Role and Limits of the ‘Functional Approach’ in Formulation of Theories of Attitudes

Abstract

In his survey of various theories of attitudes, Daniel Katz¹ classified the theories into two groups. One group comprises those assuming that man is a rational being who thinks and considers thoughtfully what is around him so as to behave accordingly. The others do not assume rationality as the basic machanism of attitude formation, but rather tend to account for the shaping of attitudes in terms of such mechanisms as conditioning, or strivings towards homeostasis, or cognitive consonance, etc. Katz remarks pointedly:

The major difficulty with these conflicting approaches is their lack of specification of condition under which men do act as theory would predict. For the facts are that people do act at times as if they had been decorticated and at times with intelligence and comprehension. And people themselves do recognize they have behaved blindly, impulsively and thoughtlessly.²

Based on a paper presented at the Conference on the Theory of Attitudes at the Institute of Sociology of Warsaw University. The original paper titled ‘Pojçcie postawy w teoriach i stosowanych badaniach spolecznych’ (The Concept of Attitude in Theories and in Applied Social Research) was published, with other papers presented at this conference, in S. Nowak (ed.), Teorie Postaw (Theories of Attitudes), Warsaw, 1973.