PSY 3113 Chapter 4

Attitudes

Attitudes

are complexes of beliefs and feelings that people have about specific ideas, situations, or other people.

Cognition

The knowledge a person presumes to have about something

Affect

A person's feeling towards something

Intention

Guides a person's behavior

Cognitive dissonance

is an incompatibility or conflict between behavior and an attitude or between two different attitudes.

- Your perception of the importance of the elements that are creating the dissonance

- The amount of influence you feel you have over these elements

- The rewards involved in the dissonance

Why don't people try to reduce their cognitive dissonance? (3)

Job Satisfaction

reflects our attitudes and feelings about our job.

- The work itself

- Personality

- Attitudes

- Values

What are the influences on job satisfaction? (4)

Organizational commitment

reflects the degree to which an employee identifies with the organization and its goals and wants to stay with the organization

Affective commitment

positive emotional attachment to the organization and

strong identification with its values and goals

leads employees to stay with an organization because they want to and is related to higher performance

Normative commitment

feeling obliged to stay with an organization for

moral or ethical reasons

related to higher performance and leads employees to stay

with an organization because they feel they should.

Continuance commitment

staying with an organization because of perceived high economic (i.e., taking another job would mean losing valuable stock options) and/or social costs (i.e., friendships with coworkers) involved with leaving

leads employees to stay with an organization because they feel that they have to.

Employee engagement

is a heightened emotional and intellectual connection that an employee has for his/her job, organization, manager, or coworkers that, in turn, influences him/her to apply additional discretionary effort to his/her work.

• Have clear goals.

• Have the resources needed to do a good job.

• Get meaningful feedback on their performance.

• Are able to use their talents.

• Are recognized for doing a good job.

• Have positive relationships with coworkers.

• Have opportunities to learn and grow.

• Have supportive leadership.

Engagement is enhanced when employees (8)

Values

are ways of behaving or end-states that are desirable to a person or to a group.

can be conscious or unconscious

Terminal values

reflect our long-term life goals and may include prosperity, happiness, a secure family, and a sense of accomplishment

Instrumental values

are our preferred means of achieving our terminal values or our preferred ways of behaving

Intrinsic work values

relate to the work itself

Extrinsic work values

are related to the outcomes of doing work

Intrapersonal value conflict

conflict between the instrumental value of ambition and the terminal value of happiness

Interpersonal value conflict

occur when two different people hold conflicting values

Individual-organization value conflict

an employee's values can conflict with the values of the organization

(1) traditional/secular-rational values

(2) survival/self-expression values

The 2 Major Dimensions in varying basic values

traditional values

emphasize the importance of religion, parent-child ties, deference to authority and traditional family values. People who embrace these values also reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide. These societies have high levels of national pride and a nationalistic outlook

secular-rational values

Widely held social beliefs that emphasize the importance of individualism, science, and critique

Survival values

- emphasis on physical and economic security

-ethnocentric world view and low levels of interpersonal trust and tolerance

Self-expression values

emphasize subjective well-being, self-expression, and quality of life, giving high priority to environmental protection, diversity tolerance, and participation in decision making

Emotions

Intense, short-term physiological, behavioral, and psychological reactions to a specific object, person, or

event that prepare us to respond to it

- Emotions are short events or episodes

- Emotions are directed at something or someone

- Emotions are experienced

- Emotions create a state of physical readiness through physiological

reactions

The Elements of Emotions (4)

Moods

are short-term emotional states that are not directed toward anything in particular

Affectivity

represents our tendency to experience a particular mood or to react to things with certain emotions

Positive Affect

Negative Affect

The two dominant dimensions of mood

positive affect

reflects a combination of high energy and positive evaluation characterized by emotions like elation

negative affect

comprises feelings of being upset, fearful, and distressed

Perception

The set of processes by which an individual becomes aware of and interprets information about the environment

Selective perception

is the process of screening out information that we are uncomfortable with or that contradicts our beliefs.

