Working On Attitudes

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Group 2 BSTM 1120

 Attitude
 A psychological construct, a mental and emotional entity that inheres in, or characterizes a person.

 It is an individual's predisposed state of mind regarding a value and it is precipitated through a

responsive expression towards oneself, a person, place, thing, or event (the attitude object) which in
turn influences the individual's thought and action.
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 Attitude can be formed from a person's past and present.

 Social Psychology
 An attitude is an evaluation of an attitude
 Eagly and Chaiken, define an attitude as
object, ranging from extremely negative
to extremely positive. "a psychological tendency that is
expressed by evaluating a particular
entity with some degree of favor or
 An attitude can be a positive or negative disfavor."
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evaluation of people, objects, events,

activities, and ideas. It could be concrete,
abstract or just about anything in your
environment, but there is a debate about
precise definitions.
 Jung’s Definition
 Attitude is a "readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way". Attitudes
very often come in pairs, one conscious and the other unconscious. Within this
broad definition Jung defines several attitudes.
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 The main (but not only) attitude dualities that Jung defines are the following.

 Consciousness and the unconscious. The  The rational attitude subdivides into the
"presence of two attitudes is extremely thinking and feeling psychological
frequent, one conscious and the other
functions, each with its attitude
unconscious. This means that
consciousness has a constellation of
contents different from that of the  The irrational attitude subdivides into the
unconscious, a duality particularly evident sensing and intuition psychological
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in neurosis". functions, each with its attitude. "There is

thus a typical thinking, feeling, sensation,
 Extraversion and introversion. This pair is and intuitive attitude".
so elementary to Jung's theory of types
that he labeled them the "attitude-types".
 Individual and social attitudes. Many of
 Rational and irrational attitudes. "I the latter are "isms".
conceive reason as an attitude".
 Factors of Attitude
Psychological

 The attitude of a person is determined by psychological factors like ideas, values, beliefs, perception,
etc. All these have a complex role in determining a person's attitude.

 Values are ideals, guiding principles in one's life, or overarching goals that people strive to obtain.
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 Beliefs are cognitions about the world—subjective probabilities that an object has a particular
attribute or that an action will lead to a particular outcome. Beliefs can be patently and unequivocally
false.

 Another important factor that affects attitude is symbolic interactionism, these are rife with powerful
symbols and charged with affect which can lead to a selective perception
 Factors of Attitude
 Family - plays a significant role in the primary stage of attitudes held by individuals. Initially, a
person develops certain attitudes from his parents, brothers, sister, and elders in the family.

 Society - Societies play an important role in formatting the attitudes of an individual. The culture, the
tradition, the language, etc., influence a person's attitudes. Society, tradition, and the culture teach
individuals what is and what is not acceptable.
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 Economic - A person's attitude also depends on issues such as his salary, status, work
environment, work as such, etc.
 Structure
 The classic, tripartite view offered by Rosenberg and Hovland is that an attitude
contains cognitive, affective, and behavioral components.
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 Attitude Component Model
 Affective component - refers to your feelings or emotions linked to an attitude object. For
example, many people are afraid/scared of spiders. So this negative affective response is
likely to cause you to have a negative attitude towards spiders.

 Behavioral component - refers to the way the attitude we have influences how we act or
behave.
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 Cognitive component - refers to the beliefs, thoughts, and attributes that we would
associate with an object. Many times a person's attitude might be based on the negative and
positive attributes they associate with an object.
 MODE Model
 Theory of attitude evaluation (motivation and opportunity as determinants of the attitude -
behavior relation). When both are present, behavior will be deliberate. When one is
absent, impact on behavior will be spontaneous. The MODE model was developed by
Fazio.

 Fazio believes that because there is deliberative process happening, individuals must be
motivated to reflect on their attitudes and subsequent behaviors.
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- A person's attitude can be measured in two different way:

 Explicit measure - are attitudes at the conscious level, that are deliberately formed
and easy to self-report.

 Implicit measure - are attitudes that are at an unconscious level, that are
involuntarily formed and are typically unknown to us.
 Function
 Utilitarian - provides us with general approach or avoidance tendencies.

 Knowledge - help people organize and interpret new information.

 Ego-defensive - attitudes can help people protect their self-esteem.

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 Value-expressive - used to express central values or beliefs

  Attitudes can be changed through persuasion and an important domain of research on
attitude change focuses on responses to communication.
Change  Target characteristics: These are characteristics that refer to the person who receives and
processes a message. One such trait is intelligence - it seems that more intelligent people
are less easily persuaded by one-sided messages.

 Source characteristics: The major source characteristics are expertise, trustworthiness

and interpersonal attraction or attractiveness.

