attitude

Attitude

Contents

Meaning

Definition

Components of Attitude

Characteristics

Types of attitude in relation of OB

Functions

Theories of attitude formation

Meaning

A state of mind or feeling with regard to some matter; a disposition. In other words, an attitude is our tendency to evaluate some symbol, object, or aspect of our world in a favorable or unfavorable manner. It also can be defined as a state of mind or feeling with regard to some matter. The word “attitude” is use rather loosely as a catchall term for the whole collection of one’s opinions, prejudices, and sentiments, even though the basic meanings of these terms are different.

Redefined, it means that attitudes are something we learn. This learning usually occurs gradually through many different kinds of experience or as the result of a particularly powerful emotional experience. Most attitudes are learned from those experiences can be favorable or unfavorable, pleasant or unpleasant, and the resulting attitude ends up as negative or positive. Social environment plays an important part in shaping attitudes. We may reflect attitudes from others such as; parents, friends, leaders or persons of prestige. We may acquire them from the cultural influence of a certain geographical area such as; a farm, small town or slum. Also, attitudes may be affected by age, position and education.

In the early stages of development, attitudes can be changed by new experiences. In later stages of development however, attitudes have a tendency to be fixed and difficult to change. A favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction toward something or someone that is exhibited by beliefs, feelings, and intended behavior.

Prepared By Mrs. Neha Rathi Faculty of KKPIMS

Definitions

KATZ AND SCOTLAND

ATTITUDE IS A TENDENCY OR A PREDISPOSITION TO EVALUATE AN OBJECT OR SYMBOL OF THAT OBJECT IN A CERTAIN WAY.

G.W.ALLPORT

ATTITUDE IS A MENTAL OR NEUTRAL STATE OF READINESS ,ORGANISED THROUGH EXPERIENCE, EXERTING A DIRECTIVE OR DYNAMIC UPON THE INDIVIDUAL’S RESPONSE.

Hogg & Vaughan

“a relatively enduring organisation of beliefs, feelings, and behavioural tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events or symbols”.

Eagly & Chaiken

“..a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour”.

According to Baron

Attitude is defined as, lasting evaluations of people, groups, objects, or issues- in fact,

of virtually any aspect of the social or physical world.

Petty and Cacioppo state,

Attitudes are general evaluations people make about themselves, other persons,

objects, or issues.

Breckler and Wiggins state,

Attitudes are enduring mental representations of various features of the social or physical world. They are acquired through experience and exert a directive influence on subsequent behaviour.


Components of attitude

The most widely held view of the structure of attitude, is that it is made up of three closely interrelated components: cognitive, affective and behavioral. From this perspective, people with positive attitudes respond positively across the cognitive, affective, and behavioral components; and those with negative attitudes, respond negatively across these components. The following section discusses the three components of attitude in more detail.

1 Cognitive Component

The cognitive component of attitude consists of beliefs, which can be derived from many formal and informal sources of information. In addition, many consumers tend to get their information about products and services or the company itself, from formal sources, such as advertising or salespeople: and from informal sources such as friends, family and neighbors. Consumers also learn from personal experiences withthe object. Beliefs can be accurate or inaccurate; regardless, the conviction held by theconsumer, influences his or her attitude.

For instance, “My pay is law” or the sales manager may believe that his sales team

should be able to meet the monthly target of Rs. 4 lakhs worth of products, even though

in reality, with the combined efforts of all the members team may be able to meet a

target of Rs. 2.75 — Rs. 3 lakhs only. Thus it may be noted that the information which

the sales manager has about his teams, capability to perform, though not exact, is

indicative of his attitude towards achieving the target.

2 Affective Component

The affective component of attitude can be defined as feelings and emotions a person has towards the object, including liking and preference. The affective component represents the way cognitive beliefs are evaluated This component can be influenced by situation, personal motive, past experience, group leadership and environment Moreover, people often share the same evaluation of a belief, because they belong to the same culture. They develop both beliefs and evaluations through growth and development within the culture.

The emotional component is given a lot of emphasis in Organisational Behaviour

especially in relation to job satisfaction. When we talk of work related behaviour, the

emotions expressed by employees can be:


• Positive when the production manager completes manufacturing of the desired

number of units in time.

• Negative in case of a police constable.

