INTRODUCTION TO

INDUSTRIAL &
ORGANIZATIONAL
PSYCHOLOGY
Lecture 2
Attitudes & Job Satisfaction

Dr. Shanshan ZHEN

SS4719
LEARNING POINTS

• ABC model: components of attitude

• Does Behavior always follow from attitude?
• Cognitive dissonance
• Major job attitudes: Job satisfaction and Organizational commitment
• Causes of job satisfaction
• Impact of job (dis)satisfaction
• Exit, voice, loyalty, neglect
• Job performance, OCB, Customer satisfaction, Absenteeism, Turnover
WHAT IS YOUR TENDENCY?

• What's your opinion on the death penalty?

• Which phone company has best quality?
• Should violence on television be regulated?
• Do you like this course?
• Do you want to go to work on daily basis?
ATTITUDES
• Definition: a relatively enduring and general evaluation of an object, person, group, issue, or
concept on a dimension ranging from negative to positive. Attitudes provide summary
evaluations of target objects and are often assumed to be derived from specific beliefs, emotions,
and past behaviors associated with those objects.
THE ABC MODEL OF ATTITUDES
THE ABC MODEL OF ATTITUDES
 “C”: Cognition (thought/beliefs)
• a description of or belief in the way things are

• Example: My pay is low.

 “A”: Affect (Emotion/feeling)
• Affect is the emotional or feeling segment of an attitude reflected in the statement. Affect can
lead to behavioral outcomes.

• Example: I am angry over how little I’m paid.

 “B”: Behavioral Intentions (actions)
• The behavioral component of an attitude describes an intention to behave in a certain way
toward someone or something

• Example: I’m going to look for another job that pays better.
EXERCISE

• The emotional or feeling component of a person’s attitude is called ________.

A. complex understanding
B. the cognitive component
C. the affective component
D. a complex attitude
EXERCISE

• The belief that ‘violence is wrong’ is an evaluative statement. Such an opinion

constitutes the ________ component of an attitude.
A. cognitive
B. affective
C. reflective
D. behavioral
ATTITUDE FORMATION
Attitude
formation

Repeated
Conditioning Social Learning
Exposure

Classical Operant
conditioning conditioning
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
• A simple form of learning which occurs through repeated association of two
different stimuli
• E.g., Pavlov’s dog

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhqumfpxuzI
 OPERANT CONDITIONING
• A form of learning where we repeat a behavior that has desirable consequences
(reward) and tend not to repeat behavior that has undesirable consequences
(punishment)
• Reinforcement is any event/stimulus that strengthens a response or increases the likelihood
of a particular response occurring again
• E.g., Skinner’s rat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmZpabCYzhE
 SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
• Learning that occurs as we watch others and also see the consequences of how
they think, feel and behave.
• According to this theory we modify our attitudes by observing other people, especially those
who we respect and admire.
• Also known as observational learning or modelling
• E.g., Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lYsmt9qUVI
REPEATED EXPOSURE
• It is proposed that attitudes can be formed by simply being exposed to an
object, person, group, event or issue repeatedly.
• “Mere Espouse Effect” – the tendency for people to come to like things (or people) simply
because they see or encounter them repeatedly.
DOES BEHAVIOR ALWAYS FOLLOW FROM ATTITUDES?
BEHAVIOUR FOLLOWS ATTITUDES:
MODERATING VARIABLES
➢The most powerful moderators of the attitude–behavior relationship are:
➢the importance of the attitude,
➢its correspondence to behavior (Specificity),
➢its accessibility,
➢the presence of social pressures,
➢Whether or not a person has had direct experience with the behavior
a. The attitude–behavior relationship is likely to be much stronger if an attitude
refers to something with which we have direct personal experience.
WHEN DO ATTITUDES PREDICT BEHAVIOUR?

• (a) Importance/personal relevance:

• refers to how significant the attitude is for the person and relates to self-interest, social
identification and value.
• E.g., The Financial Secretary proposes sum of HK$6,000 will be given to each holder of a valid Hong
Kong Permanent Identity Card (HKPIC) aged 18 or above. Will you support the scheme?
You are 20. (attitude relevant)
You are 16. (attitude NOT relevant)
Which link is stronger?
WHEN DO ATTITUDES PREDICT BEHAVIOUR?

• (b) Attitude Specificity:

• The more specific the attitude toward the behavior in question, the better that attitude can be
expected to predict the behavior.

E.g., Are you a religious person?

How frequently do you expect to attend church in the next month?

Which link is stronger?

WHEN DO ATTITUDES PREDICT BEHAVIOUR?

• (c) Attitude accessibility

• The likelihood that an attitude will be automatically activated from memory on encountering
the attitude object.

• E.g., vote preference polls taken close to an election are more accurate than earlier polls.
WHEN DO ATTITUDES PREDICT BEHAVIOUR?

• (d) Direct experience:

• Attitudes based on direct experience are more strongly held and influence behavior more than
attitudes formed indirectly (e.g., reading or watching television)

• (e) Social pressure: Acceptability

• discrepancies between attitudes and behaviors tend to occur when social pressures to behave in
certain ways hold exceptional power
E.g., You want to go to study, but all of your friends want to go to BBQ, what are you going to do?
 COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
• Developed by Leon Festinger in 1957

An unpleasant psychological state resulting from inconsistency

between two or more elements in a cognitive system.

