Your attitude can make

or break your career

 Attitude
•Attitudes are evaluative statements

•Attitudes refer to feelings and beliefs held by an individual towards

an object (object may be an individual, organization, event,
environment, situation)

•Three components of Attitude:

–Cognitive (Belief)
–Affective ( Feelings)
–Conative ( Behaviour/ Action )

•The term ‘Attitude’ essentially refers to affective part of three

components 2
 Attitudes
• Attitudes can also be defined as multiplicative
function of beliefs and values
 Beliefs
• A belief is an association between two
cognitive elements, formed through direct
behaviour and experience or by exposure to
information
– Winters are good for health
– Lawyers are dishonest
– Physical exercise is boring
 Values
• Enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct is
personally and socially preferable to an opposite
or converse mode of conduct

• Belief is translated into attitude through value

– Value: Fairness/ Justice

– Belief: Lawyers overcharge their clients
– Attitude: I don’t like lawyers
 Cognitive Structure
All patients
Doctors like
• Belief Doctors Doctors prescribe
aretreat only
to
overcharge drugs to get
poor- commission from important
well-to-do
needy Pharma for Doctors
patients
patients Companies

Humanity/ Honesty Equality

• Values Fairness

I do not like Doctors

• Attitudes
I like Doctors
 Two influences in Attitude Formation
• Direct Experience
• Social Learning (The process of deriving attitudes
from family, peer groups, religious organizations
and culture)
• Once formed not easily changed
– New conditions, new experience, and new information
– Attitudes may be affected by age, position, and
education
– In contrast to values, attitudes are less stable
Importance of understanding attitude
• One needs to manage his/her attitude to
ensure success in his/her personal and
professional life.

8
 Do Attitudes Predict Behaviour?

• Early research evidence suggested a weak to

moderate link between attitudes and
behaviour (e.g., LaPiere, 1934; Wicker, 1969)

• More recent research has examined

moderators of the attitude-behaviour
relationship
 Measuring the A-B Relationship
• Recent research indicates that attitudes (A)
significantly predict behaviors (B) when moderating
variables are taken into account.
A B

Moderating
ModeratingVariables
Variables
• •Importance
Importanceofofthe theattitude
attitude
• •Specificity
Specificityofofthe
theattitude
attitude
• •Accessibility
Accessibilityofofthe
theattitude
attitude
• •Social
Socialpressures
pressureson onthe
theindividual
individual
• •Direct
Directexperience
experiencewith
withthe
theattitude
attitude
 Controversy: Melania Trump wore a $39 jacket with the
phrase, 'I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U?' scrawled across
the back when leaving for and returning from (pictured) her
trip to visit immigrant children in Texas
Trump claims it was to attack 'Fake News Media' NOT the
 Self-Perception Theory
Attitudes are used after the fact to make sense out of an
action that has already occurred.
And, B A!
 Cognitive Dissonance
• A state of internal tension that results from an
inconsistency between any knowledge , belief, opinion,
attitude or feeling about the environment, or between
attitude and behaviour. It is psychologically
uncomfortable.

– Cognitive: factual knowledge; act or process of knowing

including both awareness and judgment

– Dissonance: lack of agreement, inconsistency between one’s

actions and one’s belief

15
 Reduction in Dissonance
• Example: Mrs Smith believes strongly that no
company should pollute the air or water

• However, dumping the company sewage into

the local river is in the best economic interests
of her firm
 Reduction in Dissonance
• What she can do to deal with her dilemma/to reduce
dissonance……………
– Stop polluting the river
– By concluding that the dissonant behaviour is not so important ( I
have to make a living and in my role as a corporate decision
maker, I often have to place the good of my company over that of
environment)
– Change her attitude (There is nothing wrong in polluting the
river)
– The benefits to society from manufacturing our products more
than offset the costs to society of resulting water pollution
– Quit the job
 Reduction in Dissonance
• The individual will not be under great tension
to reduce the dissonance
– If the issues underlying the dissonance are of
minimal importance,
– if the individual perceives that the dissonance is
externally imposed and is substantially
uncontrollable,
– or the rewards are significant enough to offset the
dissonance
Ways to Reduce:Cognitive Dissonance

Avoidance

Denial

Change

19
 Example of the Process
• Senior Fire Controller Jones is unhappy that women are
now assigned to his unit because he feels that females
cannot handle stressful emergency situations.

