Attiitudes

Attitudes
Attitudes

Attitudes, Job Attitudes,
Personality and Values

Evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects, people, or events

Lecturer: Nicole Knight

Cognitive Component
The opinion or belief segment of an attitude

Affective Component
The emotional or feeling segment of an attitude

Behavioral Component
An intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something
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Nature of Evaluations Underpinning
Attitudes
• Attitudes not represented on single continuum
e.g. totally +ve to totally –ve
• Rather, evaluate attitude objects on both positive and negative dimensions (Cacioppo et al 1977)
–
–
–
–

positive attitude = Hi +ve reaction & Lo -ve reaction negative attitude= Lo +ve reaction & Hi –ve reaction indifference = Lo +ve reaction & Lo –ve reaction ambivalence = Hi +ve reaction & Hi –ve reaction

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The Theory of Cognitive
Dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance
Any incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes
Individuals seek to reduce this gap, or “dissonance”

Desire to reduce dissonance depends on:
• Importance of elements creating dissonance

• Since evaluations of attitude objects ‘automatic’ some consider attitude formation to be a reflex
e.g. Chaiken et al., 1996

• Degree of individual influence over elements
• Rewards involved in dissonance

– But range of personal and social factors influence nature of our evaluations

4

Measuring the A-B Relationship
Recent research indicates that attitudes
(A) significantly predict behaviors (B) when moderating variables are taken into account. A
B
Moderating Variables
• Importance of the attitude
• Specificity of the attitude
• Accessibility of the attitude
• Social pressures on the individual
• Direct experience with the attitude

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Attitudes and Behaviour
• How strong the link between attitudes & behaviour?
• Classic study (LaPiere 1934):
– LaPiere + Chinese-American couple travel 10,000 miles & visit 250 hotels, restaurants etc
– Only one refusal
– Subsequent letter asking if owners / managers would accept
Chinese patrons
– 90% said ‘No’
• Flaws in the study:
– time between measurements
– confound of LaPiere’s own presence
– were respondents the same on both occasions?

Attitudes, Behaviour &
Correspondence

• Conclusion from LaPiere:

– attitudes poor predictors of behaviour!

• Krauss (1995) attitudes do predict behaviour: – when level of correspondence between attitude measure and behaviour is high
– when attitudes placed in broader context

• Poor correspondence in LaPiere’s study
– Asked about Asians in general, not a welldressed and attractive Chinese couple accompanied by an American professor!

Attitudes, Behaviour & Context
• Attitudes better predictor of behaviour when not seen as only determinant of behaviour
• Ajzen & Fishbein (1977):
– Attitudes (How I feel about ‘x’)
– Subjective norms (What my friends feel about ‘x’)
– Perceived behavioural control (Can I behave the way I would like towards ‘x’)
All predict intention to behave in a certain way which then predicts behaviour

• Successful prediction of weight loss, use of condoms, blood donation, exercise, smoking, voting (Kurland, 1995; Sheppard et al., 1988)

Attitude Strength
• Why some attitudes stronger than others?
• Influenced by
– genetic inheritance (Tesser, 1993)
• attitudes of identical twins more similar than those of fraternal twins
• attitudes of twins raised apart as close as those of twins raised in same home
• genetic make-up influencing physical, sensory
& cognitive abilities, temperament & personality
– psychological factors (Boninger et al., 1995):
• when related to own interests & outcomes
• when related to deeply held beliefs
• matters of concern to family, friends in-group

Attitudes, Behaviour & Measurement
Correspondence
• Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977:
– attitudes only correlate with behaviour when attitude measures closely match behaviour in question • e.g. Davidson & Jaccard’s (1979) study of women’s use of birth control within next two years
– Used general (e.g. ‘How do you feel about birth control?’) and specific (e.g. ‘How do you feel about using birth control pills during the next two years?’) attitude measures
– the more specific the measure, the better the prediction of behaviour

Ajzen & Fishbein (1977)
Theory of reasoned action / planned behaviour Attitude
Norm

Intention

Behaviour

Perceived behavioural control

Attitude Strength & Behaviour
• Attitudes more predictive of behaviour:
– when based on greater information and knowledge • (Davidson et al., 1985 [voting behaviour]; Kallgren
& Wood, 1986 [recycling behaviour])

– when formed through personal experience
• (Fazio & Zanna, 1981 [attitudes & behaviour regarding puzzles])

– when highly accessible to awareness
• simple word eliciting strong feelings (Fazio, 1990)

Self-Perception Theory

Types of Attitudes
Job Satisfaction

Attitudes are used after the fact to make sense out of an action that has already occurred.
And,

B

A collection of positive and/or negative feelings that an individual holds toward his or her job

A!

