Experience, Intended Messages, Attitudes And Dispositions

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The Remedial Process Towards Unwinding The Strands Of Hate - Part I (Experiences, Intended messages, Attitudes and Dispositions are fundamental components of day to day Communication)

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What is hate? How is it cultivated? What are the effects of hate on health and wellbeing? Can you overcome hate, and if at all, how do you go about it?

The goal here is to present a series of posts on this subject that will answer the above questions from a psychosocial perspective as we arrive at an effective remedial process or approach to hate. So, with this first post, we are looking at hate as something that doesn’t happen in a vacuum but is manifested out of our daily experiences.

Experiences

Our whole life of existence is an incessant succession of events happening on various arenas from dusk to dawn and communication whether verbal or non-verbal, is a fundamental element of these events. Through events and on various arenas, we communicate within self, with others, our environment and even the unseen transcendental existence.

We are looking at hate as something that does not happen in a vacuum but is manifested out of our daily experiences.

The list is infinite but some examples of events and arenas of communication, as random as they could be, are watching your favourite TV show, reading the newsfeed on your social media, listening to your favourite podcast, having conversations on traditions and laws of your heritage with family, listening to speeches of political and spiritual leaders, doing some reps at the gym, and going through your normal day at work. What we encounter as our participation in these events through communication become our experiences. This means communication is ultimate and necessary in manifesting experiences in our daily life. Without communication, we can’t manifest experiences.

Let’s look at some random examples of daily experiences. First example, you’re on lunch break so you unleash your phone to hop on twitter, react to posts on Facebook, block some trolls on your YouTube channel and slide in some DMs on Instagram. Second example, you find yourself at the airport lounge waiting for your flight, so you decide to strike conversations with people to pass the time.

Third example, you wake up in the morning, sit on your bed for a moment to plan your day, get up, go through your hygiene routine, dress up and step out. What you encountered through your participation in all these events are your experiences. But most importantly, experiences mould our attitudes through the intended messages they communicate, and attitude is ultimate in the cultivation and expression of all our emotions, especially hate.

Intended Messages

Intended message is that particular information an experience is expected to communicate or transmit. Take your favourite News network for instance. It is founded on certain morals, tradition, culture or ideology. If they are conservative, their presentation will be tailored to impart conservatism, or if progressive, their presentation will be tailored as such. This influence, in this case the transmission of ideology, is what we refer to as intended message.

Say, you’re looking for dining chairs, so you go online to look for what you want, and this particular shop is offering free next day delivery and 20% discount if you buy four chairs. The intended message here is “good deal, a better deal than what others are offering”, which is the free next day delivery and 20% discount. Intended message can be presented in various forms. And referring to our examples above, the news network tailoring its presentation to portray its ideological position communicates intended messages of impartation, indoctrination or even manipulation.

But the case of buying chairs online portrays an intended message of transaction and to some extent, manipulation. Well, there are a plethora of forms of intended messages with examples being validation, instigation, violation, inspiration, recreation, reprehension, confrontation, disinformation, just to mention a few. However, when we receive intended messages, we process them to formulate and register our own impressions and attitudes.

Attitude

Attitude is your responsive evaluation of any entity including self, based on an encountered experience. This evaluation aligns towards either favour or disfavour but could also be uncertain or anywhere in between on that spectrum. Since the mind is the ultimate faculty in these exchanges, the affect, cognitive and conative components come into play. This means attitude has three components.

First, the affective component pertains to feelings or emotions we associate with the attitude object. Well by attitude object we are referring to the entity of our evaluation. For instance, your fear of cockroaches is the reason for your negative reaction (or disfavouring response) towards them. In other words, fear as your emotion, is what you associate with cockroaches, which is the attitude object in this case.

The next aspect is behaviour or the conative component which pertains to how attitude influences actions, functions, and activities we associate with the attitude object. Like the cockroach scenario, actions such as jumping, screaming or squishing the cockroach on sight is an example of the conative component of attitude. It is the attitude expressed through behaviour i.e., attitude expressed through our actions, how we function, our activities towards the attitude object, in this case the cockroaches.

The third component is cognitive. This is the belief or knowledge of attributes we associate with the attitude object. So still using the cockroach scenario. Say I chance on an article that says cockroaches are “unhygienic scavengers” that carry bacteria which causes infections. This knowledge registers a belief in me that cockroaches are dangerous to my health, so I must avoid them at all costs.

So, let’s have two illustrations. First, Okoloa is a student in college, gifted in playing multiple sports, so he has full scholarship and he’s making good grades. One day his uncle visits and being so proud of Okoloa’s achievements, he encourages him to stand tall and be confident of his family heritage. He tells him, “We are genetically special, and we are from a powerful tribe”. Whiles the message from the uncle is intended for inspiration and validation, Okoloa somehow registers the impression of being superior to students from other tribes, hence treating them as lower caste with prejudice and disdain, as he prances around in pride and full of entitlement.

In the second illustration, however, Okoloa after hearing those words from his uncle, registers an impression that he is just blessed with special abilities because of his inherited genes. He maintains that he is just as normal a human being as any random person on campus, hence respecting, appreciating, and treating all people equally.

You can see we are presented with two different attitudes but the same intended message for both scenarios. Well, the differences in disposition of the characters in both scenarios is the reason for that difference in attitude.

Disposition

Disposition is basically the conative, cognitive, and affective tendencies that distinguishes a person from another. Our thoughts, opinions, ideologies, knowledge, and understanding are contained in the cognitive component, and the conative or behavioural component transmit these elements in the cognitive component into actions, functions and activities as our response to our environment.

These responses whether in function, action or activity, express feelings and emotions, and that’s contained in the affective component. Disposition is also very vital in the cultivation of tendencies such as emotional intelligence, social conscience, intellect, empathy, and rectitude.

So, in recap, we have established that our daily life is a succession of events we encounter as our experiences, and these experiences transmit messages which are processed through a person’s disposition to formulate attitude.

In our next post, we will tackle the question, “what is hate” so until then, let’s keep our hearts Locked in Over and over Vigorously bonding until Eternity.