Attitudes and Job Satisfaction
Session Objectives
• To understand attitudes, their components
and how they affect our behaviours • Compare and contrast the major job attitudes. • Define job satisfaction and show how it can be measured. • Summarize the main causes of job satisfaction.
Attitudes are evaluative statements- either favourable or unfavourable- about objects, people or events. Jung's definition of attitude is a "readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way" (Jung, [1921] Most attitudes are the result of either direct experience or observational learning from the environment.
Mainly there are 3 components of Attitudes-
Cognitive
Affective
The emotional or feeling segment of an attitude
The opinion or belief segment of an attitude
Behavioral
Attitude
An intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something
Moderating Variables
The most powerful moderators of the attitude-behavior
relationship are:
Importance of the attitude-reflects fundamental values,
self interest or identification with groups or individuals have strong relation with behaviour Correspondence to behavior- closer the attitude and behaviour, stronger the relationship Accessibility- the more we talk, the more we remember and more its effect on behaviour
Existence of social pressures- in accord with the attitude facilitates expression and vice versa Personal and direct experience of the attitude.
Leon Festinger (1957)
– No, the reverse is sometimes true! Cognitive Dissonance: Any incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes
Individuals seek to reduce this uncomfortable gap,
or dissonance, to reach stability and consistency
The stronger the dissonance, the greater the urge to
reduce it or actively avoid situations and information that create awareness of dissonance existing
Ways to reduce dissonance
- Consistency is achieved by changing the attitude causing dissonance
• To understand attitudes, their components
and how they affect our behaviours • Compare and contrast the major job attitudes. • Define job satisfaction and show how it can be measured. • Summarize the main causes of job satisfaction.
Attitudes are evaluative statements- either favourable or unfavourable- about objects, people or events. Jung's definition of attitude is a "readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way" (Jung, [1921] Most attitudes are the result of either direct experience or observational learning from the environment.
Mainly there are 3 components of Attitudes-
Cognitive
Affective
The emotional or feeling segment of an attitude
The opinion or belief segment of an attitude
Behavioral
Attitude
An intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something
Moderating Variables
The most powerful moderators of the attitude-behavior
relationship are:
Importance of the attitude-reflects fundamental values,
self interest or identification with groups or individuals have strong relation with behaviour Correspondence to behavior- closer the attitude and behaviour, stronger the relationship Accessibility- the more we talk, the more we remember and more its effect on behaviour
Existence of social pressures- in accord with the attitude facilitates expression and vice versa Personal and direct experience of the attitude.
Leon Festinger (1957)
– No, the reverse is sometimes true! Cognitive Dissonance: Any incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes
Individuals seek to reduce this uncomfortable gap,
or dissonance, to reach stability and consistency
The stronger the dissonance, the greater the urge to
reduce it or actively avoid situations and information that create awareness of dissonance existing
Ways to reduce dissonance
- Consistency is achieved by changing the attitude causing dissonance