Attitudes And Value

Attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's like or dislike for an item. Attitudes are positive, negative or neutral views of an "attitude object": i.e. a person, behaviour or event. People can also be "ambivalent" towards a target, meaning that they simultaneously possess a positive and a negative bias towards the attitude in question. Attitude comes from judgments. Attitudes develop on the ABC model (affect, behavioral change and cognition). The affective response is a physiological response that expresses an individual's preference for an entity. The behavioral intention is a verbal indication of the intention of an individual. The cognitive response is a cognitive evaluation of the entity to form an attitude. Most attitudes in individuals are a result of observational learning from their environment. The link between attitude and behavior exists but depends on human behavior, some of which is irrational. For example, a person who is in favor of blood transfusion may not donate blood. This makes sense if the person does not like the sight of blood, which explains this irrationality.

Attitude in the workplace

When it comes to Human Resource Management and recruiting, in recent years hire for attitude became a well known mantra. Several commercial tests such as the LAB Profile, Nowhere is your positive attitude more required and appreciated by others than your workplace. There are sound reasons for this: about 30% of an employeeÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs waking hours are spent at the workplace. Without some positive people around, this time could become troublesome. iWAM and PAPI were developed to measure work Attitude and motivation, e.g. for pre-employment testing

The Importance of Attitudes

Taking into consideration current attitude research, Breckler and Wiggins define attitudes as Ð'ÐŽÐ'omental and neural representations, organized through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence on behaviorÐ'ÐŽÐ'±. Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of cognitive, affective and conative components. Attitudes are part of the brainÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs associative networks, the spider-like structures residing in long term memory that consist of affective and cognitive nodes linked through associative pathways. These nodes contain affective, cognitive, and behavioral components. Anderson suggests that the inter-structural composition of an associative network can be altered by the activation of a single node. Thus, by activating an affective or emotion node, attitude change may be possible, though affective and cognitive components tend to be intertwined. In primarily affective networks, it is more difficult to produce cognitive counterarguments in the resistance to persuasion and attitude change. Affective forecasting, otherwise known as intuition or the prediction of emotion, also impacts attitude change. Research suggests that predicting emotions is an important component of decision making, in addition to the cognitive processes. How we feel about an outcome may override purely cognitive rationales.

In terms of research methodology, the challenge for researchers is measuring emotion and subsequent impacts on attitude. Since we cannot see into the brain, various models and measurement tools have been constructed to obtain emotion and attitude information. Measures may include the use of physiological cues like facial expressions, vocal changes, and other body rate measures. For instance, fear is associated with raised eyebrows, increased heart rate and increase body tension. Other methods include concept or network mapping, and using primes or word cues.

The Way of Attitudes Determining Behaviors at Work

In regard of your attitude and the work environment, nowhere is your positive attitude more required and appreciated by others than your workplace. There are sound reasons for this: about 30% of an employeeÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs waking hours are spent at the workplace. Without some positive people around, this time could become troublesome. Supervisors/managers reply on the positive attitudes of employees to establish a team spirit. Positive attitudes among a few employees make othersÐ'ÐŽÐ'Ї job easy. Besides, positive employees devote their time and concentrate on solutions, and radiate enthusiasm that is contagious. This creates a very pleasant work atmosphere where negative thinkers donÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їt find much room to pollute the environment

Both positive and negative employeesÐ'ÐŽÐ'Ї attitudes travel quickly in the workplace. Working around positive persons is a delightful and exciting experience. He/she can make you feel more motivated. Likewise, working near a negative person is very likely to cause you to turn negative. A positive work environment speaks its merits for itself. It is obvious from noticing the productivity and efficiency of workers who not produce at a high level but also makes it easier for others on the team to stay positive and produce more. In the same manner, negative workers can turn others negative. The more positive the workplace is, the higher the departmental productivity. There will be more output, higher productivity, better quality, fewer mistakes and fewer complaints. When employees feel easy and relaxed, they concentrate better reach their potential. Besides, employees are more tolerant of each others and work is viewed as an enjoyable challenge than as a boring task.

To sum up, all of us are responsible for our lives. We produce causes all day long, and the environment can return to us only a corresponding effect. Consequently, we determine the quality of our own life.

Organizational commitment

In the study of organizational behavior and Industrial/Organizational Psychology, organizational commitment is, in a general sense, the employee's psychological attachment to the organization. It can be contrasted with other work-related attitudes, such as Job Satisfaction (an employee's feelings about their job) and Organizational Identification (the degree to which an employee experiences a 'sense of oneness' with their organization).Organizational scientists have developed many definitions of organizational commitment, and numerous scales to measure it. Exemplary of this work is Meyer & Allen's model of commitment, which was developed to integrate numerous definitions of commitment that had proliferated in the research literature. According to Meyer and Allen's three-component model of commitment, prior research indicated that there are three "mind sets" which