 Message Characteristics: The nature of the message plays a role in persuasion.

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 Cognitive routes: A message can appeal to an individual's cognitive evaluation to help

change an attitude.
- central route to persuasion the individual is presented with the data and motivated to
evaluate the data and arrive at an attitude changing conclusion.
- peripheral route to attitude change, the individual is encouraged to not look at the
content but at the source. This is commonly seen in modern advertisements that feature
celebrities. In some cases, physician, doctors or experts are used. In other cases, film stars
are used for their attractiveness.
 Emotion and attitude change
 Emotion is a common component in persuasion, social influence, and attitude change. Much
of attitude research emphasized the importance of affective or emotion components. Emotion
works hand-in-hand with the cognitive process, or the way we think, about an issue or
situation.

 By activating an affective or emotion node, attitude change may be possible, though affective
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and cognitive components tend to be intertwined. In primarily affective networks, it is more

difficult to produce cognitive counterarguments in the resistance to persuasion and attitude
change.
 Components of emotion appeals
 Any discrete emotion can be used in a persuasive appeal; this may include jealousy, disgust,
indignation, fear, blue, disturbed, haunted, and anger. Fear is one of the most studied
emotional appeals in communication and social influence research.

 Important factors that influence the impact of emotion appeals include self-efficacy, attitude
accessibility, issue involvement, and message/source features. Self-efficacy is a perception
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of one's own human agency; in other words, it is the perception of our own ability to deal with
a situation. It is an important variable in emotion appeal messages because it dictates a
person's ability to deal with both the emotion and the situation
 Attitude accessibility
 refers to the activation of an attitude from memory in other words, how readily available is an
attitude about an object, issue, or situation.

 Issue involvement is the relevance and salience of an issue or situation to an individual.

Issue involvement has been correlated with both attitude access and attitude strength.
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 Attitude-behavior relationship
 The effects of attitudes on behaviors is a growing research enterprise within psychology. Icek
Ajzen has led research and helped develop two prominent theoretical approaches within this field:
the theory of reasoned action and, its theoretical descendant, the theory of planned behavior. Both
theories help explain the link between attitude and behavior as a controlled and deliberative process.
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 Theory of reasoned action
 
 The theory of reasoned action (TRA) is a model for the prediction of behavioral intention,
spanning predictions of attitude and predictions of behavior.

 The theory of reasoned action was developed by Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen (1975,
1980), derived from previous research that started out as the theory of attitude, which led to
the study of attitude and behavior.
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 The theory was "born largely out of frustration with traditional attitude–behavior research,
much of which found weak correlations between attitude measures and performance of
volitional behaviors" (Hale, Householder & Greene, 2003, p. 259).
 Theory of planned behavior
 
 Proposed by Icek Ajzen in 1985 through his article "From intentions to actions: A theory of
planned behavior."

 Developed from the theory of reasoned action, which was proposed by Martin Fishbein together with
Icek Ajzen in 1975.

 The theory of reasoned action was in turn grounded in various theories of attitude such as learning
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theories, expectancy-value theories, consistency theories, and attribution theory. According to the
theory of reasoned action, if people evaluate the suggested behavior as positive (attitude), and if
they think their significant others want them to perform the behavior (subjective norm), this results
in a higher intention (motivation) and they are more likely to do so.
 Measurement
   1928 Louis Leon Thurstone published an article titled "Attitudes Can Be Measured" in it he
proposed an elaborate procedure to assess people's views on social issues. Attitudes can be
difficult to measure because measurement is arbitrary, because attitudes are ultimately a
hypothetical construct that cannot be observed directly.

 Many measurements and evidence proofed scales are used to examine attitudes. A Likert
scale taps agreement or disagreement with a series of belief statements. The Guttman
scale focuses on items that vary in their degree of psychological difficulty.
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 Implicit - Implicit measures are not consciously directed and are assumed to be automatic,
which may make implicit measures more valid and reliable than explicit measures (such as
self-reports).

 Explicit - Explicit measures tend to rely on self-reports or easily observed behaviors. These
tend to involve bipolar scales (e.g., good-bad, favorable-unfavorable, support-oppose, etc.).
 Working On Attitude
   How to give feedback to a passive employee?
- If you want to see your passive employees speak up more often in meetings, with
customers, or on projects, tell them directly. Be specific about what you’d like.

 What is the opposite of a passive personality?

- On the other hand, some people have no qualms about making their opinions known.
Let’s take a look at the aggressive personality trait and how it affects a person’s working
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style.

 What does it mean to be aggressive at work?

