitude to land reform, or a contractor’s to labour inspection, tracks the purse as much as the heart.
- Education and curriculum: a civics class on Article 17 can shift cognition; a coaching culture that only ranks can dull empathy for the failed peer.
- Peers and workplace: a police lock-up culture can normalise custodial cruelty as “attitude toward crime.”
- Media and social media: repeated frames of the poor as cheats, or of women as responsible for assault, cultivate availability bias.
- Religion and reform traditions: a satsang that blesses charity, or a movement like the Self-Respect movement, can recode a problem as injustice not fate.
- Law and State example: SC/ST Act enforcement, or a Chief Minister who mocks a community, teaches what is permitted feeling.
Contact and experience
- Allport’s contact hypothesis: equal-status work in a disaster camp can soften a communal attitude; unequal contact (master–servant) can worsen it.
- Personal victimhood: a riot survivor’s attitude to “the other” may freeze unless justice and counselling intervene.
- Example: Swachh Bharat shifted many urban attitudes to open defecation from “private habit” to public shame — media plus toilets plus leadership, not one lecture.
- Example: a medical student’s week in a PHC can turn “malnutrition is ignorance” into “malnutrition is wages and water.”
Why attitudes stick and how they change
- They serve functions: knowledge, ego-defence, value-expression, and social adjustment (Katz).
- Change needs a new incentive, a trusted messenger, and a chance to act (a shramdaan, a FIR, a vote), not only a slogan.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD F[Family class media] --> A[Attitude ABC] C[Contact law education] --> A A --> B[Vote donation cruelty or help]
Conclusion
Attitudes to social problems grow from learning, family, class interest, media, law, and contact. Examples from caste, sanitation, and the PHC show that the State can recode feeling only if experience and interest also move.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Meenu keeps telling her friends that she is fond of social service, yet she never participates in any social-welfare activities. One of her friend’s father is associated with an NGO that frequently organises welfare programmes such as free distribution of clothes and medicines to the poor. Although Meenu was asked many times to devote some time to that NGO, she showed no interest. What probable explanations can be given for Meenu’s conduct? Justify psychologically.
Next question in the 2019 paper (Q20). View answer →
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Can one viral video form an attitude?
It can prime affect. A stable attitude usually needs repetition, peer talk, and a fit with interest or identity.
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Does education always liberalise attitudes to caste?
Not always. Elite education can coexist with endogamy. Curriculum plus mixed hostels plus law works better than a degree alone.
Same topic · past papers
UPPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2021 · Q18 · UPGS4 · 12 marks
Discuss the factors which influence the formation of an individual’s attitude towards social problems with the help of suitable examples. -
2024 · Q19 · UPGS4 · 12 marks
"A person's real behaviour may be contrary to the person's attitude towards a specific subject." Do you agree with this statement? Answer with suitable arguments. -
2021 · Q20 · UPGS4 · 12 marks
Rajeev was a migrant labourer. One day, while going on the road on his bicycle, a car pushed his bicycle. Rajeev dragged the driver out of the car and began abusing him. The driver took out a knife and, after stabbing him three or four times, fled. Onlookers delayed taking Rajeev to hospital and, due to excessive bleeding, he died. If you were in place of Rajeev, what would you have done about the driver’s irresponsible driving? People often show indifferent or passive attitude towards such road accidents and accident victims. Discuss its causes and suggest remedies.
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