Table of Contents
What is an Attitudes?
Attitudes, generally written as a settled way of thinking or feeling about something. It more on the reflection or respondent towards something or given object. Some example of the situation is “ Mr. Lee bought a new car that just had been advertise recently on the television’. So, based on this scenario ,we can say that Mr. Lee react based on the ads he had seen, that occur him proceed to the purchasing attitude. It all about our responds toward the given object. It is bad or good, either buy it or ignore it. Other than that, attitudes also can be accepted as point of view, view, viewpoint, vantage point, frame of mind, way of thinking, way of looking at things, school of thought toward certain things. In psychology, attitude is known as a psychological construct, a mental and emotional entity that inheres in, or characterizes a person. They are complex and an acquired state through experiences.
Furthermore, Attitude also can be describe as a reaction or response that is still closed from someone to a stimulus or object. The attitude clearly shows the connection of the suitability of the reaction to a particular stimulus which in everyday life either an emotional reaction to social stimulus.
Next, Attitude also is a willingness to act, and not an implementation of certain motives. Attitude is not yet an action or activity, but it is a predisposition to the behavior of a behavior. According to Allport (1954) explained that the attitude has 3 main components, namely: Trust (Belief.) Ideas and concepts of an object, Emotional life or evaluation of an object, Tendency to act. These three components together form a complete attitude. Various levels of attitude, namely: Receiving, interpreted the subject want and pay attention to the stimulus given by the object. Responding, giving answers if asked, working on and completing the assignment given are indicative of attitude Respect, inviting other people to work on or discuss a problem is an indication of level three attitudes.
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How Attitudes are Learned as well as Their Nature?
Taking note that, Attitude is one of the natural traits in a person. Everyone has a different attitude. Although sometimes the behavior of a person is similar to one another, but their attitude remains different. A person’s attitudes may occur from their own experience and will affect one’s attitude towards the goods, services or situations it faces. The events in the past also affect one’s attitude. Therefore we will see some people who are always angry with others even though they do not make any mistakes. This is because some people have experience always scolded by his family all his life. This attitude cannot be seen directly in a person, but it can be seen by one’s behavior in giving direction and arranging a matter. Attitude also represents the judgment, preferences or rejection of a person based on the information they receive.
As we know, these attitudes involve the feelings, beliefs, and tendencies of one’s actions or actions on others or for the goods. While this attitude is considered a neutral thing that happens in a person, it also has a factor that causes a person to have a different attitude. Among the factors influencing one’s attitude are social factors, direct instruction, family, prejudices, personal experience, media, educational and religious institutions, physical factors, and economic status or occupations. Like an example in physical factors, someone who has obesity and finds out he has several of diseases, he will tend to improve himself by starting to eat nutritious food and exercise to maintain his health.
Attitude position can be identified based on three components of attitudes or known as ABC model of attitudes. The first component is affective component. This component involves the person’s feelings or emotions toward things, people or situations. This will affect others like an example, the boss at ABC’s company has always been emotionally and always scolding their employees then their employees will act not to do the work they are being directed and their attitude towards the boss is a negative reaction. A person’s feeling or emotion in affective component will lead to a surface about something like fear and hatred. For example, a person may have an attitude about a flower-like scarf because it looks cute.
The second component is cognitive component. This component refers to a person’s attitude will occur when they have knowledge or information about goods, services, the information or the knowledge of others can also affect one’s attitude in the cognitive component. The cognitive component of attitudes refers to the beliefs, thoughts, and attributes that we would associate with an object. For example, one considers that the expensive item has a higher quality than a cheap item. So, he bought Lexus brand cars compared to the Proton brand as it was more reliable.
The third component is the behavioral component. This component will show that one’s emotions are highlighted or visible through body language. Their face expression will show various emotions such as sadness, anger, fear, surprise and so forth. For example, if someone is scared of insects like spiders, they will show a fearful expression whenever they see the spider. Of the three aspects of the component, it can affect the workplace. These components provide challenges to an organization including work functions, policies, procedures and organizational structures as well as the presence of individuals within the organization.
For example, workers must have their own perception of their employer (cognitive component), and their perceptions and beliefs on employers are not trusting their employers because he always receives bribes (effective), so their employees will not want to build good relationships with employers they (behavioral). In the organization also, the attitude of a person has several types, there are job satisfaction, job involvement and organizational commitment. In an organization, attitudes are important for their goal or objective to succeed. 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.
Attitudes have their function. The functions are adjustment function, ego-defensive function, value-expressive function, and knowledge function. Attitude will always help people to adjust their work environment. Example for adjustment function, when employees in organization are well-served, they will build or give a positive attitude towards the organization. If employees in the organization criticize the low salary despite their hard work, they will show a negative attitude towards the organization.
Organizations have challenges in the barriers to changing the attitude of their employees. This barrier will lead to failure to achieve the goal in the organization. Among the barriers to changing attitudes are prior commitment, insufficient information, balance and consistency, lack of resources, improper reward system, and resistance to change. Sometimes, organizational plans are more ambitious, causing a lack of resources within the company or organization. So, if the organization wants to change the attitude of its employees on the new organization plan, it will make it impossible to achieve because of lack of resources.
However, there is a way to change one’s attitude by distinguishing negative attitudes from positive attitudes. Positive attitudes will lead to positive changes in life. It’s hard to change one’s attitude. But with effort, we can change it. Among the ways to change attitude is new information will help to change attitude, avoid negative attitudes because it is mainly formed owing to insufficient information, change trough direct experience, resolving discrepancies between attitudes and behavior, persuasion of friends or peers, legislation also will help to change someone attitude.