• People seek a stable consistency among their attitudes and between their attitudes and their
behavior.
• Any form of inconsistency is uncomfortable, and individuals therefore attempt to reduce or
minimize it.
THINK & SHARE
• If you are a smoker, you are likely to experience dissonance because you know that smoking
significantly increases the risks of lung cancer, emphysema, and earlier death. How can you
reduce this dissonance?
HOW TO REDUCE DISSONANCE?
• Changing our discrepant behavior (e.g., stop smoking),
• Changing our cognitions through rationalization or denial (e.g., research has not proved
definitely that smoking causes lung cancer” may reduce the dissonance),
• Adding a new cognition (e.g., “Smoking suppresses my appetite, so I don’t become overweight,
which is good for my health.”).
THE DESIRE TO REDUCE DISSONANCE

• The importance of the elements creating dissonance (e.g., health? )

• The degree of influence the individual believes he or she has over the elements creating
dissonance (e.g., can I control my health? )
• The rewards that may be involved in dissonance (high rewards accompanying high dissonance
tend to reduce tension inherent in the dissonance; e.g., dissonance is less distressing if
accompanied by something good such as a higher pay raise than expected)
EXERCISE

• Which of the following is not a moderating variable of the attitude-behavior relationship?

A. Direct experience
B. Correspondence to behavior
C. Power
D. Accessibility
EXERCISE

• Any incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes results in
________.
A. Organization dissonance
B. Cognitive dissonance
C. Attitudinal clarification
D. Values clarification
MAJOR JOB ATTITUDES

• Job satisfaction
• Organizational commitment
MAJOR JOB ATTITUDES

• Job satisfaction:
a positive feeling about a job resulting from an evaluation of its
characteristics.

• A person with high job satisfaction holds positive feelings about the work, while
a person with low satisfaction holds negative feelings.
MAJOR JOB ATTITUDES
• Organizational commitment:
The degree to which an employee identifies with a particular organization and
its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organization

• Emotional attachment to an organization and belief in its values is the gold standard
for employee commitment.

• Employees who are committed will be less likely to engage in work withdrawal even if
they are dissatisfied, because they have a sense of organizational loyalty or attachment.
MEASURING JOB SATISFACTION
• Single global rating method (e.g., All things
considered, how satisfied are you with your job?)

➢Only a few general questions

➢Remarkably accurate of job satisfaction
• Summation Score Method
➢Identifies key elements in the job and asks
for specific feeling about them
 STANDARDIZED JOB SATISFACTION SURVEYS
Examples of MSQ
Two most widely used standardized surveys of job satisfaction:
• Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ)
• 20 job facets
• Supervisor’s competence, working conditions, compensation,
task variety, level of job responsibility, and chances for
advancement

• Job Descriptive Index (JDI)

• 5 job facets
• the job itself, supervision, pay, promotions, and coworkers
WHAT FACTORS ARE MOST IMPORTANT TO YOUR JOB SATISFACTION?
CAUSES OF JOB (DIS)SATISFACTION

• Job conditions:
• the intrinsic nature of the work itself--the strongest correlation with overall satisfaction
• social interactions
• supervision
• Personality:
People who have a positive core self-evaluation (CSE)—who believe in their inner worth
and basic competence—are more satisfied with their jobs than people with negative CSEs.
CAUSES OF JOB (DIS)SATISFACTION
• Pay:
Pay does correlate with job satisfaction and overall happiness for many people, but the effect can
be smaller once an individual reaches a standard level of comfortable living.

No significant correlation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9vw6omT7Fg
CAUSES OF JOB (DIS)SATISFACTION
❑Corporate social responsibility (CSR):
• An organization’s self-regulated actions to benefit the society or
the environment beyond what is required by law, increasingly
affects employee job satisfaction
E.g., environmental sustainability initiatives, nonprofit work, and
charitable giving
• CSR allows workers to serve a higher purpose or contribute to a
mission when managed well. People who view their work as
part of a higher purpose often realize higher job satisfaction.
OUTCOMES OF JOB SATISFACTION

• Job performance
• Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)
• Customer satisfaction
• Life satisfaction
OUTCOMES OF JOB SATISFACTION
• Job performance:
• Some researchers used to believe the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance
was a myth.
• Individuals with higher job satisfaction perform better, and organizations with more satisfied
employees tend to be more effective than those with fewer. (T. A. Judge, C. J. Thoresen, J. E. Bono, and G. K.
Patton, “The Job Satisfaction–Job Performance Relationship: A Qualitative and Quantitative Review,” Psychological Bulletin 127, no. 3
(2001): 376–407.)
OUTCOMES OF JOB SATISFACTION
• Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB):
• A person is willing to take an extra commitment beyond the normal duty: talking positively
about their organizations, helping others, and going beyond the normal expectations of their
jobs

• Evidence suggests job satisfaction is moderately correlated with OCB (B. J. Hoffman, C. A. Blair, J. P.
Maeriac, and D. J. Woehr, “Expanding the Criterion Domain? A Quantitative Review of the OCB Literature,” Journal of Applied
Psychology 92, no. 2 (2007): 555–66.)
 OUTCOMES OF JOB SATISFACTION
• Customer satisfaction: Satisfied employees and managers appear to increase customer
satisfaction and loyalty.

