Each person perceives and experiences both external and internal processes in his own way, individually. Different people have different needs. Therefore, their installations also differ. Therefore, the same stimulus or situation affects different people differently. This is most clearly seen in the example of commercial advertising. According to experts in the field of mass communications, its effectiveness is considered high and even very high if it reaches from 1 to 10% of the target audience (Harris R., 2001). All this means that information that affects some people does not affect others at all. In other words, people have attitudes that express their needs and contribute to meeting those needs. New needs lead to the formation of new attitudes, a change in needs leads to a change in attitudes. All installation functions can be grouped by types or blocks. For the first time, such a classification was carried out by D. Katz (1967), identifying five main functions of installations:

1. The self protection function.
2. Value-expressive function (self-representation).
3. Socio-regulatory function.
4. An instrumental (utilitarian) function.
5. Cognitive function.

For the first time in the history of psychology, the theory of psychoanalysis began to talk about the mechanisms of Ego protection. Sigmund Freud himself, and especially his daughter Anna Freud, identified and described quite a lot of types of psychological defenses (A. Freud, 1999). Among them are the following: neurosis, rationalization, projection, denial, formation of an opposite reaction, etc. The most typical example of a self-defense mechanism is rationalization: a person, motivated by some irrational, unconscious impulse, commits an act, but finds a completely rational explanation for it. As a rule, the irrational impulse that motivates a person to commit certain actions comes from negative drives and feelings of a person — envy, anger, hatred, feelings of inferiority, worthlessness, etc. But in the self—attribution of an individual, the motivation for his actions acquires a noble, even more – sublime meaning. The person himself explains his actions solely with good intentions: he did so in the name of goodness, justice, and the best considerations. In those cases, when a person’s self-awareness is developed to a certain extent and is periodically activated, he constantly resorts to Ego-protection mechanisms to regulate self-esteem. At the same time, people follow the path of finding the simplest ways to solve their problems. The easiest way to raise self—esteem is by humiliating and belittling other people – individuals or even entire social groups. The need to increase self—esteem, thus, leads to the formation of appropriate attitudes – xenophobia, racism, sexism, nationalism, class hatred, etc. Fear, envy, a sense of insignificance bring to life the attitude of striving for power, wealth, give rise to arrogance, neglect, arrogance (for example, bossy, national, social, etc.) As a rule, people use not one, but many Ego defense mechanisms at once. Rationalization goes side by side with projection (it’s not me, it’s him, the first one). Projection is accompanied by negation. Thus, some people may constantly feel the need to protect themselves and have appropriate attitudes, while for others, a state of increased anxiety and low self-esteem may be temporary. Still others may only occasionally feel the need to protect the Ego. and then their attitudes that contribute to her satisfaction may also be short-lived.

Attitudes that express a person’s values usually satisfy their need for self-representation. Simply put, through these attitudes, a person declares himself to his social environment. It is clear that you can only express what you have, what you are. Therefore, both the type and the level of a person’s values are determined by the level of his personal development, the complexity of his Self-concept. The way of life and lifestyle, the way of dressing, the type of hairstyle, the possession of certain things, the opinions expressed, views, judgments, behavior — all this expresses a person’s Self. So, for example, creating an image of a rich, successful person may be associated with an attitude towards enrichment and, accordingly, express the basic value of an individual. In another case, it may be the creation of a sexually attractive image, which may also be a reflection of attitudes and values. But, of course, an individual can represent himself in other ways. For example, he may actively express his public position, participate in some civil movements, or support certain political parties. From the perspective of a functional approach, we can say that as many people as there are needs.

When interacting with other people, we voluntarily or involuntarily form our own image of them, in other words, we form attitudes towards them. Some people we like, others we don’t. It is important to note how our attitudes towards others help or hinder our social relationships. It is clear that if a person has a general negative attitude towards people, then his interactions with others will be minimized. And even those will differ in intensity. But the fact of the matter is that people do not always declare their real attitudes towards their friends, relatives, neighbors, colleagues, etc. Much more often in their relationships with their immediate environment, people use politeness, good manners, flattery, that is, they demonstrate some generally accepted patterns of behavior. But in almost any case (with rare exceptions), if a person wants to gain favor, sympathy, and affection from others, he demonstrates his agreement with them, common views, opinions, and so on. In most cases, the similarity factor enhances social attractiveness. Of course, the similarity of people’s views and attitudes can be real, and not just manifest. Therefore, in order to establish social relations, we are looking for like—minded people, people similar to us – in age, gender, and social group, based on the fact that they have the same attitudes as us.