Job Involvement
Identifying with the job, actively participating in it, and considering performance important to self-worth

Organizational Commitment
Identifying with a particular organization and its goals, and wishing to maintain membership in the organization
(Affective, Normative, and Continuance Commitment)
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Types of Attitudes, cont’d

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An Application: Attitude Surveys

Perceived Organizational Support (POS)

Attitude Surveys

Degree to which employees feel the organization cares about their well-being

Eliciting responses from employees through questionnaires about how they feel about their jobs, work groups, supervisors, and the organization

Employee Engagement
An individual’s involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for the organization

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Attitudes and Workforce
Diversity

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Job Satisfaction

• Training activities that can reshape employee attitudes concerning diversity: • Measuring Job Satisfaction
– Single global rating
– Summation score

– Participating in diversity training that provides for self-evaluation and group discussions
– Volunteer work in community and social serve centers with individuals of diverse backgrounds 17

• How Satisfied Are People in Their
Jobs?
– In general, people are satisfied with their jobs.
– Depends on facets of satisfaction—tend to be less satisfied with pay and promotion opportunities 18

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Causes of Job Satisfaction
• Pay influences job satisfaction only to a point.
– After about $40,000 a year, there is no relationship between amount of pay and job satisfaction.
• Personality can influence job satisfaction.
– Negative people are usually not satisfied with their jobs. 20

How Employees Can Express
Dissatisfaction
Exit

Voice

Behavior directed toward leaving the organization

The Effect of Job Satisfaction on
Employee Performance

Active and constructive attempts to improve conditions Loyalty

Neglect

Passively waiting for conditions to improve

• Satisfaction and Productivity
– Satisfied workers are more productive AND more productive workers are more satisfied!
– Worker productivity is higher in organizations with more satisfied workers.
• Satisfaction and Absenteeism
– Satisfied employees have fewer avoidable absences.
• Satisfaction and Turnover
– Satisfied employees are less likely to quit.
– Organizations take actions to retain high performers and to weed out lower performers.

Allowing conditions to worsen 21

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Job Satisfaction and Customer
Satisfaction

Job Satisfaction and OCB
• Satisfaction and OCBs
– Satisfied employees who feel fairly treated by and are trusting of the organization are more willing to engage in behaviors that go beyond the normal expectations of their job.

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• Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction
– Satisfied workers provide better customer service.
• Satisfied employees increase customer satisfaction because:
– They are more friendly, upbeat, and responsive.
– They are less likely to turnover, which helps build long-term customer relationships.
– They are experienced.
• Dissatisfied customers increase employee job dissatisfaction. 24

What Is Personality?

What is personality?

Personality

Personality is the complex organization of cognitions, affects, and behaviors that gives direction and pattern (coherence) to the person’s life. Like the body, personality consists of both structures and processes and reflects both nature (genes) and nurture
(experience).
Pervin, 1996.
But is it a description of how we behave or a cause? The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts and interacts with others, measurable traits a person exhibits

Personality Traits
Enduring characteristics that describe an individual’s behavior

Personality
Determinants
• Heredity
• Environment
• Situation

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Characteristics of personality
Where does personality come from?
• Personality shows continuity, stability and coherence
• Personality is expressed in many ways, including behaviour, thoughts, and feelings
• Personality is organised
• Personality is a determinant that influences how the individual relates to the social world
• Personality is a psychological concept and is assumed to link with physical, biological characteristics of the person
• Personality traits are relatively enduring ways that one person varies from another
Mischel, Shoda and Ayduk (2008)

Personality and behaviour
• Personality can be a strong determinant of behaviour
• The extent to which personality determines behaviour depends on the interaction of the strength of our personality trait and the situation • For example, you ask a colleague to give a high profile presentation at short notice
– Someone with a low score in trait anxiety will take it in their stride
– Someone with a high score in trait anxiety will feel very anxious and nervous
– Someone with a moderate score might be somewhat anxious, but their anxiety might be more contingent on other factors, e.g. who is in the audience, familiarity with the material

• Genetic factors
– Research evidence from behavioural genetics
– Extraversion has a relatively strong genetic basis
– Twin studies show correlations between personality of monozygotic twins to be about .5 (Loehlin, 1992)
– Genes interact with the environment