• Life satisfaction: Research in Europe indicated that job satisfaction is positively correlated with
life satisfaction, and your attitudes and experiences in life spill over into your job approaches
and experiences. Furthermore, life satisfaction decreases when people become unemployed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDc7P2aG3VQ
THE IMPACT OF JOB DISSATISFACTION

• The Exit–voice–loyalty–neglect framework

• Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB)
• Absenteeism
• Turnover
RESPONSES TO DISSATISFACTION

Two dimensions:
constructive/destructive;
active/passive

Exit–voice–loyalty–neglect framework
EXIT-VOICE-LOYALTY-NEGLECT FRAMEWORK

• Leaving the organization

(looking for a new position and
resigning)
• Lead to loss of knowledge,
skills, abilities
EXIT-VOICE-LOYALTY-NEGLECT FRAMEWORK

• Attempts to improve conditions

• E.g., Suggesting improvements,
discussing with superiors,
Undertaking union activity
EXIT-VOICE-LOYALTY-NEGLECT FRAMEWORK

• Passively but optimistically waiting

for things to improve
• E.g., speaking up for the
organization in the face of external
criticism; trusting the organization
and its management to “do the
right thing.”
EXIT-VOICE-LOYALTY-NEGLECT FRAMEWORK

• Passively allows conditions to worsen

• E.g., Chronic absenteeism, reduced
effort, increase error rate
EXIT-VOICE-LOYALTY-NEGLECT FRAMEWORK
Explains why people can
Explains performance variables
tolerate unpleasant conditions
e.g., productivity, turnover,
or how improve working
absenteeism
conditions
COUNTERPRODUCTIVE WORK BEHAVIOR (CWB)
Counterproductive work behavior (CWB): actions that actively damage organization,
including stealing, behaving aggressively toward coworkers, or being late or absent.

• People who are not satisfied with their work become frustrated, which lowers their performance and
makes them more prone to CWB.

• Dissatisfied employees often choose one or more of these specific behaviors due to idiosyncratic factors
(e.g., quit, surf Internet or steal work supplies)
• Employers should seek to correct the source of the problem—the dissatisfaction—rather than try to
control the different responses.
• Also can be an emotional reaction to perceived unfairness
 ABSENTEEISM & JOB DISSATISFACTION
• Consistent negative relationship between satisfaction and absenteeism (moderate level)
• Weaker when few alternative jobs available
• Weaker in organizations that provide liberal sick leave; Even satisfied employees would still
enjoy days off with no penalties
TURNOVER & JOB DISSATISFACTION
• The relationship between job satisfaction and turnover is stronger than between satisfaction and
absenteeism. Overall, a pattern of lowered job satisfaction is the best predictor of intent to
leave.
• Environmental “contagion effect”: If the climate within an employee’s immediate workplace
is one of low job satisfaction leading to turnover, there will be a contagion effect.

Keep track of job

dissatisfaction
TURNOVER & JOB DISSATISFACTION
• The satisfaction–turnover relationship is affected by alternative job prospects.
• Job dissatisfaction is more likely to translate into turnover when other employment
opportunities are plentiful. When employees have high “human capital” (high education, high
ability), job dissatisfaction is more likely to translate into turnover because they have, or
perceive, many available alternatives.
TURNOVER & JOB DISSATISFACTION

• Some factors help break the dissatisfaction–turnover relationship:

• Employees’ embeddedness—connections to the job and community—can help lower the
probability of turnover, particularly in collectivist (group-oriented) cultures.
• Embedded employees seem less likely to want to consider alternative job prospects.
EXERCISE

• Job dissatisfaction is more likely to translate into ________ when employees feel or perceive
they have many available alternatives. This can happen when employees have high human
capital.
A. Neglect
B. Engagement
C. Tardiness
D. turnover
EXERCISE

• The most important thing a manager can do to raise employee satisfaction is to focus on
________.
A. Employee pay
B. Benefits
C. Work hours
D. Intrinsic parts of the job
GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS

Is job satisfaction a U.S. concept?

• Cross-cultural differences do exist but job satisfaction seems to
be a global concern

Are employees in Western cultures more satisfied with their jobs?

• Yes, but that may be due to the greater value Westerners put
on positive emotions and happiness.
QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

• What are the three components of attitudes?

• Does behavior always follow from attitudes?
• What are the major job attitudes?
• How do we measure job satisfaction?
• What causes job satisfaction?
• What are the outcomes of job satisfaction?
• How do employees respond to job satisfaction?
 Implications for Managers

Related to
Pay attention performance,
to job turnover,
satisfaction absenteeism,
withdrawal

Measure
regularly and
Is the job
objectively
challenging and
interesting?
Pay alone is not
sufficient!
NEXT LECTURE: EMOTION, MOOD & STRESS