Here is a compilation of essays on ‘Attitude’ for class 9, 10, 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Attitude’ especially written for school and college students.
Essay on Attitude
Essay Contents:
- Essay on the Meaning and Definition of Attitude
- Essay on the Characteristics of Attitude
- Essay on the Components of Attitude
- Essay on the Formation of Attitude
- Essay on the Functions of Attitude
- Essay on the Change of Attitude
- Essay on the Types of Attitude
- Essay on the Theories of Attitude
Essay # 1. Meaning and Definition of Attitude:
Attitudes are learned predispositions and represent cluster of beliefs, assessed feelings and behavioural intentions towards aspects of our environment like a person, object or event. Attitudes are evaluative statements either favourable or unfavourable concerning objects, people or events and are a persistent tendency to feel and behave in a particular way toward some object.
Measuring the A-B Relationship Recent research indicates that attitudes:
(A) Significantly predict behaviours
(B) When moderating variables are taken into account.
According to G.W. Allport, “Attitude is a mental and neutral state of readiness organized through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it is related.”
Krech and Crutchfield defined “attitude as an enduring organization of motivational, emotional, perceptual and cognitive processes with respect to some aspect of the individual’s world.”
According to Katz and Scotland, “Attitude is a tendency or predisposition to evaluate an object or symbol of that object in a certain way”. In effect attitude is used in a generic sense, as to what people perceive, feel and express their views about a situation, object or other people. Attitude cannot be seen, but the behaviour can be seen as an expression of attitude.
Essay # 2. Characteristics of Attitude:
The attitude is the evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects, people, or events. More precisely attitudes can be defined as a persistent tendency to feel and behave in a particular way toward some object which may include events or individuals as well.
Attitude can be characterized in three ways:
(a) They tend to persist unless something is done to change them.
(b) Attitudes can fall anywhere along a continuum from very favourable to very unfavourable.
(c) Attitudes are directed toward some object about which a person has feelings (sometimes called “affect”) and beliefs.
Essay # 3. Components of Attitudes:
The three basic components of attitude are cognitive, affective and behavioural part:
(a) Cognitive Component:
Cognitive component of attitude is related to value statement. It consists of belief, ideas, values and other information that an individual may possess or has faith in. Quality of working hard is a value statement or faith that a manager may have.
(b) Affective Component:
Affective component of attitude is related to person’s feelings about another person, which may be positive, negative or neutral.
Example: I do not like Maya because she is not hard working, or I like Mina because she is hard working. It is an expression of feelings about a person, object or a situation.
(c) Behavioural Component:
Behavioural component of attitude is related to impact of various situations or objects that lead to individual’s behaviour based on cognitive and affective components.
Example: I do not like Maya because she is not hard working is an affective component, I therefore would like to disassociate myself with her, is a behavioural component and therefore I would avoid Maya.
Development of favourable attitude, and good relationship with Mina is but natural. Individual’s favorable behaviour is an outcome of the fact that Mina is hardworking. Cognitive and affective components are bases for such behaviour. Former two components cannot be seen, only the behaviour component can be seen. Former is important because it is a base for formation of attitude. These components are explained in Figure.
Essay # 4. Formation of Attitude:
Direct Experience with the Object:
Attitudes can develop from the personally rewarding or punishing experience with an object.
(a) Classical Conditioning:
People develop associations between various objects and the emotional reactions that accompany them.
(b) Operant Conditioning:
Attitudes that are reinforced, either verbally or nonverbally, tend to be maintained.
Vicarious Learning:
Where person learns something by the observation of others helps in attitude development where individual has no direct experience with the object of attitude.
Formation of attitudes is influenced by:
(i) Family and Peer Groups:
A person may learn attitude through the imitation of family members and peers.
(ii) Neighbourhood:
The neighbourhood has a certain structure in terms of having cultural facilities, religious groupings and possibly ethnic differences. The neighbours tolerate condone or deny certain attitudes.
Economic Status and Occupations of the Person:
Mass communication like news-paper, TV, radio etc.
These in turn give rise to development of one’s attitudes.
(a) Attitudes Help Predict Work Behavior:
The following example might help to illustrate it. After introducing a particular policy, it is found from an attitude survey, that the workers are not too happy about it. During the subsequent week it is found that the attendance of the employees drops sharply from the previous standard. Here management may conclude that a negative attitude toward new work rules led to increased absenteeism.
(b) Attitudes Help People to Adapt to their Work Environment:
An understanding of attitudes is also important because attitudes help the employees to get adjusted to their work. If the management can successfully develop a- positive attitude among the employees, they will be better adjusted to their work.
Essay # 5. Functions of Attitude:
According to Katz, attitudes serve four important functions from the viewpoint of organizational behaviour.
These are as follows:
(a) The Adjustment Function:
Attitudes often help people to adjust to their work environment. Well-treated employees tend to develop a positive attitude towards their job, management and the organization in general while berated and ill-treated organizational members develop a negative attitude. In other words, attitudes help employees adjust to their environment and form a basis for future behaviour.
(b) Utilitarian Function:
An attitude may develop because either the attitude or the attitude object is instrumental in helping one to obtain rewards or avoid punishments.
(c) Ego-Defensive Function:
Attitudes help people to retain their dignity and self- image. When a young faculty member who is full of fresh ideas and enthusiasm, joins the organization, the older members might feel somewhat threatened by him. But they tend to disapprove his creative ideas as ‘crazy’ and ‘impractical’ and dismiss him altogether.
