Beliefs and Attitudes

Culture is stored in individual human beings, in the form of their beliefs, attitudes, and values. There are strong similarities in the belief systems among the members of a given culture.

Beliefs are an individual's representations of the outside world. Some beliefs are seen as very likely to be true, such as "2 + 2 = 4". Others are seen as less probable, such as "All old people sit at home in rocking chairs." Beliefs serve as the storage system for the content of our past experiences, including thoughts, memories, and interpretations of events. Beliefs are shaped by the individual's culture.

Attitudes, like beliefs, are internal events and not directly observable by other people. Attitudes are emotional responses to objects, ideas, and people. Attitudes store these emotional responses in the same way that beliefs store the content of past events. People express opinions, outwardly observable verbal behavior, and engage in other behaviors, partially on the basis of their attitudes and beliefs. Attitudes and beliefs form a storage system for culture within the individual. Attitudes and beliefs are internal and are not publicly observable. I cannot know your attitudes or your beliefs directly, but I can observe what you say (your expressed opinions) and what you do (your behav­ior) and infer your attitudes and beliefs from these overt expressions.

Attitudes and beliefs indicate behavioral intentions, tendencies for a person to respond to events, ideas, and people in particular ways. When a belief is held by most members of a culture we call it a cultural belief. Culture influences the perceptions and behaviors of the individuals sharing the culture through beliefs, values, and norms. They are important building blocks of culture.

A cultural belief may rest on a common history that a people share. For example, the Navajo believe that U.S. government programs cannot be trusted. This belief stems, in part, from the Long Walk in which the U.S. Army forced 6,000 Navajo men, women, and children in 1868 to march 300 miles from their homes in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico to internment at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. More than 4,000 Navajos died. Later, in the 1930s, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs forcibly reduced the Navajo sheep pop­ulation by 20 percent in order to prevent overgrazing. This policy was bitterly opposed by the Navajo. If you were a Navajo today, would you believe that the federal government could be trusted to help you and your family?

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11