0.1 What is subtle about social interaction?  (Page 26/26)

Attitudes, communication and personality

• A persons attitude changes can be attributed to their unique personality and their personality type
• There can be multiple attitude changes in a short period of time during an interaction
• Attitude can change from various causes, such as the content of an interaction which might include a conversation, or other interpersonal behaviors (your attitude can change when you're not interacting with a person as well though, obviously)
• Attitudes can vary in strength and duration - also how noticeable the attitude is to the people in the interaction
• Attitudes are considerably more complicated than simple affect orientations such as being nice or mean, there is a whole host of psychological factors that contribute to a certain attitude (though on the surface it seems as if attitudes are simple - when you look at someone they are easy to read on one hand, but mysterious and complicated on the other)

What makes an attitude? why are attitudes important?

• Attitudes can show a certain level of affect
• Attitudes are influenced by person perception
• Attitudes can be influenced by the emotions someone is feeling during an interaction, if you are feeling a certain way that is going to affect your attitude
• Attitudes are therefore related to feeling, what you are feeling helps contribute to your attitude - if you are feeling sad you might have a depressed looking attitude, for instance
• What the person is focusing on in an interaction is going to contribute to his or her attitude, if you are focusing on being mean then you are going to have a mean attitude, for instance. This means if you are not focusing you might not have an attitude at all.
• Attitudes have various levels of goodness and badness, directed towards various objects in a social encounter such as the other person, something they said, something they are being shown
• Attitudes therefore contain information, if you have a bad attitude, that shows your feelings towards the object that is the cause of your bad attitude. Also, simply displaying more affect is more communicative as well because you are being more intense.
• There are as many attitudes as there are emotions and feelings, if you are feeling one thing then you could say that that is your attitude. Feelings are very complicated, and therefore attitudes are equally as complicated.
• Sometimes an attitude can be very noticeable, obvious, annoying or not so.
• Interactions are basically people displaying some sort of affect or attitude continuously, but the affect/attitude is not constant and singular, it is complicated and multidimensional - it changes constantly and is on one hand very simple to understand, and on the other very complex.
• If you think about it, the entire interaction is displayed in someones attitude, what they feel and what they think about what is going on is displayed in their attitude, an attitude is therefore just a reflection of what that person is thinking, it is the personality they are presenting to the world.
• People are basically just deliverers of attitude, they think and feel, but those are expressed through their attitude and affect, which are very similar, the emotions you display (your affect) and your attitude are basically the same thing. This is so because your attitude is what you are feeling directed at the world, and your feelings are all directed at the world (to various degrees).
• Your feelings are directed at the world because other people can read your feelings to a certain extent. You could say that your attempt to communicate your feelings to someone else is your attempt to have an attitude.
• Attitudes and the feelings that make them up are therefore communicative, attitudes communicate what you feel - and sometimes you do this deliberately or you may have an attitude you are completely unaware of.
• In fact, feelings are present all the time in people, so therefore they are communicating their feelings all the time in complex ways, showing a complex, changing attitude all of the time.
• Whatever you are feeling at any time could influence your attitude at that time - your attitude is just the feelings you have that you are presenting or trying to communicate to someone (or some number of people) - or you could be putting on a fake attitude and not really be feeling those things, but I would say in such cases your "putting on" the attitude would generate feelings that come from that attitude even if you are making the attitude up.
• So attitudes come from your feelings and thoughts, they are composed of certain ideas or feelings that you wish to display in an emotional way. For instance, if you are feeling sad you may show an attitude of lack of interest. Feelings are thus related to attitudes, you choose to display an attitude that shows what you want to communicate - you want to communicate a lack of interest so you act like you are bored, that is an attitude, however, since this attitude comes from you being sad part of your "bored" looking attitude is going to have elements of sadness, you might also be feeling bored to some degree. So what you are feeling caused you to generate an attitude that reflected those feelings and what you wanted to communicate because you were feeling those things. Your attitude may be made up, you may not feel that way, or maybe you just wish to communicate something with an attitude and you don't feel anything about it - it is a non-emotional attitude, and maybe you aren't even emotional or have feelings for the cause of you deciding to generate this non-emotional attitude.
• Attitudes are something that you are communicating to another person or other people that have associated and related feelings. If you want to be rude to someone you could have a "bad" attitude, you are communicating that you want to be rude and mean to them. There are also going to be certain feelings you have that are related to that attitude, you might feel like you really dislike the person, or that they are a loser - or maybe you don't feel anything at all about the person or people and just wish to show a negative attitude.

Perception of social situations

Conclusion