• Neutral in case of a bureaucrat working in the secretariat

.3 Behavioural Component

The behavioural component of attitude can be defined as the individual's tendency to act towards an object and such examples include intention, trial purchase and recommendation of the product to others. Marketers often focus on the second, affective component, assessing the degree of positive or negative feeling for an object. They argue that this overall liking is based on the cognitive component (beliefs and knowledge about the brand) and that influence leads to behaviour, such as trial and purchase.

Of the three components of attitudes, we are only able to observe and see the

behavioural component of an individual. One cannot see other people's feelings (or

emotions) nor the informational component. These two components can only be derived

at. Let us refer to the above example once again. We have presumed that the sales

manager pressurizes his team to meet the target of Rs. 4 lakhs (per month), then two

conclusions can be drawn—

• Firstly, the sales manager feels very strongly about his team achieving the monthly

target.

• Secondly, the sales manager believes that achieving the sales target of Rs.4 lakhs is

necessary.

Thus taking a view of attitudes as comprising of the above three components will be

helpful in gaining an understanding of their complexity and the potential relationship

between attitudes and the individual's behaviour.


Characteristics

REFERS TO FEELINGS OR BELIEFS OF AN INDIVIDUAL.

TEND TO RESULT IN BEHAVIOR.

ATTITUDE CAN FALL ANYWHERE ALONG A CONTINUUM FROM VERY

FAVOURABLE TO VERY UNFAVORABLE.

ARE GRADUALLY ACQUIRED OVER A PERIOD OF TIME.

Usually are not easily changed

CONSTITUTE A PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA WHICH CANNOT BE

DIRECTLY OBSERVED

Positive or negative implicationsFormed largely from the continuous process of socialization

Difficult to measure- Difficult to measure and are often only indicated by behavior as reactions to stimuli from individual situations, social values, etc.

May create inflexibility and stereotypes- May create inflexibility and stereotypes if the attitude is based on inconsistencies, incorrect assumptions or other false data.

Often indicated by behavior- Attitudes are often demonstrated through the behavior of the individual.

Types of attitude in relation of OB

A person can have several attitudes but in Organisational Behaviour we are more

interested in understanding the job related attitudes. Such job related attitudes will

reveal about the positive or negative evaluations that employees possess about the

various aspects of their work environment. In Organisational Behaviour there are four

work related attitudes, namely: job satisfaction, job involvement and organisational

commitment.


Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction is all about how one feels about (or towards) one's job. An employee

who expresses satisfaction is said to have a positive attitude towards the job, unlike a

dissatisfied employee who has a negative attitude towards the job. A person having

negative attitude shows a personality disposition which is inclined to experience

nervousness, tension, worry, upset and distress, whereas those with positive attitude

will feel happy with themselves, others and their work.

A high level of job satisfaction equals positive attitudes toward the job and vice

versa.

Employee attitudes and job satisfaction are frequently used interchangeably.

Often when people speak of “employee attitudes” they mean “employee job

satisfaction.”

Job Involvement

This refers to the extent to which an individual identifies psychologically with his or her

job and will try to perform the job to the best of his or her ability. A higher level of job

involvement results in a display of positive disposition towards his/her job, subordinates,

colleagues, superiors and derive a pleasurable and positive attitudes from performing

their job. Higher degree of job involvement also ensures lesser rate of absenteeism and

lower labour turnover.

Organizational Commitment:

This can be visible in how the employee has identified (in thought and action) with the

organization, its goals and vision and is also proud to be a part of the organisation. An

employee with a high degree of organizational Commitment will posses a sense of well

being towards the organization and take pleasure and be effectively engaged in his

work and achieving the firms’ goals.

It is an attitude which reflects the extent to which people identify with and are involved

with their organisations and are unwilling to leave them.


Organisational citizenship:

A person can have several attitudes but in Organisational Behaviour we are more

interested in understanding the job related attitudes. Such job related attitudes will

reveal about the positive or negative evaluations that employees possess about the

various aspects of their work environment. In Organisational Behaviour there are four

work related attitudes, namely: job satisfaction, job involvement and organisational

commitment.

Function of attitude

According to Katz, Attitudes serve four important functions for individuals:

In organisational behaviour it is necessary to study the various functions of attitudes

mainly because:

• Attitudes are important predictors of work behaviour.

• Understanding of attitudes will help people to adapt to their working environment.

