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Management Practices and Organisational Behaviour

Notes membership in the organisation. High organisational commitment means identifying
with one's employing organisation.

9.6.5 Attitude Formation

Attitudes are learned. Individuals acquire attitudes from several sources but the point to be
stressed is that the attitudes are acquired but not inherited. Our responses to people and issues
evolve over time. Two major influences on attitudes are direct experience and social learning.
1. Direct Experience: Attitudes can develop from a personally rewarding or punishing
experience with an object. Direct experience with an object or person is a powerful influence
on attitudes. Research has shown that attitudes that are derived from direct experience are
stronger, are held more confidently and are more resistant to change than are attitudes
formed through indirect experience. One reason attitudes derived from direct experience
are so powerful is because of their availability. This means that the attitudes are easily
accessed and are active in our cognitive processes. When attitudes are available, we can
call them quickly into consciousness. Attitudes that are not learned from direct experience
are not as available, and therefore we do not recall them easily.

(a) Classical Conditioning: One of the basic processes underlying attitude formation can
be explained on the basis of learning principles. People develop associations between
various objects and the emotional reactions that accompany them.
(b) Operant Conditioning: Attitudes that are reinforced, either verbally or non-verbally,
tend to be maintained. Conversely, a person who states an attitude that elicits ridicule
from others may modify or abandon the attitude.
(c) Vicarious Learning: In which a person learns something through the observance of
others can also account for attitude development, particularly when the individual
has no direct experience with the object about which the attitude is held. It is through
vicarious learning processes that children pick up the prejudices of their parents.
2. Social Learning: In social learning, the family, peer groups and culture shape an individual's
attitudes in an indirect manner. Substantial social learning occurs through modelling, in
which individuals acquire attitudes by merely observing others. For an individual to
learn from observing a model, four processes must take place:

(a) The learner must focus attention on the model.
(b) The learner must retain what was observed from the model.
(c) Behavioural reproduction must occur; that is, the learner must practice the behaviour.

(d) The learner must be motivated to learn from the model.
Social learning can take place through the following ways:
(a) The Family: A person may learn attitudes through imitation of parents. If parents
have a positive attitude towards an object and the child admires his parents, he is
likely to adopt a similar attitude, even without being told about the object, and even
without having direct experience. Children also learn to adopt certain attitudes by
the reinforcement they are given by their parents when they display behaviours
that reflect an appropriate attitude.
(b) Peer Groups: Peer pressure moulds attitudes through group acceptance of individuals
who express popular attitudes and through sanctions, such as exclusion from the
group, placed on individuals who espouse (promote) unpopular attitudes.

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