Unit 3: Attitude, Value, and Motivation

Unit 3: Attitude, Value, and Motivation

• Attitudes are evaluative statements or judgments about objects, people, or events.
• Attitudes reflect feelings about something.
• Attitudes are often a result of experience or upbringing.
• Attitudes significantly influence behavior and affect how people act in various situations.
• Attitudes are enduring but can change.

Definition of Attitude

• According to Gordon Allport, an attitude is a mental and neural state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individual's response to all objects and situations with which it is related.

Components of Attitudes

• Attitudes have three components (ABCs):
  • Cognitive component: The opinion or belief segment (e.g., "My pay is low").
  • Affective component: The emotional or feeling segment (e.g., "I am angry that my pay is low").
  • Behavioral component: An intention to behave in a certain way (e.g., "I am going to look for another job that pays better").

Factors Influencing Attitude Formation

• Experience
• Social roles and norms
• Classical and operant conditioning
• Observing people in the environment

Social Factors

• Social roles play a significant role in shaping attitudes, influencing how people are expected to behave in specific contexts.
• Social norms define acceptable behaviors within a society.

Learning (Attitude Formation)

• Classical conditioning: Advertisers use this method to develop positive associations with products (e.g., associating a sports drink with beautiful people).
• Operant conditioning: Attitudes can change based on rewards and punishments. (e.g., negative feedback about smoking can lead to avoiding it).
• Observation: Observing admired individuals' attitudes often leads to adopting similar beliefs (e.g., children observing parents' attitudes).

Functions of Attitudes

• Adjustment function: Attitudes guide people towards social acceptance.
• Value-expressive function: Attitudes reflect core values and beliefs.
• Ego-defensive function: Attitudes shield individuals from uncomfortable realities.
• Knowledge function: Attitudes help make sense of a complex world, simplifying information processing.

Job Attitudes

• Organizational Behavior (OB) focuses on attitudes related to positive or negative evaluations of the work environment.
• Key job attitudes include job satisfaction, job involvement, organizational commitment, perceived organizational support, and employee engagement.
• Job satisfaction is a positive feeling about one's job based on its characteristics.
• Job involvement involves identifying with one's job, actively participating, and considering performance crucial to self-worth.
• Psychological empowerment describes an employee's belief in their influence on the work environment, competence, job meaning, and autonomy.
• Organizational commitment measures the degree to which an employee identifies with an organization, its goals, and wishes to remain a member.
• Perceived organizational support (POS) illustrates the degree to which an organization values employees' contributions and well-being.
• Employee engagement refers to an employee's enthusiasm for their job.

Are These Job Attitudes All That Distinct?

• Evidence suggests these job attitudes often overlap significantly, potentially influenced by personality traits. Knowing job satisfaction often gives insights into how a person views the organization.

Values

• Values represent basic convictions about what mode of conduct or end-state of existence is preferable.
• Values include judgments about what is right, good, and desirable.
• Values have content (what the mode of conduct or end-state is) and intensity (how important).
• Individual's ranking of values is called a value system.
• Values tend to be relatively stable but can be changed.
• Values relate to personality traits.

Terminal versus Instrumental Values

• Terminal values are desirable end states of existence (e.g., freedom and prosperity).
• Instrumental values are preferable modes of behavior or means of achieving terminal values (e.g., self-improvement and ambition).
• The Rokeach Value Survey (RVS) has terminal and instrumental values, each with 18 values.
• Values vary among groups and occupations.

Generational Values

• Values change across generations.
• Researchers study generational cohorts to understand common work values.
• Examples of generational value differences include different attitudes toward work/life balance and loyalty.

Cultural Values

• Values are learned and vary across cultures.
• Hofstede's framework and the GLOBE framework identify dimensions of cultural values (e.g., power distance and individualism-collectivism).
• The GLOBE framework is an extension of Hofstede's that includes more aspects like humane orientation and performance orientation.

Motivation

• Motivation is the process that explains an individual's intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal.
• Intensity describes how hard a person tries.
• Direction is the effort channeled to benefit the organization.
• Persistence is the length of time an individual maintains effort.
• Motivation works best when personal needs align with organizational goals.
• A need is an internal state that makes outcomes appear desirable, and unmet needs cause tension.

Early Theories of Motivation (Content Theories)

• Hierarchy of Needs Theory (Maslow): Motivation is driven by a hierarchy of five needs (physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization). Each need must be met before moving to the next.
• Theory X and Theory Y (McGregor): Theory X assumes negativity and external control is necessary to motivate employees, while Theory Y assumes positive and self-motivation and that employees can be entrusted to achieve goals.

Two-Factor Theory (Herzberg)

• Motivation is driven by motivators (intrinsic factors leading to job satisfaction) and hygiene factors (extrinsic factors leading to job dissatisfaction).
• This theory differs from previous approaches by showing that satisfaction and dissatisfaction are not opposite ends of the same continuum. Hygiene factors only result in the absence of dissatisfaction while motivators result in job satisfaction.

McClelland's Theory of Needs

• Individuals are motivated by one of three needs- achievement, power, or affiliation. These are learned and often a person's dominant need drives their behavior and motivation.

Contemporary Theories of Motivation (Process Theories)

• Goal-setting theory: Specific and difficult goals, with feedback, lead to higher performance. MBO (management by objectives) programs are a common way of establishing goals.
• Self-efficacy theory: Belief in one's ability to succeed. Components leading to higher self-efficacy include experiences of mastery, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and emotional/physiological states.
• Equity theory: Motivation is influenced by the perceived fairness between inputs and outputs compared to others, with potential responses as employees change inputs, outcomes, or perception of others.
• Expectancy theory: Motivation is driven by the belief that effort will lead to performance, performance will lead to reward, and that the reward will satisfy individual goals.

Explore the essential concepts of attitude, value, and motivation in this quiz focused on Unit 3. Learn about the definition of attitude, its components, and how it influences behavior. This quiz is designed to enhance your understanding of psychological principles related to attitudes.