Individual Behaviour - Attitude

ATTITUDE

            Attitude is the persistent tendency to respond in a positive or negative way to someone or something in one’s environment. Attitudes are closely linked to behavior and an integral part of the world of work. An individual does not have an attitude until he or she responds to an entity on an affective, cognitive, or behavioral basis. These three components – affect, behavioral intentions and cognition – constitute ABC Model of an attitude.

Component	Description	Measured by
Affect	Emotional component of an attitude	Physiological indicators, Verbal statements about feelings
Behavior	Intention to behave in a certain way	Observing behavior, Verbal statements about intentions
Cognition	Beliefs or perceptions	Attitude scales, Verbal statements about beliefs

Attitude formation: Attitudes are learned either from direct experience or social learning. Direct experience with something strongly influences attitudes towards it. In social learning, the family, peer groups, religious organizations, and culture shape an individual’s attitudes indirectly.

Theories of attitude formation:

1.  Cognitive-consistency theories: Psychological tension created by the unpleasant state leads to attempts at reducing the inconsistency.

                a.    Balance theory – F.Heider: Consistency in the judgment of the people and                             issues that are linked by some form of relationship

                                                              i.      Three elements- The person, other person and impersonal entity

                           ii.      Two relationships – linking relations and unit relations    

b. Extension of Balance Model – Abelson: Abelson has suggested has four methods in which a person can resolve imbalance in cognitive structures

•  Denial- Denying a relationship  when imbalance occurs
•  Bolstering- Adding another issue in the main issue
•  Differentiation- Splitting one of the elements into two elements that re related in opposite ways to other elements in the system and negatively related to each other
•  Transcendence- Combining elements into larger, more super ordinate units from an balanced structures 

c.    Congruity Theory - Os good and P.H.Tannenbaum: This theory focuses on the changes in the evaluation of a source and a concept that are linked by an associative or dissociative assertion. Also states that how much change should be there in the attitudes towards the source and the concept so that incongruity is resolved. 

d.    Affective-Cognitive Consistency theory – M.I.Rosenberg: This theory is concerned with the consistency between a person’s overall attitude or effect towards an object or issue and his beliefs about its relationship to his more general values

e. Cognitive Dissonance Theory- Leon Festinger: Cognitive Dissonance refers to any incompatibility that an individual might perceive between two or more of his attitudes or between his behavior and attitudes. The desire to reduce dissonance is determined by three factors:

• Importance  of the elements creating the dissonance
•  The degree of influence the individual believes he has over the elements
•  The rewards that may be involved in dissonance

2.      Functional Theory: The functional theory considers how attitudes and efforts are related to the motivational structure of the individual. This theory focuses on two things:

• The meaning of the influence situation in terms of both the kinds of motives that it arouses
• The individual’s method of coping and achieving his goals 

a.      Daniel Katz outlines four functions of attitude areas as follows:

•  Instrumental function: Develop favorable attitudes towards things that aid or reward us
•  Ego-defensive function: Protect from acknowledging basic truths about ourselves or the harsh realities of life
•  Value-Expressive function: Express basic values, reinforce of self-image
•   Knowledge function: Provide meaningful, structured environment

b.      Kelman has distinguished three processes of attitude formation and change as follows:

• Compliance: When an attitude is formed or changed in order to gain a favorable impression from other person or group
• Identification: When a person forms or changes his attitude because this adoption helps him establish or maintain a positive self defining relationship with the influencing agent
• Internalization: Adopting an attitude because it is congruent with one’s overall value systems 

3.     Social Judgment Theory – Sherif and Hoveland: This theory attempts to explain how existing attitudes produce distortions of attitudes related objects and how these judgments mediate attitude change. The person’s initial attitude on an issue provides a point of reference against which he evaluates other opinions. These views can be considered in terms of attitudinal continuum as follows:

a.Latitude of acceptance: The range of opinions the individual finds acceptable, encompasses the opinion that best characterizes his own stand

b.Attitude of rejection: The range of opinion the individual finds objectionable, encompasses the opinion he finds most objectionable

c.  Attitude of non-commitment: The range of opinions that the person finds neither acceptable nor unacceptable 

4.      Self-perception theory- Daryl Bern:  This theory suggests that people develop attitudes and opinions by observing their own behavior and drawing conclusions from it.