Some say that attitude and behavior are the same. Their assumption is inaccurate because attitude and behavior are different. From that attitude is the appearance of a person’s behavior.
Attitude is defined as a person’s mental tendency, which is responsible for the way he thinks or feels for someone or something. It influences the behavior of the individuals and decides how to act or behave in a particular situation. Attitude also is a kind of habit that usual way of doing things. Every process in an organization will get better if the attitude of everyone great. So, successes and failures in life depend upon the attitude of the individuals. Behavior implies the actions, moves, conduct or functions or an individual or group towards other persons. Behavior is the way a person responds to his attitude. This response is either positive or negative, depending on how that views his position
A person’s attitude is mainly based on the experiences gained by him during the course of his life and observations. On the other hand, the behavior of a person relies on the situation. Attitude is a person’s inner thoughts and feelings. As opposed to, behavior expresses a person’s attitude. The way of thinking or feeling is reflected by a person’s attitude. On the contrary, a person’s conduct is reflected by his behavior. Attitude is defined by the way we perceive things whereas behavior is ruled by social norms.
The formation or change of attitude refers to the conversion from having no of one’s attitude toward an object to having some attitude toward the object. Conversion from having no attitude to having some attitudes is called result of learning. Customers will always buy new products or services that are always used by others and have a good brand. The always-popular brand and the crowd’s welcome will affect other customers to buy it. The brand of this popular product is due to their repeated satisfaction after buying a product from the same company. The behavior can be explained in terms of Classical Conditioning.
Classical Conditioning is two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response in a person. There are three stages in Classical Conditioning. The first stage includes unconditioned stimulus (UCS) as one’s favorite brand or company and unconditioned response which is purchase. Unconditioned stimulus produces an unconditioned response in an organism. A stimulus in the environment has produced a behavior or response which is unlearned (unconditioned) and therefore is a natural response which has not been taught and that means no new behavior has been learned yet. The neutral stimulus in classical conditioning does not produce a response until it is paired with the unconditioned stimulus. For example, a perfume (UCS) could create response of happiness or desire (UCR) therefore; someone will buy perfume because it can create happiness to her.
Stage two includes unconditioned stimulus (UCS), conditioned stimulus (CS), and unconditioned response (UCR). In this stage, conditioned stimulus refers to new product that produces by the same company. For example, perfume (UCS) might be associated with a specific person (CS).
Stage three is after repeated pairings. It is include conditioned stimulus which is new product and conditioned response. The conditioned stimulus (CS) has been associated with the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) to create a new conditioned response (CR). For example, a person (CS) who has been associated with nice perfume (UCS) is now found attractive (CR).
Sometimes, consumers will purchase a product without thinking or prior knowledge or attitude toward it. For example, someone might buy the last bottle of Spritzer mineral water in gas station mini mart without thinking deeply. Other than that, consumers sometimes make trial purchase of new product from the same company that they familiar or have personal involvement in the product. If they find that the product is satisfying and meet their expectation, they likely to repurchase the product and the product become favorable attitude to them.
If the consumers seek to solve a problem or satisfy their need, they are likely to form attitudes either positive or negative about the products due to the information given. The more information consumers have about the product, the more consumer will form attitudes towards the product either positive or negative. Formation of attitudes is strongly influenced by consumer’s experience, family and friends and direct marketing of the companies.
Attitude is important to create a good relationship with others. A good or positive attitude will lead us to have a good relationship and easy to communicate with others. It is also important in an organization. Every people in an organization must have a good attitude to maintain successful of their company.
Of course it is hard to control our emotion through the ups and down of life like never ending roller coaster ride. As a Muslim, we should have positive outlook all the time so that people will feel easy to be with you and it will make other religion respect to us because have a good attitudes. The Prophet said: “How amazing is the case of the believer; there is good for him in everything, and this characteristic is exclusively for him alone. If he experiences something pleasant, he is thankful, and that is good for him; and if he comes across some diversity, he is patient, and that is good for him.” [Muslim]
The Characteristics of an Attitudes?
Attitudes determine the type of behavior in relation to relevant stimuli, people or events. It can be said that attitude is an internal factor, but not all internal factors are attitude. How to differentiate it? It is by the characteristic of the attitude. These characteristics of attitude can categorized peoples in group on how they react or act.
The characteristic of attitudes are:
- That attitude is learned
This attitude is the result of learning needs to be distinguished from other psychological motives that are not learned, for example hungry, thirst is a psychological motive that is not learned while the choice for European food is attitude. Some attitudes are learned accidentally or without the awareness of some individuals. Perhaps what happens is to learn attitudes intentionally if the individual understands that this will bring better for himself, help group goals, or obtain something of a personal nature.
- Stability
The attitude starts from being studied, then becomes stronger, more stable and stable through experience
- Personal societal significance
Attitudes involve relationships between someone and other people and also between people and goods or situations. If someone feels that someone else is fun, open and warm, this will mean a lot to him, he feels free and favorable.
- Contains cognition and affect
The cognitive component of attitude is containing factual information. For example the object is felt pleasant or unpleasant
- Approach avoidance directionality
If someone has a favorable attitude towards an object, they will approach and help him, otherwise if someone has an unfavorable attitude, they will avoid it.