• Environmental factors
– Experience
– Family and local environment
– Critical events

The Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
A personality test that taps four characteristics and classifies people into 1 of 16 personality types

Personality Types
• Extroverted vs. Introverted (E or I)
• Sensing vs. Intuitive (S or N)
• Thinking vs. Feeling (T or F)
• Judging vs. Perceiving (P or J)

Score is a combination of all four
(e.g., ENTJ)
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The Big Five Model of
Personality Dimensions

Meyers-Briggs (cont’d)

Extroversion

Sociable, gregarious, and assertive

A Meyers-Briggs Score

Agreeableness

– Can be a valuable too for self-awareness and career guidance

Good-natured, cooperative, and trusting

Conscientiousness
Responsible, dependable, persistent, and organized

BUT

Emotional Stability

– Should not be used as a selection tool because it has not been related to job performance! Calm, self-confident, secure under stress (positive), versus nervous, depressed, and insecure under stress (negative)

Openness to Experience
Curious, imaginative, artistic, and sensitive
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Major Personality Attributes
Influencing OB

Measuring Personality
Personality Is Measured by:

• Core Self-Evaluation
– Self-Esteem
– Locus of Control

• Self-Report Surveys
• Observer-Rating
Surveys
• Projective Measures

• Machiavellianism
• Narcissism
• Self-Monitoring
• Risk Taking

– Rorschach Inkblot Test
– Thematic Apperception
Test

• Type A vs. Type B Personality
• Proactive Personality
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Core Self-Evaluation: Two Main
Components

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Machiavellianism

Self-Esteem

Machiavellianism (Mach)

Individuals’ degree of liking or disliking themselves

Degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes that ends can justify means

Locus of Control
The degree to which people believe they are masters of their own fate
•Internals (Internal locus of control)
Individuals who believe that they control what happens to them
•Externals (External locus of control)
Individuals who believe that what happens to them is controlled by outside forces such as luck or chance Conditions Favoring High Machs
• Direct interaction with others
• Minimal rules and regulations
• Emotions distract for others
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Narcissism

Self-Monitoring
Self-Monitoring

A Narcissistic Person

A personality trait that measures an individual’s ability to adjust his or her behavior to external, situational factors • Has grandiose sense of self-importance
• Requires excessive admiration
• Has a sense of entitlement
• Is arrogant

High Self-Monitors

• Tends to be rated as less effective

• Receive better performance ratings
• Likely to emerge as leaders
• Show less commitment to their organizations 37

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Risk-Taking

Personality Types
Type As

• High Risk-Taking Managers
– Make quicker decisions
– Use less information to make decisions
– Operate in smaller and more entrepreneurial organizations • Low Risk-Taking Managers
– Are slower to make decisions
– Require more information before making decisions
– Exist in larger organizations with stable environments
• Risk Propensity
– Aligning managers’ risk-taking propensity to job
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requirements should be beneficial to organizations

Personality Types
Proactive Personality
Identifies opportunities, shows initiative, takes action, and perseveres until meaningful change occurs
Creates positive change in the environment, regardless or even in spite of constraints or obstacles

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1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Are always moving, walking, and eating rapidly
Feel impatient with the rate at which most events take place
Strive to think or do two or more things at once
Cannot cope with leisure time
Are obsessed with numbers, measuring their success in terms of how many or how much of everything they acquire

Type Bs
1.
2.
3.
4.

Never suffer from a sense of time urgency with its accompanying impatience
Feel no need to display or discuss either their achievements or accomplishments Play for fun and relaxation, rather than to exhibit their superiority at any cost
Can relax without guilt

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The use of personality inventories
Contemporary approach (’90)
•Personality assessments can be valuable only if they are meaningfully matched to occupational criteria.
•Personality linked to the job holders‘ competencies:

•A more differentiated criteria, precise specification

The use of personality inventories
Contemporary approach

Personality and performance
• Meta-analytical studies show some associations between personality and performance
• In particular, high scores in conscientiousness are associated with high performance (Barrick &
Mount, 1991)
• Personality can have a stronger influence on work performance when there is close person-job fit
• But organisations are ‘strong’ environments, and in some types of organisation your personality may be less of an influence.

