Chapter 3 ATTITUDES AND JOB SATISFACTION

I.​ Attitudes
Attitudes are evaluative statements – either favorable or unfavorable – about objects, people, or
events. They reflect how we feel about something.
Attitudes are complex, the reasons underlying it are probably complicated.

1.​ What Are the Main Components of Attitudes?

Cognitive component of an attitude: a description of or belief in the way things are.
Affect component is the emotional or feeling segment of an attitude and is reflected in the
statement
The behavioral component of an attitude describes an intention to behave in a certain way
toward someone or something.

Cognition and affect in particular are inseparable in many ways.

2.​ Does Behavior Always Follow from Attitudes?

Festinger proposed that cases of attitude following behavior illustrate the effects of cognitive
dissonance, any incompatibility an individual might perceive between two or more attitudes or
between behavior and attitudes.
→ Festinger argued that any form of inconsistency is uncomfortable and that individuals will
therefore attempt to reduce it. They will seek a stable state, which is a minimum of dissonance.
→ By either altering the attitudes or the behavior, or developing a rationalization for the
discrepancy.

Festinger proposed that the desire to reduce dissonance depends on moderating factors, including
the importance of the elements creating it and the degree of influence we believe we have over
them.
Be more motivated to reduce dissonance when the attitudes or behavior are important or when
they believe the dissonance is due to something they can control.
A third factor is the rewards of dissonance; high rewards accompanying high dissonance tend to
reduce the tension inherent in the dissonance.

The most powerful moderators of the attitudes relationship are the importance of the attitude, its
correspondence to behavior, its accessibility, the presence of social pressures, and whether a
person has direct experience with the attitude.
→ Important attitudes reflect our fundamental values, self-interest, or identification with
individuals or groups we value.

Specific attitudes tend to predict specific behaviors, whereas general attitudes tend to best predict
general behaviors.
→ So the more you talk about your attitude on a subject, the more likely you are to remember it,
and the more likely it is to shape your behavior.

Discrepancies between attitudes and behavior tend to occur when social pressures to behave in
certain ways hold exceptional power, as in most organizations.

The attitude–behavior relationship is likely to be much stronger if an attitude refers to something

with which we have direct personal experience.

3.​ What Are the Major Job Attitudes?

Job Satisfaction describes a positive feeling about a job, resulting from an evaluation of its
characteristics.
Job Involvement measures the degree to which people identify psychologically with their job
and consider their perceived performance level important to self-worth.
→ A high level of job involvement → really care about the kind of work they do.
→ Psychological empowerment, employees’ beliefs in the degree to which they influence their
work environment, their competence, the meaningfulness of their job, and their perceived
autonomy.
→ High levels of both job involvement and psychological empowerment are positively related to
organizational citizenship and job performance. High job involvement is also related to reduced
absences and lower resignation rates.
Organizational Commitment An employee identifies with a particular organization and its
goals and wishes to remain a member.
→ Interestingly, research indicates that employees who feel their employers fail to keep promises
to them feel less committed, and these reductions in commitment, in turn, lead to lower levels of
creative performance.
→ Negative relationships between organizational commitment and both absenteeism and
turnover.
→ Employees who are not committed, who feel less loyal to the organization, will tend to show
lower levels of attendance at work across the board.

Perceived Organizational Support (POS) the degree to which employees believe the
organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being.
→ People perceive their organization as supportive when rewards are deemed fair, when
employees have a voice in decisions, and when they see their supervisors as supportive.
→ Strong POS perceptions → higher levels of organizational citizenship behaviors, lower levels
of tardiness, and better customer service.

Employee Engagement An individual’s involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for,
the work she does.
→ Highly engaged employees have a passion for their work and feel a deep connection to their
company; disengaged employees have essentially checked out - putting time but not energy or
attention into their work.
→ vẫn còn nhiều tranh cãi

Evidence suggests these attitudes are highly related, perhaps to a troubling degree.

II.​ Job Satisfaction

1.​ Measuring Job Satisfaction
The single global rating is a response to one question, such as “All things considered, how
satisfied are you with your job?” Respondents circle a number between 1 and 5 on a scale from
“highly satisfied” to “highly dissatisfied.”
The second method, the summation of job facets, is more sophisticated. It identifies key elements
in a job such as the nature of the work, supervision, present pay, promotion opportunities, and
relationships with co-workers. Respondents rate these on a standardized scale, and researchers
add the ratings to create an overall job satisfaction score.
→ Both methods are helpful. The single global rating method isn’t very time consuming, thus
freeing time for other tasks, and the summation of job facets helps managers zero in on problems
and deal with them faster and more accurately.
 2.​ How Satisfied Are People in Their Jobs?
The answer seems to be a qualified “yes” in the United States and most other developed
countries.
Research also shows satisfaction levels vary a lot, depending on which facet of job satisfaction
you’re talking about.
Although job satisfaction appears relevant across cultures, that doesn’t mean there are no cultural
differences in job satisfaction. Evidence suggests employees in Western cultures have higher
levels of job satisfaction than those in Eastern cultures.
Evidence suggests that individuals in Eastern cultures find negative emotions less aversive more
than do individuals in Western cultures, who tend to emphasize positive emotions and individual
happiness

3.​ What Causes Job Satisfaction?

