This document discusses attitudes, including their meaning, components, formation, and change. An attitude is a psychological tendency to evaluate something favorably or unfavorably. Attitudes have three components - affect, behavioral intention, and cognition. They are formed through direct experience and social learning. Work-related attitudes like job satisfaction and organizational commitment can impact work behavior. Attitude change occurs through persuasion that considers target, source, message, and cognitive route characteristics. Barriers to changing attitudes include prior commitments, credibility issues, and insufficient information.

1. ATTITUDES
Submitted by:
Naveen Sihag
B.Tech(CS)

2. Contents
Meaning
Components of attitudes
Formation of attitudes
Work related attitudes
Attitude change
Barriers to changing attitudes

3. Meaning
An attitude is a psychological tendency,
expressed by evaluating an entity with
some degree of favor or disfavor.
It reflects How one feels about something?
Attitude is a hypothetical construct that
represents an individual’s like or dislike for
an item.
I say “I like my job”, I am expressing my
attitude about work.

4. ABC Model
Attitudes develop on the basis of
evaluation responding. An individual does
not have an attitude until he or she
responds to an entity (person, object,
situation, issue) on an affective, cognitive
or behavioral basis.
Three components:
 affect
 behavioral intention
 cognition

5. Affect:- is the emotional component of
an attitude. It refers to an individuals
feeling about something or someone.
“I like this…..”
“I prefer that…”
These reflect effective component of an
attitude.
Behavioral intention:- The intention
to behave in a certain way towards an
object or person.

6. Cognition:- reflects person’s perception or
beliefs. Cognitive elements are evaluative
beliefs and are measured by attitude scales
or by asking about thoughts.
“I believe Japanese workers are industrious”
reflects cognitive component of an attitude.

7. Components Measured by Examples
A Affect Physiological indicators
Verbal statements I don’t like my
about feelings. boss.
B Behavioral Observed behavior
Intentions Verbal statements I want to transfer to
about intentions another department.
C Cognition Attitude scales
Verbal statements I believe my boss
about beliefs plays favorites at
work.

8. Attitude Formation
Two major influences on attitudes are:
 Direct experience
 Social learning
Direct experience with an object or person is a
powerful influence on attitudes.
They are stronger, held more confidently, and are
more resistant to change tan attitudes formed
through indirect experience. This means that the
attitudes are easily accessed and are active in
our cognitive processes.

9. Social learning:-The process of deriving
attitudes from family, peer groups, religious
organizations and culture.
Children learn to adopt certain attitudes by
the reinforcement they are given by their
parents.
After overhearing other individuals
expressing an opinion or watching them
engaging in a behavior that reflects an
attitude, the observer adopts the attitude.

10. Work Attitudes
Attitudes at work are important because
directly or indirectly, they affect work
behavior. These job-related attitudes tap
positive or negative evaluations that
employees hold about aspects of their
work environment.
 Job satisfaction
 Organizational commitment

11. Job satisfaction
A pleasurable or positive emotional state
resulting from appraisal of one’s job or job
experiences. It has been treated both as a
general attitude and a satisfaction with five
specific dimensions of the job:
 Pay
 Work itself
 Promotion opportunities
 Supervision
 coworkers

12. Job satisfaction is related to organizational
citizenship behavior- behavior that is above
and beyond the call of duty.
Satisfied employees are more likely
to help their coworkers, make positive
comments about company and refrain from
complaining when things at work do not go
well.
Going beyond the call of duty is
especially important to organizations using
teams to get work done. Employees
depend on extra help from each other to
get things accomplished

13. Satisfied workers want to give something
back to the organization because they want
to reciprocate their positive experiences.
Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs)
influence performance evaluation. Employee
who exhibit behaviors such as helping
others, making suggestions for innovations
and developing their skills receive higher
performance ratings.
“Companies with satisfied workers have
better performance than Companies with
dissatisfied workers.”

14. Organizational Commitment
The degree to which an employee
identifies with a particular organization and
its goals, and wishes to maintain
membership in the organization.
Three kinds of Organizational
Commitment:
 Affective commitment
 Continuance commitment
 Normative commitment

15. Affective commitment is an employee’s
intention to remain in an organization
because of strong desire to do so. It
consists of 3 factors:
. A belief in the goals and values of the
organization
. A willingness to put forth effort on behalf
of the organization
. A desire to remain a member of the
organization.
Affective commitment encompasses loyalty.

16. Continuance commitment is an
employee’s tendency to remain in an
organization because the person cannot
afford to leave. Employees believe that if
they leave, they will lose a great deal of
their investments in time, effort and
benefits ant that they cannot replace these
investments.
Normative commitment is a perceived
obligation to remain with the organization.
Individuals who experience normative
commitment stay with the organization
because they fell that they should.

17. Attitude change
Attitudes can be changed through
persuasion. Through persuasion, one
individual (the source) tries to change the
attitude of another person (the target).
Factors that affect the persuasiveness of a
message are:
 Target characteristics
 Source characteristics
 Message characteristics
 Cognitive routes

18. Target characteristics:
These are the characteristics that refer to
the person who receives and processes a
message. Individuals with low self-esteem
are more likely to change their attitude in
response to persuasion than are
individuals with high self-esteem. The
mind frame and mood of the target also
plays a role in this process.

19. Source characteristics:
Three major characteristics of the source
affect persuasion are:
 Expertise
 Trustworthiness
 Attractiveness.
A source who is perceived as an expert is
particularly persuasive. The credibility of a
perceived message is a key variable,
example: If one reads a report about
health and believes it came from a
professional medical journal, one may

20. be more easily persuaded than if one
believes it is from a popular newspaper.
Some psychologists have debated that this
is a long-lasting effect and others are of
view that effect of telling people that a
message came from credible source
disappeared after several weeks (“sleeper
effect”).
If people are informed of the source of a
message before hearing it, there is less
likelihood of a sleeper effect than if they are
told of message and then source.

21. Message characteristics:
The nature of the message plays a role in
persuasion. Sometimes presenting both
sides story is useful to change attitude.
Example: If you want to implement an
unpopular policy at work. You have to
persuade your employees that the policy
is a positive change

22. Cognitive routes:
Persuasion occurs over two routes:
 Central route
 Peripheral route
In the central route to persuasion the
individual is presented with the data and
motivated to evaluate the data and arrive
at an attitude changing conclusion. The
content of message is more important and
it involves direct cognitive processing of
the message’s content.

23. In peripheral route to attitude change, the
individual is encouraged to not look at the
content but at the source i.e. individual is not
motivated to pay much attention to the
message’s content.
This is commonly seen in modern
advertisements that feature celebrities.
In some cases, physicians, doctors, or
experts are used. In other cases film stars
are used for their attractiveness.

24. Barriers to changing attitudes:
 Prior commitments
 Strong commitments
 Publicly expressed attitudes
 Low credibility
 Insufficient information
 Degree of fear