MQM 221

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MQM 221

• Foundations of Individual Behavior
• Chapter 2
• November 10, 2009

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Key Psychological Contributions

• Ability
• Attitudes
• Learning

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Ability

• Refers to an individuals capacity to perform the
  various tasks in a job
• Is a current assessment of what one can do
• Intellectual ability is one of the best
  predictors of performance
• The correlation between intelligence and job
  satisfaction is about zero
• Employee performance is enhanced when there is a
  high ability-job fit

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Attitudes

• Attitudes are evaluative statements favorable
  or unfavorable concerning objects, people, or
  events

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Components of Attitudes

• Cognitive
• What we know or believe our opinion about a
  person, event, or object
• Affective
• How we feel
• Behavioral
• Inclination to behavior in a certain way

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Consistency of Attitudes

• People seek consistency among their attitudes and
  between their attitudes and their behavior
• When there is an inconsistency, the individual
  may alter either the attitudes or behavior, or
  develop a rationalization for the discrepancy

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Attitudes and Dissonance

• Dissonance results from inconsistency between
  attitudes, or inconsistency between attitudes and
  behaviors
• Generally, we attempt to reduce dissonance by
  either changing attitudes or behavior

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Factors Affecting Dissonance

• Intensity/Salience of attitudes
• If the attitudes are relatively unimportant,
  dissonance will be low
• Differentiationmany other supporting attitudes,
  values and beliefs
• Perceived control
• If dissonance results from behavior that cannot
  be controlled, the pressure to change will be
  reduced
• Rewards

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Reducing Dissonance

• Change behavior
• Rationalize the behavior
• Change the attitude

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Attitudes and Behavior

• Generally speaking, attitudes do influence
  behavior
• Characteristics of attitudes impacting behavior
• Importanceimportant attitudes more likely to
  influence behavior
• Specificitystronger link between specific
  attitudes and specific behaviors
• Accessibilityeasily remembered attitudes have
  stronger impact on behavior
• Social pressuresstrong social pressures may
  weaken the link between attitudes and behaviors
• Direct experience

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Self-Perception Theory

• The view that behavior influences attitudes
• Argues that attitudes are used after the fact to
  make sense out of an action that has already
  occurred rather than as devices that precede and
  guide action
• Tend to infer attitude from behavior when you
  have had few experiences regarding an issue
• Attitudes likely to guide behavior when your
  attitudes have been established for a while

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Major Job-Related Attitudes

• Job satisfaction
• Job involvement
• Psychological empowerment
• Organizational commitment
• Affective commitment
• Continuance commitment
• Normative commitment
• Perceived organizational support
• Employee engagement

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What Leads to Job Satisfaction?

• Work itself the strongest correlation with
  overall satisfaction
• Pay not correlated after individual reaches a
  level of comfortable living
• Advancement opportunities
• Supervision
• Coworkers
• A persons personality

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Effects of Satisfied and Dissatisfied Employees

• Job performance strong correlation
• OCB modest relationship but more related to
  conceptions of fair outcomes, treatment and
  procedures
• Customer Satisfaction strong correlation
• Absenteeism moderate to weak negative
  correlation
• Turnover moderate negative correlation
• Workplace deviance strong correlation

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Learning How People Adapt

• Any relatively permanent change in behavior that
  occurs as a result of experience

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Theories of Learning

• Operant Conditioning
• Argues that people learn to behave to get
  something they want or avoid something they dont
  want
• Social Learning
• Individuals can learn by observing what happens
  to other people and just being told about
  something, as well as by direct experiences