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Attitude Of Mother-in-law Towards Daughter-in-law As A Determinant Factor In Marital Stability In Some Selected Families
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Attitudes
come from judgements. Attitudes develop on the ABC model (affect,
behavioural change and cognition). The affective response is a
physiological response that expresses an individual’s preference for an
entity. The behavioural intention is a verbal indication of the
intention of an individual. The cognitive response is a cognitive
evaluation of the entity to form an attitude. Most attitudes in
individuals are a result of observational learning from their
environment. The link between attitude and behaviour exists but depends
on human behaviour, some of which is irrational. For example, a person
who is in favour of blood transfusion may not donate blood. This makes
sense if the person does not like the sight of blood, which explains
this irrationality.
Unlike personality, attitudes are expected to
change as a function of experience. Tesser (1993) has argued that
hereditary variables may affect attitudes-but believes that they may do
so indirectly. For example, if one inherits the disposition to become an
extrovert, this may affect one’s attitude to certain styles of music.
There are numerous theories of attitude formation and attitude change.
Consistency
theory implies that we must be consistent in our beliefs and values.
People expect consistency; we have a strong preference for consistency
in our lives. We want things to work the same way every time they
happen. Thus, we have ‘mental worlds’ of our expectancies about the
world, the people in them, and our relationships with the world and
other people. The glue that holds all these mental relationships
together is consistency. Consistency becomes like a form of human
gravity. It helps us to understand the world and our place in it.
The
most famous example of Consistency Theory is Dissonance Theory
associated with Leon Festinger. Dissonance is as a result of
inconsistencies. According to Festinger (1957), as much as we need
consistency, there are many occasions where things occur in surprising
and unexpected ways. There is an inconsistency between what we expected
and what we got. Dissonance is simply a technical term for the
cognitive, emotional, physiological and behavioural state that arises
when things do not go the way we expected them to.
Dissonance is an
unpleasant experience which we want to get rid of when we have it. We
want to get back to the state of consistency, back to where things make
sense.
We can get rid or reduce dissonance by denying it and
pretending like it didn’t happen and swamping the dissonance and
acknowledging that things didn’t work out like we expected at this time,
but remembering all those other times when it did. The goal here is to
overload all that bad dissonance with lots of good memories and
thoughts. Also we can change our expectancy and here we try to alter in
some real way something that really did happen and lastly we can change
our evaluation of the event. Instead of responding with dissonant
thoughts, we actually change our evaluation and find the best possible
outcome.
Dissonance theory is applicable to mother-in-law and
daughter-in-law relationship. There are certain expectations of the wife
by the mother-in-law. Such attitude as submissiveness, respect,
obedience and dedication especially when she is on a visit to the
family. The daughter-in-law also has a certain expectations of the
mother-in-law. Some of these are being a role model to her, a support
within the husband’s family, being there for the grandchildren etc. When
these expectations are not being fulfilled by both women, there is a
state of dissonance. They would have to deal with these situations by
denying that anything is amiss, swamping the dissonance with good
memories and thoughts of their mother and daughter, changing their
expectancy and sometimes changing the evaluation of events between them
to see a brighter side of it.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]This study investigated the influence of communication on attitude towards mother-in-law among female married adults in Lagos Metropolis.In carrying out the study, four null hypotheses were postulated to provide direction. The study consisted of one hundred randomly selected samples. The instrument used for data collection was a self-designed questionnaire by the researcher of a 4 point Likert format. Both one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Independent t-test Statistical Techniques were us ... Continue reading---