• A female worker functions well during an emergency.

• Jones experiences cognitive dissonance.

• How does Jones reduce this?

20
 Example of the Process
• Avoidance- Jones delegates responsibilities so
he doesn’t have to come in contact with
females, or asks for a transfer.

• Denial- Jones passes this off as an exception

to the rule

• Change- Jones thinks that he thought females

could not perform under stress, but he was
wrong.
21
 Exercise
• A hospital management wants to know
whether its decision of hiring hospital
managers have improved the hospital services
or not. The management is also interested in
knowing the attitude of the nursing and
paramedic staff about them.

• How would you do this?

 Measuring Attitudes
Overt Attitude Measures

Self-report (single item)attitude measures

• Advantages:
– Easy and quick to administer
– Relatively cheap
• Disadvantages:
– Responses may not be reliable, e.g.,
• Mood
• Social desirability
 Measuring Attitudes
Overt Attitude Measures
Attitude scales
• Multiple items are used to measure the same
construct
• Eliminate some of the problems of single-item
measures (e.g., reliability)
• Some of the more popular scales include:
– Likert’s Method of summated Ratings
– Osgood’s Semantic Differential Scale
 Measuring Attitudes
• Method of Summated Ratings: (Likert Scale ) An extremely
popular means for measuring attitudes, respondents
indicate their own attitudes by checking how strongly they
agree or disagree with statements. Response alternatives:
“strongly agree”, “agree”, “uncertain”, “disagree”, and
“strongly disagree”.

• Semantic Differential: A series of bipolar rating scales to

secure a measure of the meaning of concepts. Bipolar
adjectives, such as “good” and “bad”, anchor both ends (or
poles) of the scale.
 Fiedler’s LPC
• Pleasant……………………………………………………………………..Unpleasant
Friendly………………………………………………………………………Unfriendly
Rejecting…………………………………………………………………….Accepting
Unenthusiastic…………………………………………………………….Enthusiastic
Tense…………………………………………………………………………...Relaxed
Cold………………………………………………………………………………Warm
Helpful………………………………………………………………………….Frustrating
Cooperative………………………………………………………………Uncooperative
Supportive………………………………………………………………..Hostile
Quarrelsome……………………………………………………………...Harmonious
Efficient……………………………………………………………………….Inefficient
Gloomy……………………………………………………………….……..Cheerful
Distant…………………………………………………………………………Close
Boring………………………………………………………………………….Interesting
Self-assured………………………………………………………………..Hesitant
Open………………………………………………………………………….Guarded
 Fiedler’s LPC
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
• Pleasant……………………………………………………………………..Unpleasant
Friendly………………………………………………………………………Unfriendly
Rejecting…………………………………………………………………….Accepting
Unenthusiastic…………………………………………………………….Enthusiastic
Tense…………………………………………………………………………...Relaxed
Cold………………………………………………………………………………Warm
Helpful………………………………………………………………………….Frustrating
Cooperative………………………………………………………………Uncooperative
Supportive………………………………………………………………..Hostile
Quarrelsome……………………………………………………………...Harmonious
Efficient……………………………………………………………………….Inefficient
Gloomy……………………………………………………………….……..Cheerful
Distant…………………………………………………………………………Close
Boring………………………………………………………………………….Interesting
Self-assured………………………………………………………………..Hesitant
Open………………………………………………………………………….Guarded
 Work Attitudes
• Attitudes are important as they affect job behaviour

–Job Satisfaction: refers to an individual’s general

attitude towards his/her job. High job satisfaction
equals to positive attitude and job dissatisfaction equals
to negative attitude

–Job Involvement: The degree to which an individual

identifies with his/her job, actively participates in it and
considers his/her performance important to self-worth
 Work Attitudes

• Organizational Commitment: The degree

to which an employee identifies with the
organization and its goals and wishes to
maintain membership in the organization