Barriers to attitude change:

•  Prior commitment
•  Insufficient information
• Balance and consistency
• Lack of resources
• Improper reward system
• Resistance to change

Attitudes related to Organizational Behavior:

1.     Job Satisfaction: A pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences. It has been treated both as a general attitude and as satisfaction with five specific dimensions of the job: pay, the work itself, promotion opportunities, supervision and coworkers.

Measures of Job Satisfaction:

·         JDI- Job Descriptive Index

·         MSQ- Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire

2.    Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Behavior that is above and beyond the call of duty

3. Workplace Deviance Behavior: A result of negative attitudes and consists of counterproductive behavior that violates organizational norms and harms others or the organization

4.    Job involvement: The degree to which one is cognitively engrossed and engaged in one’s job to the point it becomes central to his/her identity.

5. Organizational Commitment: The strength of an individual’s identification with an organization 

Attitude Measurement: An attitude measurement survey is a study on a properly drawn sample, of a specified population to find out what people in that population feel about a specified issue. 

 Attitude surveys: Employee attitude surveys provide a picture of organization’s needs.

Attitude scales:

1.  Thurstone scale (11 point range): An attitude scale consisting of items in the form of statements with which the respondent has either to agree or disagree

2.  Likert scale (5 or 7 point): An attitude scaling method in which respondents indicate the extent of their agreement with each item on a scale

3.  Semantic differential:  A flexible method of attitude scaling in which the subjects rate the concepts, in which the researcher is interested, on a bipolar seven point scale

4. Guttman scale: This scale involves the researcher constructing a set of hierarchical statements relating to the concept under investigation. These statements should reflect an increasing intensity of attitude. The point at which the respondent disagrees with a statement reflects the respondent’s scale position.

Individual Behaviour - Perception

PERCEPTION

The process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environments is known as perception.

Nature of Perception:

• Perception is the intellectual process
• Perception is the basic cognitive or psychological process
• Perception becomes a subjective process and different people may perceive the same event differently

Perceptual process:

Perceptual inputs  ---> Perceptual throughput ----> Perceptual outputs

Stimuli -----> Receiving, Selecting, Organizing, Interpreting ----->  Actions

Perceptual Organisation:

• Grouping: The perceiver groups the various stimuli on the basis of their similarity or proximity
• Closure: When faced with incomplete information, people fill up the gaps themselves to make the information meaningful based on the past experience past data or facts
• Figure-Ground Principle: The tendency to keep certain phenomena in focus and others in background

Factors influencing perception:

1.       Characteristics of the perceiver:

a.      Familiarity with target

b.      Attitudes

c.       Mood

d.      Self Concept

e.      Cognitive structure

2.      Characteristics of the target:

a.      Physical appearance

b.      Verbal communication

c.       Non verbal cues

d.      Intentions

3.      Characteristics of Situation:

a.      Context of interaction

b.      Strength of situational cues

Barriers to perception:

Selective Perception: The process of selecting information that supports for individual viewpoints while discounting information that threatens viewpoints

Stereotype: A generalization about a group of people

First impression error: The tendency to form lasting opinions about an individual based on initial perceptions

Projection: Overestimating the number of people who share our own beliefs, values and behavior

The Self-fulfilling Prophecies – Pygmalion effect: The situation in which our expectations about people affect our interaction with them in such a way that our expectations are fulfilled

Halo effect: The tendency to draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of single characteristic

Contrast effect: Evaluation of a person’s characteristics that is affected by comparisons with other people recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics

Self-serving bias: The tendency for individuals to attribute their own success to internal factors and put the blame for failures on external factors

Impression Management: The process by which individuals try to control the impressions others have of them

Fundamental attribution error: The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments about the behavior of others

Horn effect: The tendency to evaluate an individual completely on the basis of a negative quality or feature perceived

Response Disposition: It refers to a person’s tendency to perceive familiar stimuli rather than unfamiliar ones

Response Salience:  It is the set of disposition which are determined not by familiarity of the stimulus situations, but by the person’s own cognitive predispositions

Perceptual Defence: It refers to the screening of those elements which create conflict and threatening situation in people