Interesting jobs that provide training, variety, independence, and control satisfy most employees.
There is also a strong correspondence between how well people enjoy the social context of their
workplace and how satisfied they are overall. Interdependence, feedback, social support, and
interaction with co-workers outside the workplace are strongly related to job satisfaction even
after accounting for characteristics of the work itself.
For people who are poor or who live in poor countries, pay does correlate with job satisfaction
and overall happiness.
→ There isn’t much of a relationship between the average pay for a job and the average level of
job satisfaction.
→ Money does motivate people. But what motivates us is not necessarily the same as what
makes us happy. (Extrinsic motivation)
Research has shown that people who have positive core self-evaluations —who believe in their
inner worth and basic competence—are more satisfied with their jobs than those with negative
core self-evaluations (are more likely to give up when confronting difficulties, be stuck in
boring, repetitive jobs).

4.​ The Impact of Satisfied and Dissatisfied Employees on the Workplace

The exit–voice–loyalty–neglect framework—is helpful in understanding the consequences of
dissatisfaction.

Exit. The exit response directs behavior toward leaving the organization, including looking for a
new position as well as resigning.
Voice. The voice response includes actively and constructively attempting to improve conditions,
including suggesting improvements, discussing problems with superiors, and undertaking some
forms of union activity.
Loyalty. The loyalty response means passively but optimistically waiting for conditions to
improve, including speaking up for the organization in the face of external criticism and trusting
the organization and its management to “do the right thing.”
Neglect. The neglect response passively allows conditions to worsen and includes chronic
absenteeism or lateness, reduced effort, and increased error rate.

Job Satisfaction and Job Performance: Happy workers are more likely to be productive
workers.
Job Satisfaction and OCB: People who are more satisfied with their jobs are more likely to
engage in OCBs.
→ Fairness perceptions help explain the relationship. Those who feel their co-workers support
them are more likely to engage in helpful behaviors.
→ Research shows that when people are in a good mood, they are more likely to engage in
OCBs.
Job Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction: For frontline employees who have regular
customer contact, the answer is “yes.” Satisfied employees increase customer satisfaction and
loyalty.
Job Satisfaction and Absenteeism: We find a consistent negative relationship between
satisfaction and absenteeism, but it is moderate to weak. → Other factors affect the relationship.
Job Satisfaction and Turnover: The satisfaction–turnover relationship also is affected by
alternative job prospects. If an employee is presented with an unsolicited job offer, job
dissatisfaction is less predictive of turnover because the employee is more likely leaving in
response to “pull” (the lure of the other job) than “push” (the unattractiveness of the current job).
Similarly, job dissatisfaction is more likely to translate into turnover when employment
opportunities are plentiful because employees perceive it is easy to move. Finally, 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.
Job Satisfaction and Workplace Deviance: If employees don’t like their work environment,
they’ll respond somehow, though it is not always easy to forecast exactly how.
→ Deviant behavior in the workplace (or counterproductive behavior or employee withdrawal) -
quit, use work time to surf the Internet or take work supplies home for personal use,...
Managers Often “Don’t Get It”: The stock prices of companies in the high-morale group -
more than 70 percent of employees expressed overall job satisfaction, grew 19.4 percent,
compared with 10 percent for the medium- or low-morale group.
→ Regular surveys can reduce gaps between what managers think employees feel and what they
really feel.
→ Surveys are no panacea, but if job attitudes are as important as we believe, organizations need
to find out where they can be improved.
 Chapter 4 EMOTIONS AND MOODS

III.​ What Are Emotions and Moods?

Affect is a generic term that covers a broad range of feelings people experience, including both
emotions and moods.
Emotions are intense feelings directed at someone or something.
Moods are less intense feelings than emotions and often (though not always) arise without a
specific event acting as a stimulus.
→ Most experts believe emotions are more fleeting than moods.
But emotions can turn into moods when you lose focus on the event or object that started the
feeling.

1.​ The Basic Emotions

Psychologists have tried to identify basic emotions by studying facial expressions.
→ One problem is that some emotions are too complex to be easily represented on our faces.
→ The way we experience an emotion isn’t always the same as the way we show it.

Some even plot them along a continuum: happiness—surprise—fear—sadness—anger—disgust.

