Attitudes could be regarded as the categorization of a stimulus object along an evaluative dimension based upon three general classes of information: (a) cognitive information; (b) affective/emotional information; and/ or (c) information concerning past behaviors or behavioral intentions. In this sense, attitudes are evaluations. They denote a person’s orientation to some object. All attitudes have an “object of thought,” which may be specific and tangible or abstract and intangible (equality, globalization). By denoting the individual’s orientation to the object, an attitude conveys the individual’s evaluation of the object. Attitudes are expressed in the language of “like/dislike,” “approach/avoid,” and “good/ bad.” When the object of the attitude is important to that person, the evaluation of the object produces an affective, or emotional, reaction in that person. Two features are important here. The first feature is that attitudes can be activated and can function automatically, suggesting that attitudes are a part of cognitive life (since they constitute categorizations). The second feature is that attitudes are communicative and social, since they only have sense inasmuch as they convey information from one person to another.

The tendency to evaluate is not directly observable and intervenes between certain attitude objects and certain responses. It is assumed to be grounded in experience and to have many observable manifestations. Both the experiences that lead to a certain attitude and its manifestations are often divided into three components: cognition, affect, and behavior. The cognitive component refers to a person’s perception of the object of the attitude, and/or what the person says he or she believes about that object. The affective component entails emotions and feelings elicited by the attitude object, and the behavioral component comprises actions directed at the attitude object as well as behavioral intentions.

Attitudes serve a number of functions. The knowledge function is similar to the common understanding of what an attitude does. Attitudes help us explain and understand the world around us. Attitudes serve a utilitarian function, by which it is meant that they help us gain rewards and avoid punishments. To be “politically correct,” for example, is to hold and display attitudes for utilitarian reasons. The third function is the value-expressive one. The expression of an attitude can sometimes be no more than a public statement of what a person believes or identifies with. Finally, attitudes can serve an ego-defensive function. Such attitudes are usually deep-seated, difficult to change and hostile to the attitude object. Attitudes that serve this function project outwardly what are really internal, intrapsychic conflicts.

Work-Related Attitudes

There are two specific work-related attitudes that are crucial in organizations: job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Job satisfaction could be defined as a positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences. It generally refers to a variety of aspects of the job that influence a person’s level of satisfaction with it. These usually include attitudes toward pay, working conditions, colleagues and boss, career prospects, and the intrinsic aspects of the job itself.

One of the major determinants of job satisfaction seems to derive from the intrinsic features of the work itself. According to J. Hackman and G. Oldham’s model, such features might be skill variety—the extent to which the tasks require different skills; task identity—the extent to which an individual can complete a whole piece of work; task significance—the extent to which the work is perceived as influencing the lives of others; autonomy—the extent to which the individual has freedom within the job to decide how it should be done; and feedback—the extent to which there is correct and precise information about how effectively the worker is performing. In addition, leader behavior is also important in satisfaction at work as well as perceptions of distributive justice. Finally, value theory claims that job satisfaction exists to the extent that the job outcomes an individual receives match those outcomes that are desired. The more people receive outcomes they value, the more satisfied they will be; the less they receive outcomes they value, the less satisfied they will be. Value theory focuses on any outcomes that people value, regardless of what they are.

Organizational commitment has been defined by R. T. Mowday and his colleagues as “the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in an organization.” This concept is often thought to have three components: (a) a desire to maintain membership in the organization; (b) belief in and acceptance of the values and goals of the organization; and (c) a willingness to exert effort on behalf of the organization. N. Allen and J. Meyer have divided organizational commitment slightly differently into: (a) affective commitment—essentially concerns the person’s emotional attachment to his or her organization; (b) continuance commitment—a person’s perception of the costs and risks associated with leaving his or her current organization; and (c) normative commitment—a moral dimension, based on a person’s felt obligation and responsibility to his or her employing organization.

