Attitudes: What are they?

There are many ways to define an attitude, and several definitions are currently
accepted. Basically, an attitude is a stable and enduring disposition to evalua
te an object or entity (a person, place or thing), in a particular way. I like wo
rking on this project and I do not like working after office hours are examples of
attitudes because they express a persons general feeling, either favorable or un
favorable toward something.
Typically attitudes have been considered along with two other elements beliefs a
nd behaviors. Beliefs represent what we have learned or come to know through exp
erience. As such, they are either true or represent what we think is true (for e
xample, that working on a challenging project would bring recognition in the org
anization or that working after office hours would affect health and personal li
fe). Behaviors (for example, whether one completes the project successfully or l
eaves the office at 6PM in the evening) represent the actions we take with regar
d to a particular object or entity.
In the simplest case attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors should be related. A disl
ike of nuclear power plants would be associated with negative beliefs about them
(for example, believing that they are dangerous and often run in an irresponsib
le manner) and negatively oriented behaviors (signing a petition to stop constru
ction of a nuclear power plant).

Sometimes these three elements are strongly related (Campbell, 1947), though in
other instances the relation between attitudes, beliefs and behaviors is not ver
y strong. (Wiegel et al., 1974). For example, we might dislike studying, (a nega
tive attitude) and rarely study at all (negative behavior) yet truly believe it
will lead to success, yet rarely study (for example if we were required to work
for forty hours a week to support ourselves or if we were brilliant). We could e
ven dislike studying, be unsure whether it leads to better grades, and yet spend
a great deal in studying. Hence we can say that attitude is a complex cognitive
process.
Clearly, the possible relations between attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are co
mplex. We will discuss the various possibilities more throughout the chapter.
Why are attitudes important?
* Attitudes serve as one way to organize our relationship with our world. Th
ey make our interactions more predictable affording us a degree of control.
For example, the attitude I like working for this company is very useful in
guiding our behavior towards the company s work.
* Attitudes also enable us to reduce the vast amount of information that we
possess into manageable units. All the beliefs we have about our company could b
e summarized as I like my company , and thus our attitude represents the combinatio
n of many bits of information for us.
* We can use others attitudes to make judgments about them.
* It has been found consistently that the more similar our attitudes are to
those of others, the more we like them.
* Finally, people s attitudes can sometimes be useful in predicting behavior,
such as how they will vote in an election or which brand of car they will buy.

Components of Attitudes
Attitudes consist of three basic components: emotional, informational, and behav
ioral.
* The emotional component involves the person s feelings, or affect- positive,
neutral, or negative- about an object. Thus, emotion is given the greatest atte
ntion in the organizational behavior literature in relation to job-satisfaction.

In addition, the expression of emotions either positive, like a customer s

ervice representative; negative, like a bill collector or a police officer; or n
eutral, like an academic administrator or public servant- is also important to w
ork behavior.
* The informational component consists of the beliefs and information the in
dividual has about the object. A supervisor may believe that two weeks of traini
ng is necessary before a worker can operate a particular piece of equipment.
In reality, the average worker may be able to operate the machine after on
ly four days of training. Yet the information the supervisor is using (that two
weeks is necessary) is the key to his attitude about training.
* The behavioral component consists of a person s tendencies to behave in a pa
rticular way toward an object. For example the supervisor in the above paragraph
may assign two weeks of machine training to all his new people.

It is important to remember that of the three components of attitudes, only the

behavioral component can be directly observed.
One cannot see another person s feelings (the emotional component) or beliefs (The
informational component). These two components can only be inferred.
For example, when the supervisor assigns a new employee to two weeks training on
the equipment, it is only inferred that the 1) the supervisor has strong feelin
gs about the length of training required and the individual believes that this l
ength of training is necessary.

How are attitudes formed?

Attitudes may be learned from the experiences we have. These include mostly mund
ane events such as being praised by our parents for expounding liberal attitudes,
but also major life and world events.
The basic processes through which we learn attitudes remain the same throughout
life, though as we grow older the attitudes we learn may be more complex, and th
e ones we already hold may become more resistant to change.
The processes through which our experiences create attitudes are all related to l
earning which is a basic human process. We will learn more about learning process
es in the chapter 6 of this module.
As for now just keep in mind that all our attitudes are learned from our experie
nce of the social context around us.
The influence of the family, schooling, and peer groups waxes and wanes as we gr
ow into adolescence and adulthood.
Thus, the primary sources of our attitudes change as we mature. A final source o
f attitudes is the culture in which a child grows up. Culturally prevalent preju
dices are generally reflected in prejudiced attitudes.