Components of Attitudes
Before we can discuss how attitudes impact the workplace, we need to understand the components of attitudes. Those components are:
- Cognitive: This represents our thoughts, beliefs and ideas about something. Typically these come to light in generalities or stereotypes, such as 'all pitbulls are dangerous,' or 'all babies are cute.'
- Affective: This component deals with feelings or emotions that are brought to the surface about something, such as fear or hate. Using our above example, someone might have the attitude that they hate pitbulls because they are dangerous or that they love all babies because they are cute.
- Conative: This can also be called the behavioral component and centers on individuals acting a certain way towards something, such as 'we better keep those dangerous pitbulls out of the dog park,' or 'I cannot wait to kiss that baby.'
Each one of these components is very different from the other, and they can build upon one another to form our attitudes and therefore affect how we relate to the world. For example, we can believe pitbulls are dangeorus (cognitive), we do not have to hate the pitbulls for being dangerous (affective), but we could still try to keep them out of the dog park because of that fact (conative). Or, we could indeed believe they are all dangerous (cognitive), hate them for it (affective), and that would drive our behavior toward them (conative).
Attitudes and the Workplace
Taking this a step further, we can assemble some ideas of how these three components can impact the workplace. The challenge in the workplace is that now these components are tied to work functions, policy, procedures and organizational structure, as well as the people and individuals present in the organization.
For example, we could have thoughts or beliefs (cognitive) about managers in general, and those thoughts or beliefs could manifest themselves in not trusting a manager (affective), and thus we would never want to develop a close relationship with a manager (conative).
It is important to make the point here that these are attitudes - and yes, they can be wrong. Just because we have an attitude (remember our 2-year-old), that does not mean it is correct. It is just how we feel about a person or situation. The problem, though, is if employees let attitudes like this direct their personality at work, it can indeed stunt their ability to grow in an organization.
Obviously not every manager is trustworthy, but if we let our negative attitudes dictate how we view and react to managers, we will never be able to see if some are indeed good people and can be trusted. Certainly having a good relationship based on trust with your manager is a great thing to have in the workplace.
So, it is good to have attitudes in the workplace, as long as they are used with caution. Use them to help guide you with your first steps in a situation, but do not let them blind you or keep you from seeing a potentially different side of the person or situation. This goes for both good and bad attitudes.
Lesson Summary
Attitudes are present in all of us. They are a part of who we are and they help us to deal with situations that arise both personally and professionally. Once again, attitudes are a way of thinking, and they shape how we relate to the world both in work and outside of work. They have several different components:
- Cognitive: This represents our thoughts, beliefs and ideas about something.
- Affective: This component deals with feelings or emotions that are brought to the surface about something, such as fear or hate.
- Conative: This can also be called the behavioral component and centers on individuals acting in a certain way towards something.
Each can build upon the other to form and shape an attitude, or they can reside by themselves. For example, we can have a thought or belief on spinach, but we are probably not going to have strong beliefs of love or hate for it, and almost certainly, it will not impact our behavior. However, we can have thoughts or beliefs about doing a certain aspect of a job that we do not like, and those thoughts can cover the entire spectrum of cognitive, affective and conative. It all depends on how strong our attitude is towards the issue at hand.
Learning Outcomes
This lesson will teach you how to:
- Define attitude
- Explain the three components of attitudes
- Analyze how these components may affect the workplace