Organizations can do several things to enhance employees’ commitment. People tend to be highly committed to their organizations to the extent that they have a good chance to take control over the way they do their jobs and are recognized for making important contributions. Thus, job enrichment becomes a significant tool for the enhancement of organizational commitment. In addition, aligning the interests of the company with those of the employees leads to highly committed individuals. Many companies do this directly by introducing profit-sharing plans: By letting employees share in the company’s profitability, they are more likely to see their own interests as consistent with those of their company. And when these interests are aligned, commitment is high. Finally, in many ways, the easiest way to enhance commitment—also the most effective and the least expensive—is simply listening to employees. The mere act of listening to employees shows them that the organization cares about what they have to say, and they are more likely to reciprocate in terms of organizational commitment.

Attitudes And Behavior

One of the most enduring enigmas researchers have been concerned with is the relationship between attitudes and behaviors. The common-sense view of attitudes has it that attitudes directly cause a person to act in a particular way. However, the relationship between attitudes and behavior is not as simple as this, since as often as not behaviors appear to be quite unrelated to attitudes, and behaviors can cause attitudes as much as the other way around. A number of possible reasons were suggested for this lack of correspondence between attitudes and behavior. One was social pressures of various kinds: laws, societal norms, and the views of specific people can all prevent a person behaving consistently with his or her attitudes. So can other attitudes, limitations on a person’s abilities, and a person’s general activity levels. It was also argued that the research on this issue was badly designed, that measures of attitude were often general whereas measures of behavior were specific, reflecting only one of many elements of the attitude. Also, behavior was assessed on only one occasion or even a short time period.

Praktanis and Turner suggested a number of factors which could increase the correspondence between attitudes and behavior: (a) When the object of the attitude is both well-defined and salient. Salience concerns the extent to which the object of the attitude is perceived as relevant to the situation at hand. (b) When attitude strength is high—that is, when the attitude comes easily to mind. (c) When knowledge supporting the attitude is plentiful and complex. This increases a person’s certainty about what he or she thinks, as well as his or her ability to act effectively toward the object of the attitude. (d) When the attitude supports important aspects of the self.

Icek Ajzen and M. Fishbein developed a model of the relationship between attitudes and behavior designed to overcome these difficulties. This model was called the theory of reasoned action. They argue that attitudes do not predict behaviors per se, but rather behavioral intentions. It is behavioral intentions that directly predict behavior. Behavioral intentions are determined by a person’s attitude and his or her subjective norms. Subjective norms refer to what the individual actor believes his or her significant others believe he or she should do. The theory of reasoned action is only applicable to behaviors under volitional control.

As one of the authors of the original model, Ajzen has revised the model to become the theory of planned behavior, to accommodate the fact that behaviors are often not under the volitional control assumed by the theory of reasoned action. The theory of planned behavior retains behavioral intentions as central in the link between attitudes and behavior, and still holds that behavioral intentions are the product of attitudes toward the behavior and subjective norms. However, an important third factor is added—perceived behavioral control. This factor refers to the person’s perceptions of the ease or difficulty of performing the behaviors. Perceived behavioral control affects the formation of behavioral intentions, and also directly affects the production of behavior itself, independently of behavioral intentions.

Attitude Change

Changing attitudes is an important part of many people’s work in organizations. Attitudes might change by changing behavior more immediately through sanctions and incentives rather than focusing on attitude change per se. Some research indicates that attitude change may often be opposite in direction to a change in behavior. According to the theory of psychological reactance, restricting a person’s freedom of choice motivates the person to evaluate the eliminated alternatives more positively. Thus, the application of sanctions against some undesired behaviors may backfire, especially if the freedom to engage in the restricted behavior is highly valued. But offering positive incentives for engaging in desired behaviors may also have opposite consequences on attitudes, especially if those who receive the incentive have already been intrinsically motivated (i.e., held a positive attitude toward the behavior). Even though the frequency or intensity of the behavior may increase while the reward is applied, attitudes toward the behavior may become less positive, a phenomenon known as the over justification effect.

