Essay on Attitude, Emotion, and Cognitive Consistency Theories

This essay critically examines the concepts of attitude and emotion, exploring their significance in social and workplace contexts. It begins by defining attitude as a social entity influenced by emotions, beliefs, and values, and then delves into the impact of emotions on persuasion and decision-making. The essay presents a study involving employees and their attitudes towards handling patients, highlighting the role of behavioral observations and self-reports in assessing mental states. The essay then discusses the three components of attitude: behavioral, cognitive, and affective, and explores various cognitive consistency theories, including balance theory, congruity theory, and cognitive dissonance theory. These theories are analyzed in terms of how individuals strive for consistency between their attitudes and behaviors, particularly in the workplace. The study emphasizes the importance of understanding these concepts for effective communication and interpersonal attraction, and concludes by comparing the strengths of dissonance theory over balance theory in improving behavior and maintaining positive relationships.

Critical essay

a) Attitude is social entity which describes social and mental health of the person. Emotion
is one of the big factor which affect the attitude of the person. It is one of the element in
persuasion, social influence and attitude change. Emotion prediction plays significant role in
decision making. Beliefs, values and attitude of the individual is mainly based on its surrounding
environment. It is the way of thinking and it is related to the activities within and outside the
workplace of the people.
There are 200 employees selected to determine their attitude while handling patients of
different behaviour. They were asked to make videotape about their attitudes toward an
instructional activity (Vogel and Wanke, 2016). Researcher has tried to obtain and collect
different opinions of them. They were told to fill the answer sheet and when they complete this
then put it in the box. The employees have to tell their experience and problems while handling
customers. Different attitude, reactions and emotions when they have to look after stubborn
patients and their reactions while providing treatment.
Attitude and persuasion is not limited to only laboratories. It has said that attitude can be
observable in thoughts, feelings and behaviour of the people. It can be formed from three
components which is essential for strengths and persistence of the attitude. It is not very easy to
determine the reaction, mentality of employees when they act improperly. It can be viewed as
association in memory between attitude objects and its evaluation (Umar and et.al., 2016). The
attitude can be formed on the basis of cognitions in which attitude contains undesirable attitudes
and results. Positive attitudes of employees towards company shows that people are satisfied and
they are happy with their working.
Classical conditioning is same as operant conditioning. Participants perform better in
encoding environmental con-variations in memory and provide effective results in completing
the tasks. The participants respond immediately when they were given difficult tasks and forced
to perform them rapidly (Simmons, Jones and Bradley, 2017). They become vigilant for the task
and different ways and shortcut methods to complete them effectively.
Attitudes are extraordinary malleable as implicit preferences will change as stimulus
materials changes. Contestants which are communicated the long term objectives and challenges
are more likely to behave positively as compared to those who have seen the tough challenges
and tasks of the company. Their behaviour and attitude further changes according to their
opinions, views and surrounding environment of the company (Richard, and et.al., 2016).
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Malleability is not only limited to racial attitude but it has also focused on evaluating emotions
and mentality of the participants. It has further offered persuasive counterpoint. Attitude on spot
construction deals with opposing evidence and some attitude deal with same time and situations.
This means that human beings learn and remember those things which they learn from their
experience.
Pan and et.al., (2016)., measured that study of attitude has no exceptions and verbal self-
reports are concerned more because they give assessment preferences, beliefs, values and
opinions. The author has more focused on the participants marking, checking off, circling and
other behavioural indicator to assess their mental states. They have used simpler and easier
scales to determine their mentality and attitude to different activities. Experimental researcher
has focused more on making independent variables and providing particular stimuli.
Mathew, (2016), has given more attention to absolute questions rather than relative in
order to find out behaviour and reaction of employees. They have seen that participants have
performed better when they were asked to write their views as compared to ask them in front of
different members of team and top authority. Providing their views in written format will provide
them various option and time to think over the question. Kumar and Rani, (2016), opposes the
motion and stated that face to face communication will be more effective to know the mentality,
reaction, attitude of the participant. It helps them in knowing their emotions, facial expressions
and feelings which they can express only when they were asked questions by directly interacting
with them.
Klenner, (2017), suggested that unobtrusive measures are always given more priority in
social psychology as it helps in concerning with the social desire of the participants. This
measure also allows in knowing more about the facts like employees their concern, conscious,
deliberateness, awareness as well as less consciousness, mindless and unawareness of
participants. On the other hand, Kim and et.al., (2017), stated that verbal self-report is the best
way to track consciousness aspect of mind. It tells about all components of social cognitions and
factors that affect the attitude of employees. Behavioural shifts play an important role in telling
the change in attitude.
Further, the study shows that the participants are asked to provide their views in written
which is very effective approach of finding their emotions, mentality and reactions to different
situations. The purpose of conducting questionnaire is to focus more on the perception, attention,
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reasoning level and mental status of employees. Researchers have analysed their perception and
views and attitude with the help of this survey.
b) There are three components of attitude which are related to each other. Behavioural
component is the way in which the employees behave and express their feelings. It helps in