→ The closer two emotions are to each other on this continuum, the more likely people will
confuse them.
 2.​ The Basic Moods: Positive and Negative Affect
One way to classify emotions is by whether they are positive or negative.
Positive emotions—such as joy and gratitude—express a favorable evaluation or feeling.
Negative emotions—such as anger or guilt—express the opposite.
→ Keep in mind that emotions can’t be neutral. Being neutral is being nonemotional.

When we group emotions into positive and negative categories, they become mood states
because we are now looking at them more generally instead of isolating one particular emotion.

Some, such as surprise, don’t fit well because they’re not as clearly positive or negative.
Positive affect as a mood dimension consisting of positive emotions such as excitement,
self-assurance, and cheerfulness at the high end and boredom, sluggishness, and tiredness at the
low end.
Negative affect is a mood dimension consisting of nervousness, stress, and anxiety at the high
end and relaxation, tranquility (yên tĩnh), and poise (bình tĩnh)at the low end.
→ Positive and Negative affect are moods.

Positive affect and negative affect play out at work and beyond in that they color our perceptions,
and these perceptions can become their own reality.

Negative emotions are likely to translate into negative moods.

Positivity offset, meaning that at zero input (when nothing in particular is going on), most
individuals experience a mildly positive mood.

Does the degree to which people experience these positive and negative emotions vary across
cultures? Yes.
People in most cultures appear to experience certain positive and negative emotions, but the
frequency and intensity varies to some degree.

Some cultures value certain emotions more than others.

→ Ex: U.S. culture values enthusiasm, while the Chinese consider negative emotions more
useful and constructive than do people in the United States.

3.​ The Function of Emotions

Do Emotions Make Us Irrational?
Research is increasingly showing that emotions are actually critical to rational thinking.

“Reason may not be as pure as most of us think it is or wish it were . . . emotions and feelings
may not be intruders in the bastion of reason at all: they may be enmeshed in its networks, for
worse and for better."

Because our emotions provide important information about how we understand the world around
us. The key to good decision making is to employ both thinking and feeling in our decisions.

Do Emotions Make Us Ethical?

In sum, we can conclude that people who are behaving ethically are at least partially making
decisions based on their emotions and feelings, and this emotional reaction will often be a good
thing.

4.​ Sources of Emotions and Moods

Personality. Moods and emotions have a trait component: most people have built-in tendencies
to experience certain moods and emotions more frequently than others do. People also
experience the same emotions with different intensities.

Day of the Week and Time of the Day. People tend to be in their worst moods (highest negative
affect and lowest positive affect) early in the week, and in their best moods (highest positive
affect and lowest negative affect) late in the week.
Regardless of what time we go to bed at night or get up in the morning, levels of positive affect
tend to peak at around the halfway point between waking and sleeping. Negative affect, however,
shows little fluctuation throughout the day.
→ Our workplace interactions will probably be more positive from midmorning onward and also
later in the week.

Weather. Illusory correlation explains why people tend to think nice weather improves their
mood. It occurs when people associate two events that in reality have no connection.

Stress. As you might imagine, stressful daily events at work (a nasty e-mail, an impending
deadline, the loss of a big sale, a reprimand from the boss) negatively affect moods. Mounting
levels of stress can worsen our moods, and we experience more negative emotions.
Social Activities. For most people, social activities increase positive mood and have little effect
on negative mood. Research suggests activities that are physical (skiing or hiking with friends),
informal (going to a party), or epicurean (eating with others) are more strongly associated with
increases in positive mood than events that are formal (attending a meeting) or sedentary
(watching TV with friends).

Sleep. Sleep quality does affect mood. One reason is that poor or reduced sleep impairs decision
making and makes it difficult to control emotions. A recent study suggests poor sleep also
impairs job satisfaction because people feel fatigued, irritable, and less alert.

Exercise. Research consistently shows exercise enhances peoples’ positive mood. While not
terribly strong overall, the effects are strongest for those who are depressed.

Age. Periods of highly positive moods lasted longer for older individuals, and bad moods faded
more quickly. The study implies emotional experience improves with age; as we get older, we
experience fewer negative emotions.

Sex. Evidence does confirm women are more emotionally expressive than men; they experience
emotions more intensely, they tend to “hold onto” emotions longer than men, and they display
more frequent expressions of both positive and negative emotions, except anger. Thus, there are
some sex differences in the experience and expression of emotions.

IV.​ Emotional Labor

Every employee expends physical and mental labor by putting body and mind, respectively, into
the job. Jobs also require emotional labor, an employee’s expression of organizationally desired
emotions during interpersonal transactions at work.