For instance, if the firm's management tries to impose certain modified rules related to

their (employees) coming late to the factory premises and this is followed by an

increase in absence of the workers, the management may infer that such occurrences

are due to the workers' negative attitude towards the new regulations. According to Katz

(Daniel Katz, 'The Functional Approach to the study of Attitudes, 1960) attitudes serve

four significant functions, which are as follows:

(a) The Adjustment Function

Attitudes help employees to adjust to their work environment. For instance, Nagesh is a

supervisor at the Garment factory. He is well liked by his subordinates because he

treats them well — they are free to discuss their work related or personal problems with

him and not only will he give them (subordinates) a patient hearing but also try to solve

them. The result is visible in the form of the workers' positive attitude towards work.

Conversely, if Nagesh were not to treat his subordinates well, it is likely that they may


develop a negative attitude towards work. Thus the adjustment function of attitudes

helps employees to adjust to their environment and form the basis for future behaviour.

(b) The Ego-defensive Function

Attitudes also help individuals in defending their self image. For instance, Prakash is a

manager (working since many years with the firm) who feels threatened when Yash

joins as an assistant manager. This is because Yash continuously challenges the

decisions of Prakash, who feels that Yash is arrogant, immature and impolite. But the

reality may be that Prakash is ineffective in his decision making. However, Prakash

refuses to accept this and will instead blame Yash. As a result Prakash develops a

negative attitude towards Yash and even Yash feels that his boss (Prakash) is not doing

his job properly.

From the above example we can see that attitude formation helps people to protect their

own ego. For, were Yash to change his perception and believe that Prakash is doing a

good job then he will stop criticizing his boss. But since, he was against doing this, his

attitude helps him to justify the action and protect his ego.

(c) The Value Expressive Function

Attitudes provide the basis for people to express their values. For instance, a senior

executive with a firm, who believes in work ethics, will be very vocal and expressive

about his upheld attitudes toward specific individuals or work practices in order to

emphasise these values. Similarly, the head of the HRD department while addressing

fresh recruits may say "We (the company) have reached this enviable position in the

industry only through sheer hard work. And as a company we firmly believe in this, so

all of you who have joined us recently must also be ready to put 'hard work' into

practice." This example clearly serves as a means to express one's (company's and

senior executive's) core values.

(d) The Knowledge Function

This function of attitudes provides standards and frames of reference by which people

are able to organise and make meaning or explaination of the world around them.


(Attitude serves as standard or frame for understanding and interpreting people and

events around them.) For instance, usually the trade union leaders of companies have

a negative attitude towards the company management. This attitude may not be arrived

at based on pure facts but it definitely enables the trade union leader to relate to the

management in a particular way. As a result, whatever the management may have to

communicate with the workers, the union leader may not want to believe in it. This

attitude may be seen as a manipulation or distortion of facts by the management. But

however, accurate or precise a person's view may be of reality, it will be his or her

attitude towards other persons, objects or events which will help them to make sense of

what is going on around them.

Other functions of attitude are-

Attitude determine meaning:-it determine meaning of what is seen in the

environment. Favorable attitude enables the individual to find “GOOD” meaning

whereas unfavorable attitude is linked with “BAD” meaning.

Attitude organize facts:-Interpretation of facts and derivation of meaning for the

words, thoughts and feelings basically depend on the way they are organized.

Attitude select facts:-attitude also facilitates the selection of facts. From a mass

of objective information, an individual tends to select such facts as are favorable

and consistent with his attitude and to ignore or discount those opposed.

Theories of attitude formation

1- Cognitive consistency theories

These theories are concerned with the incosistencies that arise between related

belief,bits of knowledge and evaluation about an object or an issue.

There are four important theories under this category:

1.Balance

2.Congruity

3.Affective-congnitive consistency theory


4.Congnitive-dissonance theory

Balance theory:-balance theory emphasizes an individual’s desire to keep cognitive

elements harmonious. Originally proposed by ‘HEIDER’ this theory asserts that people

seek balance in their cognitive structure and that attitude change comes about when the

system is not balanced.

This theory is concerned with consistency in the judgment of people and issues that are

linked by some form of relationship.

Congruity theory:-this is proposed by OSGOOD and TANNENBAUM .This theory is

similar to balance theory. Congruity is a stable state and in congruity is unstable one.As

such , in congruity leads to attitude change. The focus of this theory is on changes in

evaluation of a source and a concept that are linked by an associative or dissociative

assertion.

