Attitudes

Attitude is the willingness to act in a specific way under a specific conditions and situations, which means that youre going to do so and so under these conditions, human beings are born without attitude, but attitudes are build up across the development of human being, they are build up over time, attitudes are build up through accumulated experience whether youve gained these experience directly by yourself or transferred to you through some other members or groups in your society Tip: attitudes are transferred from your group or your society or your community to the next generation through what we call the social learning process Attitudes are very complicated construct, this construct is composed of 3 main components, these components are (ABC model or an Attitude) 1) Affection: its about the emotional charge over your behavior, its about which you prefer and which you wouldnt prefer in specific situation and this is based on your previous experience, like you prefer to go somewhere and dont prefer to go somewhere else, why ? because you past experience, affection can be measured by physiological indicators or verbal statements about feelings EXAMPLE: if someone invited you to go for a nile trip, in case you had bad experiences sailing in the nile, youll refuse to go there, but you can enjoy going to the zoo because you had happy experience there 2) Behavioral intentions: in behavioral intentions therere some objects or persons that youd like to escape from or youd like to go for if they are attractive, this depends on your intention, so intention is either in negative way or positive way EXAMPLE: if youve good experience with some teacher and you see him in the street you immediately go toward him and say hello!, in this case youve positive direction, but if youve bad experience with some other teacher and you see him in the street youll walk away in the opposite direction, in this case youve negative direction, so the intention is either positive or negative, this is the behavioral intention, you either approach the object or go away from it

3) - 3) Cognition: its the information youve about some object, whether these information are rumors or false facts or true facts or knowledge, all these information are used to build up your attitude toward this object EXAMPLE: 50 or 60 years ago in Egypt, there was an attitude toward the socialism and because the Egyptian society tend to be more religious, they used rumors about socialism so Egyptians hated socialism, they used the family taboos which means any action which is not acceptable within the members of the family, soviet union was social regime at that time announced that any boy can marry his mother or any daughter can marry his father, that was completely against our religious values, so they linked such kind of behavior with family taboos, of course youll reject such kind of behavior getting married within the nuclear family, you hate this behavior based on religions so your hate is transferred from this behavior to socialism and thats why we hated becoming socialism, of course this kind of announcement was false fact, they used a false fact which you hate so your emotions has transferred to the whole regime which would allow such kind of behavior ANOTHER EXAMPLE: during the referendum in March 2011, those who say yes will go to heaven and those who say no will go to hell, in this case youre trying to push the people to adopt a specific attitude depending on linking the behavior to some specific result Cognitive dissonance:its a state of tension that is produced when an individual experiences conflict between attitudes and behavior, attitudes are built upon specific experience but you might have some other conflicting experience, so in this case youve two opposite experience EXAMPLE: if you like going to the zoo but it happened when you were trying to feed some animal it bite you there, you had the pleasure being in the zoo but in the same time you got hurt by some animal Two influences on attitude formation: 1) Direct experience 2) Social learning, the process of transferring attitudes from family, peer groups, religious organizations, culture, society, group or community to the next generation, in social learning every child each day getting new experiences, these experiences build up his attitudes, the social learning for young people is much easier than for the older people because of the linakges among the attitudes EXAMPLE: in Egypt we eat in breakfast fool and falafel, its very common among Egyptian people, this way we satisfy our food needs, Egyptians people are accustomed to eat such king of food in the morning

Four processes for social learning through modeling: The learner must 1) Focus on the model: to make more emphasis on the potential model of the behavior 2) Retain what was observed: link it with the past experiences, you must remind the people with the previous experiences 3) Practice the behavior: let the people practice the behavior, in this case they would get the direct experience with the behaviors 4) Be motivated: means that youre going to act in a specific way when a situation emerges, like whenever you live abroad for long time and you remind youve good memories about some specific pattern of behavior such as eating fool and falafel, so youre trying to restore this behavior so in this case youre motivated Attitude-Behavior correspondence requirements: 1) Attitude specificity: any attitude is related to specific object or person, such as religion attitude, economic attitude, political attitude, educational attitude EXAMPLE: I dont like wearing any textiles made of any synthetic fibers, I prefer having cotton wear, this is an attitude toward a textile 2) Attitude relevance: means the attitude has several degrees of relevance depending on the detail of situation EXAMPLE: we normally eat fool and falafel in the morning not in the evening 3) Measurement timing: this is about how to relate the attitudes to the actual behavior under specific situation 4) Personality factors: within the same family, we might have two sisters or two brothers but having different attitudes 5) Social constrains: its about acceptability, it depends on the social situation, some attitudes are accepted in some situations while other attitudes are not accepted in some situations

Work attitudes: job satisfaction: -Job satisfaction is one of the main subjects related to organization behavior, its a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of ones job What are the aspects which might affect your job satisfaction? income, position, boss behavior, working morals among workers and the working environment, the physical environment such as lightning, ventilation, color EXAMPLE: there was some trial in one of the factories in the US during the 1930s, it was a factory about lamps and electronics and they wanted to raise the productivity and the efficiency of the workers, they improved the physical environment of the work, more light, more ventilation, nice paintings and colors, they found that the productivity increased, but under the same physical conditions they found that those who work under democratic leadership are more productive than those who work under dictatorship leadership, this means that not only the physical conditions affect the productivity but also the human relations among each other -Organizational citizenship behavior: 1) behavior that is above and beyond duty, this is in case of informal structure of the organization, whenever you get out of the work you still have some ties or social relations 2) related to job satisfaction, which is related directly to your satisfaction or pleasure Work attitudes: Organizational commitment: Organizational commitment: the strength of an individuals identification with an organization, this affects cohesiveness, cohesiveness means to what extent some person is willing to leave the organization he is a member in 1) Affective commitment: your emotional commitment, youre feeling emotionally satisfied with being committed to your organization 2) Continuance commitment: means youd prefer to stay in your organization, you know everything about your organization, you dont feel anything wrong with the organization, so youd like to continue your membership in your organization 3) Normative commitment: more related to the ethical aspects, you got a lot from your organization, its shame to leave this organization now after the long experience and benefits you got from your organization

Process of persuasion: Persuasion is about the changing of an attitude, weve 3 components in this case, the persuader who is trying persuade someone else with some idea, the targeted person who Id like to persuade him with some idea and the environment, under this environment weve to consider the 3 components of attitude, we usually start persuasion with the cognitive aspect Cognitive routes to persuasion