Emotional dissonance: The true challenge arises when employees have to project one emotion
while feeling another, potentially taking a heavy toll.
It can help you, on the job especially, if you separate emotions into felt or displayed emotions.
Felt emotions are an individual’s actual emotions. In contrast, displayed emotions are those that
the organization requires workers to show and considers appropriate in a given job.
→ How we experience an emotion isn’t always the same as how we show it.

Surface acting is hiding inner feelings and forgoing emotional expressions in response to
display rules.
Deep acting is trying to modify our true inner feelings based on display rules.
→ Surface acting deals with displayed emotions, and deep acting deals with felt emotions.
→ Research shows that surface acting is more stressful to employees because it entails denying
their true emotions.
 V.​ Affective Events Theory
A model called affective events theory (AET) demonstrates that employees react emotionally to
things that happen to them at work, and this reaction influences their job performance and
satisfaction.

The theory begins by recognizing that emotions are a response to an event in the work
environment.
The work environment includes everything surrounding the job—the variety of tasks and degree
of autonomy, job demands, and requirements for expressing emotional labor.
→ Examples of hassles are colleagues who refuse to carry their share of work, conflicting
directions from different managers, and excessive time pressures.
→ Uplifting events include meeting a goal, getting support from a colleague, and receiving
recognition for an accomplishment.

These work events trigger positive or negative emotional reactions, to which employees’
personalities and moods predispose them to respond with greater or lesser intensity. People who
score low on emotional stability are more likely to react strongly to negative events. And our
emotional response to a given event can change depending on mood. Finally, emotions influence
a number of performance and satisfaction variables, such as organizational citizenship behavior,
organizational commitment, level of effort, intention to quit, and workplace deviance.

Tests of affective events theory suggest the following:

1. An emotional episode is actually a series of emotional experiences, precipitated by a single
event and containing elements of both emotions and mood cycles.
2. Current emotions influence job satisfaction at any given time, along with the history of
emotions surrounding the event.
3. Because moods and emotions fluctuate over time, their effect on performance also fluctuates.
4. Emotion-driven behaviors are typically short in duration and of high variability.
5. Because emotions, even positive ones, tend to be incompatible with behaviors required to do a
job, they typically have a negative influence on job performance.

In summary, AET offers two important messages. First, emotions provide valuable insights into
how workplace hassles and uplifting events influence employee performance and satisfaction.
Second, employees and managers shouldn’t ignore emotions or the events that cause them, even
when they appear minor, because they accumulate.

VI.​ Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EI) is a person’s ability to (1) perceive emotions in the self and others,
(2) understand the meaning of these emotions, and (3) regulate one’s emotions accordingly in a
cascading model.​
→ People who know their own emotions and are good at reading emotional cues—for instance,
knowing why they’re angry and how to express themselves without violating norms—are most
likely to be effective.

1.​ The Case for EI

Intuitive Appeal Intuition suggests people who can detect emotions in others, control their own
emotions, and handle social interactions well have a powerful leg up in the business world.
EI Predicts Criteria That Matter Evidence suggests a high level of EI means a person will
perform well on the job. Research found that the ability to recognize emotions in others’ facial
expressions and to emotionally “eavesdrop” (pick up subtle signals about peoples’ emotions)
predicted peer ratings of how valuable people were to their organization.
EI Is Biologically Based A study suggests EI is neurologically based in a way that’s unrelated to
standard measures of intelligence. There is also evidence EI is genetically influenced, further
supporting the idea that it measures a real underlying biological factor.

2.​ The Case Against EI

EI Researchers Do Not Agree on Definitions To many researchers, it’s not clear what EI is
because researchers use different definitions of the construct.
EI Can’t Be Measured
EI Is Nothing but Personality with a Different Label

3.​ Emotion Regulation

The central idea behind emotion regulation is to identify and modify the emotions you feel.
→ Strategies to change your emotions include thinking about more pleasant things, suppressing
negative thoughts, distracting yourself, reappraising the situation, or engaging in relaxation
techniques.
Individuals who are higher in the personality trait of neuroticism have more trouble doing so and
often find their moods are beyond their ability to control.
Individuals who have lower levels of self-esteem are also less likely to try to improve their sad
moods, perhaps because they are less likely than others to feel like they deserve to be in a good
mood.
Sometimes attempts to change an emotion actually make the emotion stronger.
Emotion suppression appears to be especially difficult to do effectively and can lead to more
negative emotions; reappraising situations is usually more effective in increasing positive
emotions and limiting negative emotions.
From another perspective, research suggests that avoiding negative emotional experiences is less
likely to lead to positive moods than seeking out positive emotional experiences.
Emotion suppression appears to be especially difficult to do effectively and can lead to more
negative emotions; reappraising situations is usually more effective in increasing positive
emotions and limiting negative emotions. From another perspective, research suggests that
avoiding negative emotional experiences is less likely to lead to positive moods than seeking out
positive emotional experiences.