(d) The Value-Expressive Function:
Attitudes provide individuals with a basis for expressing their values. For example, a manager who values hard and sincere work will be more vocal against an employee who is having a very casual approach towards work.
(e) The Knowledge Function:
Attitudes provide standards and frames of reference that allow people to understand and perceive the world around him. If one has a strong negative attitude towards the management, whatever the management does, even employee welfare programmes can be perceived as something ‘bad’ and as actually against them.
Essay # 6. Change of Attitudes:
Employees’ attitudes can be changed and sometimes it is in the best interests of managements to try to do so. For example, if employees believe that their employer does not look after their welfare, the management should try to change their attitude and help develop a more positive attitude in them.
However, the process of changing the attitude is not always easy. There are some barriers which have to be overcome if one strives to change somebody’s attitude.
There are two major categories of barriers that come in the way of changing attitudes:
1. Prior commitment when people feel a commitment towards a particular course of action that has already been agreed upon and thus it becomes difficult for them to change or accept the new ways of functioning.
2. Insufficient information also acts as a major barrier to change attitudes. Sometimes people simply see any reason to change their attitude due to unavailability of adequate information.
Some of the possible ways of changing attitudes are described below:
(a) Providing New Information:
Sometimes a dramatic change in attitude is possible only by providing relevant and adequate information to the person concerned. Scanty and incomplete information can be a major reason for brewing negative feeling and attitudes.
(b) Use of Fear:
Attitudes can be changed through the use of fear. People might resort to change their work habit for the fear of fear of unpleasant consequences. However, the degree of the arousal of fear will have to be taken into consideration as well.
(c) Resolving Discrepancies:
Whenever “people face” a dilemma or conflicting situation they feel confused in choosing a particular course of action. Like in the case where one is to choose from” between two alternative courses of action, it is often become difficult for him to decide which is right for him.
Even when he chooses one over the other, he might still feel confused. If someone helps him in pointing out the positive points in favour of the chosen course of action, the person might resolve the dilemma.
(d) Influence of Friends and Peers:
A very effective way of changing one’s attitude is through his friends and colleagues. Their opinion and recommendation for something often proves to be more important. If for example, they are all praise for a particular policy introduced in the work place, chances are high that an individual will slowly accept that even when he had initial reservations for that.
(e) Co-Opting:
If you want to change the attitude of somebody who belongs to a different group, it is often becomes very effective if you can include him in your own group. Like in the case of the union leader who are all the time vehemently against any management decision, can be the person who takes active initiative in implementing a new policy when he had participated in that decision making process himself.
Essay # 7. Types of Attitude:
1. Job Satisfaction:
Job satisfaction is related to general attitude towards the job. A person having a high level of satisfaction will generally hold a positive attitude while dissatisfied people will generally display negative attitude towards life. When we talk about attitude, we generally speak about job satisfaction because they are inter-related in organizational behaviour.
2. Job Involvement:
Job involvement refers to the degree to which a person identifies himself (psychologically) with his job, actively participates and considers his perceived performance level important to self-worth. (Robbins). High level of involvement indicates that the individual cares for his job that has an impact on high productivity. Higher the job satisfaction, lower will be absenteeism and employee turnover.
3. Organizational Commitment:
Organizational commitment refers to degree to which an employee identifies himself with the organizational goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organization. He wants to “belong” to the organization and take an active part in its functioning.
Absenting or resigning from the job versus job satisfaction is a predictor of organizational commitment. The concept has been very popular in the recent times. Organizational commitment depends upon job enrichment factor and degree to which the workers enjoy autonomy and freedom of action while performing.
Nature of Employee Attitudes:
Attitudes are the feelings and beliefs that largely determine how employees will perceive their environment, commit themselves to intended actions and ultimately behave. Managers of organizational behavior are vitally interested in the nature of the attitudes of their employees toward their jobs, toward their careers and toward the organization itself. Employee attitudes which are important to employers are Job satisfaction, Job Involvement, Organizational Commitment and Work moods.
Moderating Variables for Attitude in Organization:
1. Importance of the attitude
2. Specificity of the attitude
3. Accessibility of the attitude
4. Social pressures on the individual
5. Direct experience with the attitude
Essay # 8. Theories of Attitude:
(a) Cognitive dissonance
(b) Self-perception theory
(a) Cognitive Dissonance Theory:
Tension arises when we are aware of two simultaneously inconsistent cognitions. To reduce the dissonance, we change our attitudes so that they will correspond to our actions. We correct discrepancies between attitudes & behaviors. Festinger’s Famous Cognitive Dissonance Study Had Ss perform dull tasks (turning knobs).
Afterwards, Ss were told the study was on how expectations affect performance. Experimenter asked Ss to tell a new S outside that the experiment was really exciting. Ss were either given $1 or $20 to lie. Ss told the new S (confederate) how great the experiment was & then filled out a questionnaire asking how much they liked the study.
Those who earned $1 were more likely to say they liked the study. Why? We often experience dissonance when making big decisions. To reduce the dissonance after making our choice, we upgrade the chosen alternative and downgrade the unchosen option.
(b) Self-Perception Theory:
When unsure of our attitudes, we examine our behavior & the circumstances under which it occurs. Wells & Petty (1980) had Ss test headphone sets by making either vertical or horizontal head movements while listening to a radio editorial. Those nodding their heads up & down agreed with the editorial most as it is associated with “yes” responses.