Unit-3: Attitude

Types of Attitude,
Factors influencing attitude,
Positive attitude,
Steps to overcome
Challenged attitude,
Developing Positive attitude and thinking.

Attitude
The way that you think, feel or behave.
In simple words, an “attitude” is an individual’s way of looking or an individual’s point of view
at something.

Types of Attitude
There are broadly three types of attitude in term of organizational behavior
1. Job satisfaction
2. Job involvement
3. Organizational commitment

Job satisfaction
A collection of positive and/or negative feelings that an individual holds toward his or her job.
A person will hold a positive attitude if had a high level of satisfaction, while dissatisfied people
will generally display a negative attitude towards life.
When we talk about attitude, we generally speak about job satisfaction because they are inter-
related in organizational behaviour.

Job involvement
Job involvement refers to the degree to which a person identifies himself (psychologically) with
his job, actively participates and considers his perceived performance level important to self-
worth.
Higher job satisfaction leads to low absenteeism & employee turnover and indicates that the
individual cares for his job.

Organizational commitment
Organizational commitment refers to a degree to which an employee identifies himself with the
organizational goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organization.
Resigning from the job or absenting versus job satisfaction is a predictor of organizational
commitment. Organizational commitment depends upon the degree of autonomy & freedom job
and job enrichment factor.

Importance of Attitude
An expert knows that a positive attitude is necessary for successful completion of a project or an
assigned task. Having a positive attitude with positive thinking in the organization will reflect on
what employee do and make them a more productive employee.
Following are the aspects related to the importance of attitude:
1. Career success - Performance is a parameter to measure employee’s success in the workplace.
2. Productivity - An employee with a positive attitude tends to take more interest and
responsibility and will provide better work, which in turn will improve productivity.
3. Leadership - Positive attitude demonstrated by leaders or employee will result in proper
communication between the subordinate which will lead to efficient work.
4. Teamwork - A positive attitude of employees helps to appreciate each other‘s competencies
and work as a team for achieving common objectives.
5. Decision making - An employee with a positive attitude and mindset will help employees to
make better decisions, in an objective manner.
6. Motivation - Motivation is an important factor for efficient work. An employee with a positive
attitude will always be mentally prepared to face any obstacle in a job. The moment they are
successful in overcoming obstacles, they are motivated to move forward.
7. Interpersonal relations - Customers prefer to make relation with someone who is positive in
nature. A positive attitude helps in establishing valuable customer loyalty.
8. Stress management - Positive attitude and thinking will reduce the stress of an employee and
with reduced stress employee can take a better decision and increase their productivity which
results, employees, to enjoy better health and take fewer sick leaves.

Components of Attitudes
The Greek philosophers were the first to recognize the components and importance of attitudes.
Attitudes are tendencies to feel or behave in a particular way with respect to some persons, objects
or events. There are three major components of attitudes—affective, behavioural and cognitive.
These are briefly written as ABC.
Affective Component (A) This component of attitude is the emotional aspect of your belief about
a situation or object. This reveals the positive or negative side of your emotion towards a situation,
event or some people. Whenever you see the hero or heroine in a movie, you may be moved by
the charm, good dialogue, charisma and so on. All these evoke some positive responses or attitudes
towards that personality. However, in some cases, the hero may show his pride or quarrelsome
nature, which you may not like, and therefore, you develop a negative attitude towards him. Your
attitude is thus based on your emotion towards that person at a point in time. But the difficulty is
that the same person may reveal different types of behaviour at different times. Thus, in many
cases, attitude formation of a permanent nature becomes rather difficult. In a majority of the cases,
the basic nature of the person or situation being considered decides your attitudes.
Behavioural Component (B) This component relates to an individual’s predisposition to respond.
The behavioural component is the verbal expression of the intention of the individual. If you like
any person or situation or event, you are likely to express that feeling through a positive attitude
of acceptance. It can also be explained that an entity’s behaviour in a particular context can lead
to either a good or bad attitude in the mind of the observer. In this situation, what is critical is the
observed behaviour from which you can infer the nature of the attitude.
Cognitive Component (C) in this case, there is a cognitive evaluation of the entity that can be
helpful to form an attitude. The cognitive component is the rational component and the affective
component is the emotional component for forming the attitudes. In forming correct attitudes, it is
necessary to take into consideration both these components; otherwise, the attitudes may not be
correct. This is because, sometimes, the first component dominates the second and vice versa.
Characteristics of Attitude
1. Attitude are predispositions - Attitude are predispositions of purpose, interest or opinion of
the person to assess some objects in a favourable or an unfavourable manner.
2. Attitude are different from values - Attitude are different from values: Values are the ideals,
whereas attitudes are narrow, they are our feelings.
3. Attitude are evaluative statement - Attitude are evaluative statements: either favourable or
unfavourable concerning the objects, people or events.
4. Attitude influence human behavior - A positive attitude towards a thing will influence human
behavior towards the thing favorably and vice-versa.
5. Attitude have intensity - It refers to the strength of the effective component. For example, we
may dislike an individual but the extent of our disliking would determine the intensity of our
attitude towards the person.
6. Attitude are learnt - Attitude is not inborn phenomenon. Attitude are learnt through social
interaction and experience.