- Aggressive people are assertive in their interactions with others. They’re comfortable
speaking up, especially when they’re confident in their viewpoints
 What are the characteristics of an aggressive person?
 They speak up when they have an idea, notice an injustice, or see an opportunity to do things
better.
 They may come across as confident, demanding, passionate, outspoken, or commandeering.
 They’re much more likely to approach people in authority about problems.
 In the extreme, they may steamroll others, coming across as pushy or too harsh.
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How to work with someone who tends to be aggressive?

 Aggressive personalities don’t fear conflict, which can make them valuable advocates for new
ideas within the workplace. They fight for what they believe in, and they’re vocal about it.
Knowing how to work with aggressive people can help t you channel their energy for the
betterment of your team.  
 How to motivate someone who tends to be aggressive at work?
 When possible, give them some time and resources to work on passion projects they’ve advocated
for. They’ll appreciate the “yes” and being able to test out new ideas.

 Aggressive personalities appreciate an environment where they can speak freely, be honest
about the problems they see, and champion good ideas. Even if your corporate culture calls for
more restraint, give your aggressive employees an outlet in one-on-one sessions with you.

How to work with someone who tends to be aggressive?

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 Aggressive people appreciate directness. Be kind but direct when you need to give
constructive criticism. They’d rather hear the bottom line than have you beat around the
bush.
 Some managers hesitate to give feedback if an employee with an aggressive personality is
coming on too strong with peers. However, this kind of interpersonal coaching can be
invaluable in helping people with aggressive personalities succeed at work. 
 Assertiveness
 Assertiveness is a skill regularly referred to in social and communication skills training.
Being assertive means being able to stand up for your own or other people’s rights in a
calm and positive way, without being either aggressive, or passively accepting ‘wrong’.
 Assertive individuals are able to get their point across without upsetting others or
becoming upset themselves.

What is Assertiveness?
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 The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines assertiveness as: “Forthright, positive, insistence on
the recognition of one's rights”. In other words: Assertiveness means standing up for your
personal rights - expressing thoughts, feelings, and beliefs in direct, honest and appropriate
ways. It is important to also note that: By being assertive we should always respect the
thoughts, feelings, and beliefs of other people. Those who behave assertively always
respect the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs of other people as well as their own.
 Passive, Aggressive and Assertive
 Assertiveness is often seen as the balance point between passive and aggressive behavior,
but it’s probably easier to think of the three as points of a triangle.

Being Assertive
 Being assertive involves taking into consideration your own and other people’s rights,
wishes, wants, needs, and desires.
 Assertiveness means encouraging others to be open and honest about their views, wishes
and feelings, so that both parties act appropriately. 
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Being Passive
 Responding in a passive or non-assertive way tends to mean compliance with the wishes of
others and can undermine individual rights and self-confidence.
 Being Aggressive
 By being aggressive towards someone else, their rights and self-esteem are undermined.
Aggressive behavior fails to consider the views or feelings of other individuals. Those behaving
aggressively will rarely show praise or appreciation of others and an aggressive response tends to
put others down. Aggressive responses encourage the other person to respond in a non-assertive
way, either aggressively or passively.

Submissive Behavior
 Submissive (or passive) behavior means shying away from saying what you really mean and not
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seeking to achieve your needs, particularly when someone else has conflicting needs.
 A submissive person is a shrinking violet, avoiding upsetting others either because they fear them,
or they fear to hurt their feelings.
 Manipulative
   Manipulative people have mastered the art of deception. They may appear respectable and
sincere but often that’s just a facade; it's a way to draw you in and ensnare you in a
relationship before they show their true colors.
1. Manipulative people either lack insight into how they engage others and create certain
scenarios, or they truly believe that their way of handling a situation is the only way because it
means that their needs are being met, and that's all that matters.
2. Manipulative people do not understand the concept of boundaries.
3. A manipulator avoids responsibilities for his own conduct by blaming others for causing it.
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4. Manipulative people prey on our sensibilities, emotional sensitivity, and especially

conscientiousness.
5. They will often talk about you behind your back the same way they talk to you about others.
6. Never waste your time trying to explain who you are to people who are committed to
misunderstanding you.
 7. Characterize people by their actions and you will never be fooled by their words. Always remember
that what a person says and does are two very separate things. Observe someone closely, without
making excuses for them—usually what you see is what you get.

8. If the individual put as much effort into being a good person as they do into pretending to be one,
they could actually be a good person. This is an essential point: Our initial encounter and perception of
someone strongly colors our developing relationship with them. If we understood from the beginning
that a person is not who they seem to be, and is just hiding behind a façade of what appears to be
socially acceptable behavior, then perhaps we would be more-wary of getting involved with them.
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9. Regularly examine what you believe

 Thank you for
listening!
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Do you have any questions?