There are also conditions under which attitudes are assimilated to a prior change in behavior. The investigation of these conditions has been stimulated by the theory of cognitive dissonance developed by L. Festinger. According to the theory, a person’s thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs can be consonant, dissonant, or irrelevant to each other. Holding dissonant beliefs creates cognitive dissonance, an unpleasant state of arousal which motivates the person to reduce the dissonance by adding, subtracting, or substituting cognitions. In this sense, behavior change can lead to attitude change via a process of dissonance reduction. There are three conditions that are necessary for attitude-discrepant actions to produce attitude change: (a) the person must perceive that the behavior has negative consequences; (b) the person must take personal responsibility for the behavior; and (c) the person needs to feel physiological arousal and to attribute this arousal to the attitude-discrepant behavior.

Persuasion

Attitudes might also change through persuasion. Persuasion is a method of influence using communicated information and argumentation from a given source that begins with changing beliefs and knowledge, the cognitive component of the attitude system. The suggestion is that the key to understanding why people would attend to, understand, remember, and accept a persuasive message is to understand the characteristics of the person presenting the message, the contents of the message, and the characteristics of the receiver of the message. The communicator variable affects the acceptability of persuasive messages. A high level of expertise, good physical looks, and extensive interpersonal and verbal skills make a communicator more effective.

Other source characteristics include credibility, attractiveness, likeability, and similarity. The credibility of a communicator rests partly on his or her expertness and trustworthiness. Expertness concerns how much the communicator knows about the subject of the communication. Trustworthiness usually depends mainly on whether the communicator has a record of honesty, and on whether he or she appears to be arguing against his or her own interests. Sometimes, however, a low credibility source has as much persuasive effect as a high credibility one. This has been termed the sleeper effect, and is thought to be due to the person remembering the message but forgetting the source.

The amount of attitude change is also directly related to the degree of attractiveness of the change agent. The power of attractiveness may rest on the desire of the message receiver to be like the communicator. There is also evidence that attractiveness is useful when the message is likely to be unpopular, though its power can be undone if the communicator is perceived to be deliberately exploiting his or her attractiveness. Finally, with regard to similarity, because we tend to like people who are similar to us, we are more persuaded by similar than dissimilar sources. However, it is not quite this simple. When the issue concerns a matter of taste or judgment, similar sources are better accepted than dissimilar ones. However, when the issue concerns a matter of fact, dissimilar sources do better.

Is the use of threat effective in changing attitudes? Moderate amounts of fear increase the effectiveness with which people process information, but high amounts of fear tend to immobilize them. The amount of fear depends not only on how scary the message is, but also on how optimistic a person is about his or her ability to deal with the threat described in it.

Finally, R. Petty and J. Cacioppo made a distinction between the central route to persuasion (which involves careful thought and weighing of arguments) and the peripheral route, which relies more on emotional responses but relatively little thought. Peripheral processing of information occurs when the recipient of the persuasive message is unwilling or unable to pay it very much attention. When this is the case, peripheral cues matter more than the strength of arguments, which include communicator attractiveness and expertise, sheer length of the message, and reactions of other recipients of the message.

On the other hand, persuasive messages processed through the central route need to contain strong arguments that stand up to scrutiny. People who enjoy thinking, are able to concentrate, feel involvement in the issues in question, and feel personally responsible for evaluating the message are most likely to process persuasive messages by the central route. It could be argued that attitude change through the central route is longer lasting and more closely associated with behavior than that through the peripheral route.

Bibliography:

Ajzen and T. J. Madden, “Prediction of Goal-Directed Behavior: Attitudes, Intentions, and Perceived Behavioral Control,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (1986);
H. Eagly and S. Chaiken, The Psychology of Attitudes (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993);
T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske and G. Lindsey, eds., The Handbook of Social Psychology (McGraw-Hill, 1998);
A. Hogg and J. Cooper, eds., The SAGE Handbook of Social Psychology (Sage, 2003);
. G. Zimbardo and M. R. Leippe, The Psychology of Attitude Change and Social Influence (McGrawHill, 1991).

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