by Kristen Bevilacqua

Created on: August 21, 2009   Last Updated: August 24, 2009

How are attitudes developed? Are we born with a natural disposition or do we learn how to act? While it's true humans are born with certain tendencies or orientations, much of our personalities and attitudes are developed through our relationships and experiences.

Development Begins at Home

There is truth in the saying "parents are our first teachers." In addition to being our first teachers regarding literacy and quantitative skills, parents are also our first role models. We learn how to interact with people by first interacting with our parents and watching them connect and relate to others. Our parents' reaction to a positive or negative situation is our first exposure to attitudes and how they affect behavior and feelings. Children often imitate their parents and learn from copying the way they speak or interact with other people.

Learning from Peers

As we get older and have more opportunity to interact with people other than our parents and siblings, our attitudes may change with those new relationships. Parents usually notice that their child's attitude changes when they begin school and form new friendships. For most children the first year of school is the first time they are regularly interacting with people other than their parents and in turn will be exposed to other attitudes and personalities.

With new friendships comes the desire of children to belong or "fit in" with their new peers. As they watch how their friends act towards people and respond in certain situations, children will often alter their own attitudes to be more like their friends. It is natural that a child's attitude will change as a result of new relationships with their peers.

Evaluating Experiences

Positive and negative attitudes evolve from evaluating our personal experiences. The more successes and failures we experience, the more situations we have to evaluate against each other. We may learn that outcomes are directly related to reactions and attitudes by looking at different situations.

We also witness other people's attitudes and make choices to imitate or avoid their examples. A child may discover that her teacher has a different attitude toward books than her parents and may decide to favor that attitude. A co-worker may observe a colleague's interaction with their boss and decide not to imitate his since his manner attitude led to a negative outcome.

Our attitudes begin to develop in childhood before we are aware of opinions and choices. They are constantly evolving and changing. With each new event in life, we internally evaluate, and potentially alter, our own attitude in relation to those new relationships and experiences.

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