VALUES, ATTITUDE & ASSERTIVENESS

Values

Basic convictions on how to conduct yourself or how to live your life that is personally or socially preferable – “How To” live life properly.

•Attributes of Values:

– Content Attribute – that the mode of conduct or end-state is important

– Intensity Attribute – just how important that content is.

•Value System

– A person’s values rank ordered by intensity

– Tends to be relatively constant and consistent

Importance of Values

• Provide understanding of the attitudes, motivation, and behaviors

• Influence our perception of the world around us

• Represent interpretations of “right” and “wrong”

• Imply that some behaviors or outcomes are preferred over others

Classifying Values – Rokeach Value Survey

• Terminal Values

– Desirable end-states of existence; the goals that a person would like to achieve during his or her lifetime

• Instrumental Values

– Preferable modes of behavior or means of achieving one’s terminal values

• People in same occupations or categories tend to hold similar values

– But values vary between groups

– Value differences make it difficult for groups to negotiate and may create conflict

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Values in the Rokeach Survey

AttitudesEvaluative statements or judgments concerning objects, people, or events

Three components of an attitude:

The emotional The emotional or feeling or feeling segment of an segment of an attitudeattitudeThe opinion or The opinion or

belief segment belief segment of an attitudeof an attitude

An intention to An intention to behave in a certain behave in a certain way toward someone way toward someone or somethingor something

Does Behavior Always Follow from Attitudes?

• Leon Festinger – No, the reverse is sometimes true!

• Cognitive Dissonance: Any incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes

– Individuals seek to reduce this uncomfortable gap, or dissonance, to reach stability and consistency

– Consistency is achieved by changing the attitudes, modifying the behaviors, or through rationalization

Predicting Behavior from Attitudes

– Important attitudes have a strong relationship to behavior.

– The closer the match between attitude and behavior, the stronger the relationship:

• Specific attitudes predict specific behavior

• General attitudes predict general behavior

– The more frequently expressed an attitude, the better predictor it is.

– High social pressures reduce the relationship and may cause dissonance.

– Attitudes based on personal experience are stronger predictors.

What are the Major Job Attitudes?

• Job Satisfaction

– A positive feeling about the job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics

• Job Involvement

– Degree of psychological identification with the job where perceived performance is important to self-worth

• Psychological Empowerment

– Belief in the degree of influence over the job, competence, job meaningfulness, and autonomy

ASSERTIVENESS

• Assertiveness is about self confidence which means having a positive attitude towards yourself and others.

Assertiveness and the Four Styles of Communication

• The Passive Style

• The Aggressive Style

• The Passive-Aggressive Style

• The Assertive Style

The Passive Style• Giving in to unreasonable demands from others• Going along with the crowd• Not offering your opinion until others have offered theirs• Never criticizing or giving negative feedback• Never doing or saying anything that might attract comment

or disapproval

Passive Style Behavior

Beliefs That Hold You Back

• Other people are more important than I am• Other people are entitled to have control over their lives.

I’m not.• They can do things effectively. I can’t.• My role in life is to be the servant

How does the Passive Style Develop?

• Some people grow up in extremely over-considerate families

• Some children are taught to be perfectly obedient• In some families, children’s requests, needs, or

boundaries are never respected• In some families Assertiveness unfortunately leads to

violence• Some people just never see assertiveness in action

The Aggressive Style• The flip side of the passive style• Instead of submitting to others, we try to get others submit

to us• It is important to win, regardless of the cost to other

people• Aim is to control the behavior of others through

intimidation• Their opinions, boundaries, goals, and requests are stupid

or meaningless—barriers to be overcome.

Aggressive Style Behavior

How does the aggressive style develop

• Having an aggressive parent who serves as a model for you

• Low self-esteem that causes you to feel threatened by minor difficulties

• Initial experiences of obtaining what you want through aggression

• Failing to see the negative consequences of aggression

The Passive-Aggressive Style• It combines elements of both the passive and aggressive

styles• The anger of the aggressive style and the fear of the

passive style both have an influence• The anger makes you want to ‘get’ the other person, but

fear holds you back from doing it directly• When we are passive aggressive we disguise our

aggression so that we can avoid taking responsibility for it.

Passive-Aggressive Style Behavior

The Origin of the Passive-Aggressive Style

• Persons who experience significant anger and a desire for control, but they fear the consequences of expressing themselves directly

• Openly assertive or aggressive behavior may have been punished in the past

Consequences of Passive-Aggressive Style

• Others begin to see us unreliable, irresponsible, disorganized, or inconsiderate

• Self-esteem drops, Anxiety builds because we never know when someone will see through our passivity and confront us.

The Assertive Style

• It recognizes that you are incharge of your own behavior and that you decide what you will and will not do

• Similarly, the assertive style involves recognizing that other people are incharge of their own behavior and does not attempt to take that control from them

Assertive Style Behavior

Benefits

• We are able to acknowledge our own thoughts and wishes honestly, without the expectation that others will automatically give in to us

• We express respect for the feelings and opinions of others without necessarily adopting their opinions or doing what they expect or demand

Assertiveness, Aggressiveness and Non-assertiveness

“You can attract more flies with honey than with vinegar” captures the difference between assertive and aggressive style

Assertive Style: Expressive and self-enhancing, but does not take advantage of others.

Aggressive Style: Expressive and self-enhancing, but takes unfair advantage of others

Non-assertive Style: Timid and self denying behavior.

Communication Styles and Behavior

Recommended Reading material Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, 9th Edition, Prentice-

Hall India 2001