Personality and Performance

The role of personality at work

Job Performance is a criterion that complex, dynamic, and Multi-dimensional (Hough &
Oswald, 2000):
– Task Performance
– Contextual Performance (OCB)
– Counterproductive Work Behaviours
Rotundo and Sackett (2002) posited that an individual’s overall job performance can be conceived of as a composite of these three performance domains.

Personality profiling

Values

• Your profile shows your traits compared with population scores

• Definition: Mode of conduct or end state is personally or socially preferable (i.e., what is right and good)
– Terminal Values
• Desirable end states
– Instrumental Values
• The ways/means for achieving one’s terminal values Note: Values vary by cohort
• Value System: A hierarchy based on a ranking of an individual’s values in terms of their intensity

• Every profile is unique
• Every profile is normal
• There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ profiles good’ bad’
• What matters is fit with your circumstances

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Types of Values—Rokeach
Value Survey

Importance of Values

Terminal Values

• Provide understanding of the attitudes, motivation, and behaviors of individuals and cultures

Desirable end-states of existence; the goals that a person would like to achieve during his or her lifetime

• Influence our perception of the world around us

Instrumental Values

• Represent interpretations of “right” and
“wrong”

Preferable modes of behavior or means of achieving one’s terminal values • Imply that some behaviors or outcomes are preferred over others

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Values in the
Rokeac
h
Survey
(cont’d)

Values in the
Rokeac
h
Survey

Source: M. Rokeach, The Nature of Human
Values (New York: The Free Press, 1973).

Source: M. Rokeach, The Nature of Human
Values (New York: The Free Press, 1973).

E X H I B I T 4-3

E X H I B I T 4-3 (cont’d)

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Values, Loyalty, and Ethical
Behavior
Ethical Values and
Behaviors of Leaders

Mean Value Rankings of Executives, Union
Members, and Activists

Ethical Climate in the Organization

Source: Based on W. C. Frederick and J. Weber, “The Values of
Corporate Managers and Their Critics: An Empirical Description and
Normative Implications,” in W. C. Frederick and L. E. Preston (eds.)
Business Ethics: Research Issues and Empirical Studies (Greenwich,
CT: JAI Press, 1990), pp. 123–44.

E X H I B I T 4-4

63

Hofstede’s Framework for
Assessing Cultures

Values Across Cultures: Hofstede’s
Framework
•
•
•
•
•

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Power Distance

Power Distance
Individualism vs. Collectivism
Masculinity vs. Femininity
Uncertainty Avoidance
Long-term and Short-term Orientation

The extent to which a society accepts that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.

Low distance: Relatively equal power between those with status/wealth and those without status/wealth High distance: Extremely unequal power distribution between those with status/wealth and those without status/wealth

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Hofstede’s Framework (cont’d)
Individualism

vs.

The degree to which people prefer to act as individuals rather than a member of groups

Hofstede’s Framework (cont’d)

Collectivism

Masculinity

A tight social framework in which people expect others in groups of which they are a part to look after them and protect them

vs.

The extent to which the society values work roles of achievement, power, and control, and where assertiveness and materialism are also valued

Femininity
The extent to which there is little differentiation between roles for men and women

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Hofstede’s Framework (cont’d)

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Hofstede’s Framework (cont’d)

Uncertainty Avoidance

Long-term Orientation

The extent to which a society feels threatened by uncertain and ambiguous situations and tries to avoid them A national culture attribute that emphasizes the future, thrift, and persistence

•High Uncertainty Avoidance:
Society does not like ambiguous situations and tries to avoid them.

vs.

Short-term Orientation
A national culture attribute that emphasizes the present and the here and now

•Low Uncertainty Avoidance:
Society does not mind ambiguous situations and embraces them.
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Achieving Person-Job Fit

Holland’s
Typology
of
Personality
and
Congruent
Occupation s Personality-Job Fit Theory
(Holland)
Identifies six personality types and proposes that the fit between personality type and occupational environment determines satisfaction and turnover

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Personality Types
• Realistic
• Investigative
• Social
• Conventional
• Enterprising
• Artistic

E X H I B I T 4–8

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Organizational Culture Profile
(OCP)

Relationships
Among
Occupational
Personality
Types

Source: Reprinted by special permission of the publisher, Psychological
Assessment Resources, Inc., from Making Vocational Choices, copyright 1973,
1985, 1992 by Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc. All rights reserved.

• Useful for determining personorganization fit
• Survey that forces choices/rankings of one’s personal values
• Helpful for identifying most important values to look for in an organization (in efforts to create a good fit)

E X H I B I T 4–9

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