Four important functions of attitude which are crucial in organizational behavior viewpoint are:
1. Adjustment Function - Attitudes often help individuals to adjust to their work
environment.
Consumers hold certain brand attitudes partly because of the brand utility. If a product has helped
us in the past even in a small way, our attitude towards it tends to be favorable. One way of
changing attitude in favor of a product is by showing people that it can solve utilitarian goals. They
may not have considered some advertisement which stresses the utilitarian benefits of a product.

2. Ego-Defensive Function - Consumers want to protect their self-concept from inner

feelings of doubt. Cosmetic and personal hygiene products, by acknowledging this need,
increase their relevance to the consumer and have the possibility of a favorable attitude by
offering reassurance to the consumer’s self-concept.
Example: Older faculty might feel somewhat threatened by a young and new faculty
member who is full of fresh ideas and enthusiasm
3. Value-Expressive Function - Attitudes are one expression of general values, lifestyles,
and outlook. If a consumer segment generally holds a positive attitude towards being in a
fashion segment, consumer may treat high fashion clothing and accessories as symbols of
that lifestyle.
Example, a manager who values honest and sincere work will be more vocal against
an employee who is having a very casual approach towards work.
4. Knowledge Function - Attitudes provide frames of reference or standard that allow individuals
to understand and perceive the world around him. Individuals have a strong need to know and
understand the people and things with whom they come in contact, especially if they think they
might influence their behavior.
Example, If a student has a strong negative attitude towards the college, whatever the college does,
the student will be perceived as something ‘bad’ and as actually against them.

Attitude Formation
The question often arises, ‘how are the attitudes and subsequent behaviors formed?’ While
attitudes are basically learned over the years, some inherited characteristics do affect such attitudes
Some of the learned characteristics responsible for attitude formation are:
1. Experiences - Our personal experiences with people and situations develop our attitude
towards such persons and situations.
Through job experience, people develop attitudes towards working conditions, salaries,
supervision and group dynamics and so on.

2. Perceptual biases - Perception is the result of a complex interaction of various senses such as
feelings, seeing, hearing and so on and plays an important part in our attitude and behavioural
formation.
For example, if a manager perceives a subordinate’s ability as limited, he will give him limited
responsibility. Similarly, we lose many good friends due to our changed perception about them.

3. Observation of other person attitude - When we like someone, we try to emulate that person’s
attitude.
For example, when we are impressed by someone keeping calm under stressful circumstances
and we appreciate such calmness, we might try to do the same.

4. Association - Our association with the group we belong to strongly influences our attitude. Our
close association with a group would encourage us to be consistent with the attitude of the
group.

5. Personality - Personality is a set of traits and characteristics, habit patterns and conditioned
responses to certain stimuli that formulate the impression that a person makes upon others and
this impression is a function of a person’s attitude.

Consumer Attitude Formation

Attitudes are learned though there are different approaches on how learning works as is acquired
by individuals. Following factors lead to consumer attitude formation:
1. Economic Factors
2. Family Factors
3. Social Factors
4. Political Factors
5. Psychological Factors
6. Personality Factors
7. Reference Group Factors

Positive attitude
When you develop a positive attitude, you will start feeling better about yourself. You will treat
yourself with more respect and love, and this in turn will boost your confidence levels and inner
strength. You will take on new challenges and come out of your self-limiting beliefs.

No poison can kill a positive thinker and no medicine can save a negative thinker.