The very name of the function indicates the aspect of behavior that learning theories consider, specifically the principle of instrumental learning. In the broadest sense, its essence boils down to the fact that a person learns to achieve desirable results (rewards) and avoid undesirable ones (punishments). Accordingly, people develop positive attitudes towards those objects that can contribute to satisfying their needs, desires, and drives, and negative attitudes towards objects that prevent them from achieving what they want, causing frustration, and other undesirable consequences. In this regard, the instrumental function is able to overlap or absorb all other functions: Ego-protective, value-expressive, regulatory and cognitive functions. A person can win sympathy, admiration, friendship, and goodwill simply by expressing their views, opinions, and value priorities, in a word, by expressing their Self. In the same way, he can avoid showing anger, aggression, and other negative feelings towards himself by using Ego-protection mechanisms, such as repression, suppression, and so on.

Among other essential functions, installations play an extremely important role in people’s lives in structuring and organizing knowledge about the world around them and about themselves. With their help, we categorize and build our knowledge into a more or less coherent, logically coherent system. This does not mean that the world around us and ourselves are exactly as they are represented in our installations. The role of attitudes is not to find the truth, but to organize the picture of the world in our minds. Without ready-made cognitive schemas, including attitudes, we would hardly be able to live at all, since everything that happens would seem like a complete chaos to us. Attitudes, therefore, help us to organize the world using the principle of saving thinking and avoiding the dangers of information overload. Borrowing other people’s experiences, opinions, views, and attitudes creates big social problems, but trying to avoid borrowing in order to create your own and only your own position is unrealistic. The unifying foundation of all the attitudes of any particular individual is the basic values that he professes or adheres to. To explain the reason for the emergence of pluralism and conflict of values in the attitude of individuals, Anthony Pratkanis and Anthony Greenwald (1989) introduce the concepts of monopolar and bipolar attitudes. They believe that the ambiguity of an attitude towards a problem is explained by the fact that a person can consciously avoid one-sided information about it, trying to get acquainted with different and even contradictory information. Monopolar installations are formed under the influence of information that unambiguously evaluates the installation object. If, say, your knowledge of a person is limited to the fact that he is smiling and polite, then, of course, you will insist that he is very sincere and nice. The vast majority of people’s attitudes are nevertheless monopolistic. Having already established an attitude towards a certain object, people most often interpret new information about it in such a way that it is consistent with their existing ideas. Not to mention the fact that they may not notice, perceive, or hear information that contradicts their views at all. People are not only more willing, but also better able to remember information that confirms their views. D. Roberts and Nathan Mccoby (1985), who established this fact, believe that a person feels pleasure when receiving confirmation of the correctness of their attitudes. After all, it increases his self-esteem. Therefore, we make friends with those who like us, as we like ourselves, listen to the radio and watch TV shows that confirm our attitudes, read books, newspapers and magazines that are consistent with our views on reality. All this can be briefly defined as selectivity in the approach to information. Paul Sweeney and Katie Gruber demonstrated this bias in the Watergate scandal of 1972. It arose due to the fact that the election team of Richard Nixon, who won the election and became president of the United States, resorted to technical eavesdropping at the headquarters of Nixon’s rival McGovern during the election campaign. So, supporters of the victorious Nixon and McGovern, who lost the election, as it turned out, were not equally interested in the scandal that broke out: Senate hearings, media reports, etc. If McGovern’s supporters were interested in any information related to Watergate, then Nixon’s supporters showed a clear lack of interest in this case (F. Zimbardo, Leippe M., 2000). Attitudes largely determine not only our vision of the world, but also our mood, vitality, and general psychological state. If the world seems dangerous and threatening to a person, then, of course, he will experience a constant feeling of anxiety and insecurity. And vice versa: a radiant worldview will set a person up for lightness and carelessness. The best option, as always, is between these two extremes. *** As we can see, certain functions of installations are determined by the personal characteristics of people. Therefore, before trying to change an individual’s attitude, it is necessary to know and consider what characterizes it: is it determined by a person’s personal characteristics or by the subject and content itself? Any attempt to change the mindset in large audiences, whether it’s advertising or political campaigning, will be successful only in relation to a certain part of the people, but not the entire audience. Moreover, it is equally important to take into account and calculate the time of exposure, since most of people’s needs are temporary and you can find yourself in the ridiculous position of trying to change those attitudes that no longer exist. Functional theories thus explain the essence of two simultaneous processes — the formation and change of attitudes. Along with other theories, they give an idea of the role that attitudes play in people’s mental lives, and the impact they have on behavior. Author: Nikolay Ivanovich Semechkin, PhD, Head of the Department of Psychology at the Far Eastern State University. Photo: yandex.ru