The document discusses attitudes as positive or negative feelings towards objects, highlighting their evaluative, cognitive, and behavioral components. It outlines functions of attitudes, including adjustment, ego-defensive, value-expressive, and knowledge functions, and examines factors influencing attitude formation such as personal experience and social surroundings. Additionally, it describes job-related attitudes like job satisfaction, involvement, and organizational commitment, along with barriers and principles of attitude change.

1. Attitudes

2. Attitudes
 Positive or negative feelings towards objects
(people, things or situations)
 A mental state of readiness organised through
experience, to behave in a characteristic way
towards the object of the attitude
 Can be thought of as a combined effect of a
belief and a value which gives a feeling about a
particular attitude object

3. Components Of Attitude

4. Components of Attitudes
 Evaluative component: the emotional or feeling
aspect of the attitude – refers to our liking or
disliking the object of the attitude
 Cognitive component: the knowledge or belief
aspect of the attitude – refers to what you
believe to be the case about the attitude object
 Behavioural component: the behavioural
predisposition aspect of the attitude – refers to a
predisposition to act in a certain way

5. Functions of Attitudes
 Adjustment function: instrumental or utilitarian function – helps
the individual to adjust to the world and to obtain rewards and
avoid punishment from the environment
 Ego-defensive function: help people defend against
information that threatens their concept of self – to protect our
self-image by legitimising behaviour which may contradict our
values
 Value-expressive function: allows individuals to derive
satisfaction from expressing attitudes reflecting their central
values and concept of self
 Knowledge function: help in understanding events which
impinge upon them by mentally organising and structuring the
world so that it is more understandable

6. Formation of Attitudes
 Direct Personal Experience
 Association
 Family and Peer groups
 Neighbourhood
 Economic status and Occupations
 Mass Communications

7. Types of Job-related Attitudes
 Job Satisfaction: refers to the general
attitude or feeling of an individual towards
his job.
 Job Involvement: refers to the degree to
which employees immerse themselves in
their jobs, invest time and energy in them,
and view work as a central part of their
overall lives.

8. Types(cont…)
 Organisational Commitment: refers to
employee’s identification with a particular
organisation and its goals and feel proud
of being its employees.

9. Changing Attitudes: Barriers to
Change
 Prior commitments: People’s commitment
to a particular course of action and are
unwilling to change. This is same like the
tendency of the decision makers to
persist with failing actions.
 Insufficient information: Sometimes people
donot see any reason as to why they
should change their attitude.

10. Principles of Attitude Change
 Consistency principle: people strive to
maintain consistency between the
affective, behavioural and cognitive
components of an attitude
 If one component changes, the person
has two alternatives:
Reverse the change to a single component
Change the other components to fall in line

11. Ways of Changing Attitudes
 Providing new information
 Use of Fear
 Resolving Discrepancies
 Influence of friends and peers
 The Co-opting Approach

12. Types of change
 Congruent change: change in the attitude
in the same direction but the intensity of
feeling is reduced
 Incongruent change: Change in the
attitude direction itself from negative to
positive or vice-versa.