Attitude, moral & political attitudes

Defining the construct

Attitude, in the UPSC GS-4 syllabus, is listed precisely as: content, structure, function; its influence and relation with thought and behaviour; moral and political attitudes; social influence and persuasion. Examiners expect you to deploy social-psychology vocabulary with precision, not folk definitions.

Gordon Allport (1935) gave the canonical definition: an attitude is a mental and neural state of readiness, organised through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individual's response to all objects and situations with which it is related. The operative idea is predisposition — a learned, evaluative readiness to respond favourably or unfavourably toward an attitude object (a person, group, policy, institution).

The tripartite (ABC) structure

The dominant model is the tripartite model of Rosenberg and Hovland (1960):

• Affective — feelings and emotions toward the object (e.g., disgust at corruption).
• Behavioural (conative) — the action tendency or intention (e.g., refusing a bribe).
• Cognitive — beliefs and thoughts (e.g., the conviction that bribery distorts justice).

Mnemonic: ABC. A strong, consistent attitude shows alignment across all three components; dissonance arises when they conflict.

Functions of attitude

Daniel Katz (1960) identified four functions, frequently asked as a direct PYQ:

1. Adjustment (utilitarian) — attitudes that maximise reward and minimise punishment.
2. Ego-defensive — protecting self-esteem from internal conflict or external threat (the root of prejudice and scapegoating).
3. Value-expressive — affirming one's central values and self-concept (a probity-minded officer publicly opposing graft).
4. Knowledge — providing a frame of reference to organise an ambiguous world.

Attitude and behaviour: the gap

The naïve assumption that attitudes predict behaviour was punctured by Richard LaPiere's 1934 study: travelling with a Chinese couple across the United States, he was refused service only once in 251 establishments, yet 90% of those same establishments later replied by post that they would not serve Chinese guests. Attitudes and conduct diverged sharply.

The gap was theorised by Icek Ajzen and Martin Fishbein in the Theory of Reasoned Action (1975) and the Theory of Planned Behaviour (1985): behaviour follows intention, which is shaped by attitude toward the behaviour, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control. For a civil servant this is operationally vital — changing public behaviour (open defecation, vaccine uptake, tax compliance) requires moving more than belief; it requires shifting norms and the felt capacity to act.

Formation

Attitudes are learned, not innate, principally through: classical conditioning (associating an object with affect), operant conditioning (reinforcement of expressed views), observational learning (Bandura's social learning, 1977), and socialisation agents — family, school, peer groups, religion, and media. This learnability is the foundation of administrative reform: attitudes formed by experience can be reformed by designed experience.

Moral attitudes

A moral attitude is an evaluative predisposition rooted in convictions about right and wrong rather than mere preference. Its distinguishing features, drawn from Linda Skitka's work on moral conviction, are universality (the belief that the judgment holds for everyone), objectivity (treated as fact, not taste), autonomy from authority and consensus (one does not need a rule or a majority to validate it), and strong emotional charge. Honesty, justice, compassion, non-discrimination, and respect for human dignity are moral attitudes a public servant must internalise; Article 51A of the Constitution codifies several as Fundamental Duties (1976, 42nd Amendment), and the Nolan Committee's Seven Principles of Public Life (1995) — selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, leadership — express moral attitudes in administrative form.

Moral attitudes are heavily shaped by Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development (1958, 1969) — the pre-conventional (reward/punishment), conventional (law and social approval), and post-conventional (universal ethical principles) levels. An officer operating at the post-conventional level resists an unlawful order even when sanctioned by superiors, echoing the Nuremberg principle (1946) that obedience to orders is no defence.

Political attitudes

A political attitude is an evaluative orientation toward the political system, ideologies, parties, policies, and authority. It is structured along axes such as left–right (economic), liberal–conservative (social), and authoritarian–libertarian. The seminal measure is the California F-scale of Theodor Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality (1950), which linked ego-defensive attitudes to prejudice and submission to authority — directly relevant to understanding administrative arbitrariness.

For the civil servant, the cardinal rule is political neutrality. Rule 5 of the All India Services (Conduct) Rules, 1968 bars connection with political parties or participation in political activity; the Second Administrative Reforms Commission's 10th Report, Refurbishing of Personnel Administration (2008), and its 4th Report Ethics in Governance (2007) insist on non-partisanship as a core value. A bureaucrat holds personal political attitudes but must subordinate them to constitutional morality — a phrase B.R. Ambedkar invoked in the Constituent Assembly on 4 November 1948 and that the Supreme Court revived in Government of NCT of Delhi v. Union of India (2018) and the Sabarimala judgment (2018).

Where the two intersect

Moral and political attitudes collide in real cases: a District Magistrate whose personal ideology favours a project must still uphold environmental clearance norms; an officer's moral revulsion at a discriminatory directive must translate, through proper channels, into lawful dissent rather than partisan defiance. The professional resolution is to anchor conduct in the Constitution, statute, and codified service values — never in personal political preference — while letting genuine moral conviction reinforce, not override, the rule of law.

Why this matters for the exam

Attitude is tested in GS Paper IV (Ethics, Integrity and Aptitude) in two distinct registers, and you must prepare for both.

Section A: theory and definitions

The syllabus explicitly names attitude: content, structure, function; its influence and relation with thought and behaviour; moral and political attitudes; social influence and persuasion. Direct conceptual questions recur:

• 2016: "What is meant by the term 'public servant'? Reflect on the expected role of a public servant." (probity via attitude).
• 2017: "How will you apply emotional intelligence in administrative practices?" — adjacent and frequently bundled with attitude.
• 2020: "What does each of the following quotations mean to you? ... an attitude"-framed quotation prompts.
• 2022: "What do you understand by 'moral integrity' and 'professional efficiency'?"

The high-yield retainable facts: Allport's 1935 definition, the ABC tripartite model (Rosenberg & Hovland 1960), Katz's four functions (1960), the LaPiere study (1934) for the attitude–behaviour gap, and the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen 1985). For political attitude, cite AIS (Conduct) Rules 1968 Rule 5, the 2nd ARC reports (2007–08), and constitutional morality (Ambedkar, 1948).

Section B: case studies

Half the 250-mark paper is case studies. Attitude theory is your diagnostic toolkit. When a case presents an officer pressured by a politician, you should label the dynamics: an ego-defensive attitude driving a corrupt colleague; a value-expressive stance grounding your own honesty; the adjustment function explaining why a junior conforms. Naming the persuasion mechanism (central vs peripheral route, below) signals analytical maturity and earns marks over vague moralising.

How to score

Examiners reward answers that (a) define with a named authority, (b) illustrate with a dated instance or administrative example, (c) connect theory to public-service conduct, and (d) in case studies, resolve the dilemma through the Constitution and codified values rather than personal opinion. A candidate who writes "the colleague's behaviour reflects an ego-defensive attitude (Katz, 1960), reinforced by the adjustment function, which I would counter through value-expressive leadership grounded in the Nolan principles" demonstrably outperforms one who writes "he was being selfish and I would be honest."

Practise compressing each theorist into one retrievable line, and keep a running list of administrative examples — Satyendra Dubey (2003), the RTI Act 2005, the Whistle Blowers Protection Act 2014 — to deploy on demand.