Stereotyping

is categorizing or labeling people on the basis of a single attribute

The halo effect

when we form a general impression about something or

someone based on a single (typically good) characteristic

The horns effect

This occurs when we form a general impression based on a single "bad" characteristic

The contrast effect

occurs when we evaluate our own or another person's characteristics through comparisons with other people we have recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics

Projection

occurs when we project our own characteristics onto other people

Attribution

refers to the way we explain the causes of our own as well as other people's behaviors and achievements, and understand why people do what they do

Self-handicapping

occurs when people create obstacles for themselves that make success less likely

Organizational fairness

Refers to employees' perceptions of organizational events, policies, and practices as being fair or not fair

Distributive fairness

refers to the perceived fairness of the outcome received, including resource distributions, promotions, hiring and layoff decisions, and raises

procedural fairness

addresses the fairness of the procedures used to generate the outcome (e.g., what rules were

followed, whether people had the opportunity to express opinions and influence

the outcome, etc).

Interactional fairness

is whether the amount of information about the decision and the process was adequate, and the perceived fairness of the interpersonal treatment and explanations received during the decision-making process.

Interpersonal fairness and Informational fairness

Interactional fairness describes two specific types of interpersonal treatment, these are?

Interpersonal fairness

reflects the degree to which people are treated with politeness, dignity, and respect by authorities or third parties involved in executing procedures or determining outcomes

Informational fairness

focuses on the extent to which employees receive adequate information and explanations about decisions affecting their working lives

Trust

is the expectation that another person will not act to take advantage of us regardless of our ability to monitor or control him or her.

Stress

a person's adaptive response to a stimulus that places excessive psychological or physical demands on him or her

Adaptation

Role of the Stimulus

Stressors can be either psychological or physical

The demands stressors place on the individual must be excessive

The components of stress (4)

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

According to this model, each of us has a normal level of resistance to stressful events. Some of us can tolerate a great deal of stress and others much less, but we all have a threshold at which stress starts to affect us.

Stage 1: Alarm

Stage 2: Resistance

Stage 3: Exhaustion

What are the 3 stages of Selye's GAS? In order.

Stage 1: Alarm

At this point, the person may feel some degree of panic and begin to wonder how to cope.

May also have to resolve a fight or flight question.

Stage 2: Resistance

individual is actively resisting the effects of the stressor

Stage 3: Exhaustion

prolonged exposure to stress causes an individual to give up

Eustress

The pleasurable stress that accompanies positive events

Distress

The unpleasant stress that accompanies negative events

Organizational stressors

are various factors in the workplace that can cause stress

Task Demands

Physical Demands

Role Demands

Interpersonal Demands

What are the 4 Organizational Stressors?

Task demands

are stressors associated with the specific job a person performs.

Occupation

Lack of Job Security

Overload

What are the task demand stressors? (3)

Overload

occurs when a person simply has more work than he or she can handle

either be quantitative (too many tasks too little time) or qualitative (believe they are unable to do the job)

physical demands

its physical requirements on the worker; these demands are a function of the physical characteristics of the setting and the physical tasks the job involve

Temperature

Office Design

What are the elements of physical demands? (2)

Role

a set of expected behaviors associated with a particular position in a group or organization.

it has both formal (i.e., job-related and explicit) and informal (i.e., social and implicit) requirements

Ambiguity

Conflict

What are the components of Role Demands? (2)

Interpersonal Demands

stressors associated with relationships in the organization

Role Demands

relate to pressures placed on a person as a function of the particular role he or she plays in the organization.

Group Pressures

Leadership

Interpersonal Conflict

What are the 3 Interpersonal Demands?

Individual Consequences of Stress

are the outcomes that mainly affect

the individual. The organization also may suffer, either directly or indirectly, but

it is the individual who pays the real price

Behavioral

Psychological

Medical

What are the 3 Individual Consequences of Stress?

Organization Consequences of Stress

-Absenteeism

-Lower productivity

-Increased turnover

-Dissatisfaction

-Lower motivation

Burnout

is a general feeling of exhaustion that develops

when a person simultaneously experiences too much pressure and has too few sources of satisfaction.

Institutional programs

managing stress are undertaken through established organizational mechanisms

Collateral stress program

an organizational program specifically created to help employees deal with stress.

Work-life relationships

then, include any relationships between dimensions of the person's work life and the person's personal life