Attitudes can be defined as an individual’s feelings about or inclinations towards other persons, objects, events, or activities. Attitudes encompass such affective feelings as likes and dislikes, and satisfactions and dissatisfactions. Our needs, past experiences, self-concept, and personality shape the beliefs, feelings, and opinion we hold towards the perceived world. Once we have formed our likes and dislikes, we generally cling on to them and find it difficult to change our attitudes, unless we make a conscious and determined effort to do so. An interesting phenomenon is that our values shape our attitudes. Traditionally, behavioral scientists have divided attitudes into two major groups: i) those that are cognitive (for example, beliefs or expectations about cause-effect relationships between events) and ii) those that are evaluative (for example, liking or disliking for event). An example of a cognitive attitude would be an employee’s belief that superior job performance would be rewarded by praise from a superior. An example of an evaluative attitude would be the degree to which he or she would like or value such praise.
Components of Attitudes
There are three components of attitudes such as Cognitive (Thinking), Affective (Feeling) and Conative (Behavioral).
- Cognitive Component: Cognitive component deals with thinking, evaluation, comparison, rational, logical issues with respect to the targeted object. This will facilitate to form a strong belief or further strengthen the belief system towards various objects. By observing and analyzing the various features of Sony laptop computer, you may form a very good opinion stating that Sony laptop is best among others. Such an evaluation is based on the cognitive component of attitudes.
- Affective Component: Affective component deals with feelings or emotional issues of the targeted objects. I do not like Ramesh as he had hunted down a rare species of deer’s in the forest. As deer’s are harmless creatures, I love them very much. The disliking of Ramesh is due to emotional aspects or personal feelings towards the targeted object.
- Behavioral Components: This refers to intention to behave in a certain way towards someone or something. As I do not like rock music, I am not interested to attend the concert. The action of not attending is due to a part of disliking of rock music concert. All these three components collectively act together for the formation of attitudes.
Sources of Attitudes
Attitudes are formed through various sources. We acquire or learn from parents, teachers, peer group members.
- Family Members: Parents or siblings influence strongly to form favorable or unfavorable attitudes towards various objects. The child rearing practices, the types of reinforcement received from parents or siblings will help mold certain attitudes such as strong preference towards color, religious faith, choices of food habits etc. which would be stable and long lasting over a period of time.
- Reference Group: People tend to form a strong attitude based on the influence of powerful personalities whom they admire a lot. For example, celebrities, charismatic political or religious leaders significantly influence either to strengthen the existing attitudes or form new attitudes. Marketing managers rely on celebrity figures to endorse the products to subtly influence their admirers to buy the products.
- Peer Group influence: Friends or colleagues at work place will have a strong influence on the formation of certain attitudes or belief system due to pressure to conforming to their norms, standards, values etc. People need people. The acceptance or reassurance of group members will strongly reinforce the chosen attitudes and behavior.
- Socialization and Learning process: The way in which people are brought up in family, the do’s and don’ts laid down by the parents, educational and educational institutions, the rules and regulations of work place, the types of rituals, cultures, norms of society etc. will strongly influence the formation of attitudes.
Types of Attitudes
There are three types of job-related attitudes such as job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment.
- Job Satisfaction: The term job satisfaction refers to an individual’s general attitudes towards their job. The likingness or dislikingness differ from individual to individual with respect to job contextual factors or job content factors. Some people give much importance to job contextual factors like salary, security, supervision, supportive colleagues, company policy, working conditions, perquisites, promotions, equitable rewards etc. Whereas others may show much interest in job content factors such as advancement, challenging assignments, career progress, appreciation and recognition, work itself. Research results revealed that the job satisfaction had a tremendous impact on improving productivity, enhancing quality requirements, reduced absenteeism rate and employee turnover. The employees expressed their dissatisfaction through so many ways such as leaving the organization, raising their voice to demand to improve the working conditions, be patient by passively waiting for the conditions to improve and neglecting everything in work. A person with a positive attitude is likely to have more job satisfaction, while a person with negative attitude is likely to have job dissatisfaction towards his or her job. Job satisfaction is one of the major determinants of an employee’s organizational citizenship behavior. Satisfied employee would seem more likely to take positively about the organization, help others and go beyond the normal expectation in their job. Moreover, satisfied employees normally are more prone to go beyond the call of duty because they were to reciprocate their positive experiences. The following are some of the major determinants of job satisfaction – mentally challenging work, equitable rewards, supportive working conditions, supportive fellow employees, personality-job fit, company policies and programs.
- Job Involvement: This refers to the extent to which a person identifies psychologically with her or his job. The person feels that the job is more meaningful and it utilizes one’s talent and skills to the fullest extent. There is a perfect harmony between the types of skills a person possesses and the work content. The individual experiences as if the whole work is being carried out by him having full control over everything related to the work. Due to this perception, performance level will be increasing significantly and enhance the overall self worth. Employees with a high level of job involvement strongly identify with and really care about the kind of work they do in their job. Job involvement measures the degree to which a person identifies psychologically with her or his job and considers her or his perceived performance level important to her or his self-worth. Employees with a high level of job involvement strongly identify with and really care about the kind of work they do in their job. There is high level of relationship between job involvement and fewer absences and lower resignation rates of an individual.
- Organizational Commitment: It is refers to the extent to which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals, and wishes to maintain membership in the organization. The person shows much of association and loyalty to their organization. Organizational commitment has gained a great deal of interest in recent years because of the changing nature of the workplace. People, who feel a perfect congruence between his values, beliefs, attitudes, and the organizational policies, practices, programs and its overall work culture, are likely to have more commitment than those who have incongruence. In order to elicit a high level of commitment from the employees, a due care must be taken at every stages right from the recruitment to retirement. Administering suitable screening tests such as aptitude tests, personality tests, interest’s tests etc will help significantly placing a right person to do a right type of job. With fewer workers, managers want workers who identify with the organization’s purpose and will work hard to achieve its goals. Organizational commitment can also be enhanced through organizational communication process, team briefing, supportive leadership etc. A good fit between the personality and the job, an internal locus of control, positive realistic expectations, opportunities for career advancement etc are the good predictors of organizational commitment. A well designed formal mentoring program has also been shown to increase organizational commitment. Promotional opportunity, providing employees with more information, supervisor’s support etc. are likely to improve organizational commitment.
Attitudes and Consistency
People always seek harmony in their life. They desire to maintain consistency between attitudes and behavior or consistency among their various attitudes. Even in case of divergent opinion or happen to work in a place where the work demands are not aligned with the basic values, people will show interest to change either the nature of assignment or leave the organization or change their basic values in such a way to ensure consistency in their life style. This means that individuals seek to reconcile divergent attitudes and to align their attitudes and behavior so that they appear rational and consistent. Where there is an inconsistency, forces are initiated to return the individual to a state of equilibrium where attitudes and behavior are again consistent. This can be done by altering either the attitudes or the behavior, or by developing a rationalization for the discrepancy.