Attitudes are enduring organizations of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward people or objects. They have three main components - affective (feelings), behavioral (intentions), and cognitive (beliefs). Some key work attitudes include job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people seek to reduce inconsistencies between their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. When dissonance arises, people try to resolve it by changing their behavior, minimizing the importance of their behavior, changing their attitude, or adding new cognitions to outweigh the dissonant ones.

1. Attitudes
1

2. 

Krech and Crutchfield defined attitude as an,
“enduring organization of motivational,
emotional, perceptual and cognitive processes
with respect to some aspect of individual
world.”
“Attitude is a tendency or predisposition to
evaluate an object or symbol of that object in a
certain way.” -Katz & Scotland
2

3. 
Relatively stable clusters of feelings, beliefs and
behavioural intentions towards specific objects,
people or institutions.
3

4. Three components:
 Affective component
 Behavioural component
 Cognitive component

4

5. 

AFFECTIVE COMPONENT: The emotional
and feeling segment of attitude. These are
verbal statements about feelings. It refers to an
individual’s feeling about something or
someone. E. g. I like this.
BEHAVIOURAL COMPONENT: An intention
to behave in a certain way toward someone or
something. It reflects observed behaviour. E.g. I
want to change my job.
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6. 
COGNITIVE COMPONENT: The opinion or
belief segment of an attitude. These are
evaluative beliefs and are measured
by
attitude scales by taking about thoughts. E.g. I
believe my boss is partial for some employees.
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7. 
Job Satisfaction: A positive feeling about one’s
job resulting from an evaluation of its
characteristics.

Job Involvement: The degree to which a person
identifies with his or her job, actively
participates in it, and considers his or her
performance important to self worth.
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8. 
Organizational Commitment: The degree to
which an employee identifies with a particular
organization and its goals, and wishes to
maintain membership in the organization.
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9. Work Attitudes
Work Attitudes
Affective
Normative
Commitment
Commitment
Desire
Perceived
Organizational
to
obligation
Commitment
Remain
to remain
The strength of an
individual’s
identification with
an organization
Continuance
Commitment
Cannot afford
to leave

10. The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
Desire to reduce dissonance
Desire to reduce dissonance
• •Importance of elements creating dissonance
Importance of elements creating dissonance
• •Degree of individual influence over elements
Degree of individual influence over elements
• •Rewards involved in dissonance
Rewards involved in dissonance
3–10

11. Types of relationship between Cognition
Types of relationship between Cognition
Dissonance:
Incompatibility
Consonance: Consistent
Irrelevance: Unrelated
3–11

12. Cognitive
Dissonance:
(proposed by Leon Festinger)
Refers to any incompatibility
that
an
individual
might
perceive between two or more
of his attitudes or behaviour and
attitude.
3–12

13. Paths to reduce dissonance
Paths to reduce dissonance
Change behaviour
Concluding behaviour is
not that important.
Change the attitude
Outweigh the dissonant
one.
3–13