Affective-Cognitive Consistency theory:-this theory is given by ROSENBERG,

concerned with the consistency between an individual’s overall attitude or effect-

towards an object or issue and his beliefs about its relationship to his more general

values.

It proposes that changes in the effective component produce changes in the cognitive

component in order to bring about consistency between the two.

Cognitive-Dissonance theory:-The cognitive dissonance theory, proposed by

FESTINGER, has had by far the greatest impact on the study of attitudes. At first sight,

this theory may appear similar to the affective cognitive theory. The difference between

the two is that this theory Dissonance tends to tie in the third component of the attitude

i.e. behavioral tendency with cognitions about the attitude object.

Functional Theory

It consist of how attitudes and efforts are related to the motivation structure of the

individual. This theory focuses on the meaning of the influences situation in terms of


both the kinds of motives that it arouses and the individual’s method of coping and

achieving his goals.

KATZ proposed functional theory and “suggested four functions of attitudes ,utilitarian or

instrumental, ego-defensive, value –expressive and knowledge when an attitude serves

an adjective function , either the individual’s level of aspiration is raised or the activities

and related attitude no longer can provide the satisfaction they once did. So when new

behaviors inconsistent with attitudes brings satisfaction, then the attitudes must be

adjusted.

Functional approach makes an important contribution towards an understanding of the

conditions that influence the maintenance and stability of attitude change.

Social Judgment Theory

The social judgment theory, formulated originally by SHERIF and HOVELLAND and,

attempts to explains how existing attitudes produce distortions of attitudinally related

object and how these judgments mediate attitude change. Accordingly, a person’s own

stand on an issue, that is, initial attitude, serves as an action for the judgment of

attitudinally related stimuli.

Various theories of attitude formation and change generated enormous amount of

research and there are mixed results. Some finding suggested following points worth

nothing.

Attitudes are always present though are mostly dormant. They become apparent

through behaviour or speech in response to the object or situation.

Attitude are reinforced by belief cognitive domain arouse strong feeling affective

domain; lead to behaviour action tendency.

Attitude appear logical to the individual but often illogical and inconsistent to the neutral

observer.


Attitude are acquired through experience that is they are learned, but often through

subtle processes so that the individual does not recognize the attitude held or know how

it was acquired.

Formation of attitude

Direct personal experience:-attitudes are formed on the basis of one’s past

experience is concerned object or person.

Association:-a new attitude object may be associated with an old attitude object

and the attitude towards the latter may be transferred towards the former.

Social learning:-attitudes are also learnt from others as for example from

parents, teachers superiors, models etc.

Family factor- During childhood, a person spends a major part of his time in

the family. Thus , he learns from the family members.

Eg. A person from a middle class family may hold a different attitude toward spending

than a person from an affluent family

Classing conditioning - This is learning by association. A Russian physiologist called Ivan Pavlov, studied salivation in dogs as part of his research programme. Normally, dogs will salivate at the when food is presented, but Pavlov was interested why the dogs had started to salivate when the saw the people that usually fed them (they also responded to the sound of the dishes being used for their meals). Pavlov set up an experiment to find out if the dogs could be trained to salivate at other stimuli such as the sound of a bell or a light. At feeding times, Pavlov would ring a bell and the amount of saliva produced by the dog was measured. After several 'trials' Pavlov rang the bell without presenting the food and found that the dogs salivated in the same way as if food was being presented.

You will note that the conditional response is the same as the unconditioned response, the only difference being that the response is evoked by a different stimulus.

The Classical Conditioning Procedure:

In scientific terms, the procedure for this is as follows.


1 Food is the unconditioned stimulus or UCS. By this, Pavlov meant that the stimulus that elicited the response occurred naturally.

2 The salivation to the food is an unconditioned response (UCR), that is a response which occurs naturally.

3 The bell is the conditioned stimulus (CS) because it will only produce salivation on condition that it is presented with the food.

4 Salivation to the bell alone is the conditioned response (CR), a response to the conditioned stimulus. .

Psychological factor- The Psychological make-up of a person is made up of

his perception, ideas, beliefs, values etc. It has a crucial role in determining a

person’s attitudes.

Eg.if a person perceives that generally all superiors are exploitative, he is likely to

develop a negative attitude towards his superiors who infact may not be exploitative.


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