determining different reactions of participants on several situations. According to Howe and
Krosnick, (2017), cognitive component relates to beliefs about a particular person, object or
towards the situation which one possess. Cognitive component of an attitude can be described as
individual values towards certain belief which proves favouritism or discrimination wrong. . The
thoughts and beliefs one has towards an attitude object, it reflects the perceptions and attitude of
an individual. It is formed on the basis of cognitions when an individual believes that the attitude
object possesses desirable or undesirable attributes or it will bring desirable or undesirable
outcomes. This component is based on evaluative beliefs and is measured by attitude of an
individual or by asking about thoughts. In the present study, when one prefer Macintosh over
Windows computer operating systems then it insists that feelings need no conclusion. Such
attitude is in the context of the emphasis of beliefs about the attitude object. They believed and
argue that an attitude toward an object is the outcome of the expected value of the attributes of
the object.
According to Hadiza and et.al., (2017), affective component is referred to the feelings of
an individual that is the outcome of his beliefs towards a person, object or situation. It is the
belief that one will get the advantage from the hard work but may feel anger or be frustrated
when he does not achieve desired advantages. It becomes stronger as an individual has more
frequent and direct experiences with the objects, person or situation. It refers to an individual’s
feeling towards someone or something. In the present study, for example the positive attitude of
a person towards chocolate may appear in favourable beliefs, feelings and behaviour. But, one
can be said to appear in effectively based attitude when a positive and negative feelings may rise
towards the attitude object. The feeling of an individual towards a chocolate such as “I like this”
and negative outcome reflects the affective component of his attitude.
In this essay, cognitive consistency theory in which inconsistencies arises among beliefs,
knowledges and evaluation about an issue and event. In this theory people, searches consistency
among their attitude and behaviour. So that they can appear rational and consistent. They do this
by changing their attitude and behaviour.
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It is argued that balance theory which comes under consistency theory. It is mainly
related with consistency of judgement of people which are related by some form of relations. In
balance theory, three elements are considered which are based on sentiments and unit relations.
These relations are positive or negative. They are mainly based on different attitude and
mentality of participants. The theory consists of balanced and unbalanced states and states.
Balance states are stable and non-balance states are unstable. When unbalanced states come then
psychological tension among the employees increases which leads to poor performance and
increases stress. This will help them to make balance cognitively by modifying relationships.
Therefore, attitude of employees depends on their attitude towards the source or issues which
they are linked to each other.
Further, Dalege and et.al., (2016), argued that unbalanced situation can be resolved when
employees use four models such as denial, bolstering, differentiation and transcendence. This
theory helps in understanding importance of persuasive communication and interpersonal
attraction for altering the attitudes of employees. Chua and Chua, (2017), suggested congruity
theory which is same as balance theory. It is based on evaluation of issues and concept of
association and disassociation assertion. Congruity occurs when source and concept both are
related with same evaluation. In this theory, congruity is stable and incongruity is unstable state.
Incongruity helps participants to improve their behaviour and handle their emotions.
On the other hand, affective cognitive theory is mainly involved with consistency
between attitude of the person and concerned with changes in attitude of the person. It states that
effective relationship between affective and cognitive changes when attitude of the people
changes. It states that when inconsistency increases beyond tolerance level then employees are
motivated to reduce it. This theory explains that altering cognitive component alternatively
changes effective components to bring consistency among two aspects. It also proposes that
attitudes can be changed with persuasive communication by evaluating the goals again.
Cognitive dissonance theory is another part of cognitive theory which is defined as
incomparability which the people use among more than two attitudes or between their behaviour.
Brown and et.al., (2016), argued that inconsistency is not comfortable and hence employees tries
to reduce it. They always try to find out the stable state where there is less dissonance and
discomfort. Participants can reduce it by understanding the factors which creates dissonance.
They can eliminate by rewards that are included in dissonance and degree of affection which
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they believe that they have over the property of organisation. This can be explained more
appropriately by considering the employees participation in more detail.
It can be seen that the elements which creates more dissonance are not so much important
and stress to correct this imbalance is not big as compared to the elements which does not create
any dissonance. This is because, no discomfort assures that there is some big mistake is going on
which the company has no idea. Degree of influence affects the people which are inspired to
reduce dissonance. Further, high rewards to the employees also creates more discomfort and
hence they try their best to reduce it at best possible level. It can be seen that individual
experience is not enough to move towards consistency. Cognitive dissonance theory helps in
estimating propensity of people to engage more changing attitude and behaviour (McLeod,
2014).
This can be analysed that employees will change their behaviour when they have to make
effective image in the company and win trusts of its senior members.
It is argued that dissonance theory is better as compared to balance theory because in
balance theory employees do not try to overcome their sentiments . Further, there is no degree of
balance and imbalance. Further, it has not helped in making quantitative predictions for change
in attitude. It can be seen that dissonance theory has helped in improving the behaviour of
participants as it provides dissonance which forces them to do efforts to bring comfort in their
work. It has helped in making the situation comfortable and easy so that they can maintain their
attitude and effective relationship among them.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
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