Types of Attitudes in the Social and Corporate World

Attitudes form the core determinants of human personality. Cultivating various attitudes in the respective proportion shapes your character. Here we will tell you about different types of attitudes, that decides the way people perceive you.

Well, you must have come across instructors or mentors, expressing their opinions on how a positive attitude can lead to success. Now, have you wondered what makes your attitude positive or negative?

To make things simpler, we are about to study different types of attitudes and how they portray you to the world. In simple words, an attitude is your response to various events in life, or things, people, places, and situations. You must understand that your preferences and choices directly depend on the attitude you carry.

What Composes Your Attitudes?

Before we dive deeper into different kinds of attitudes that shape your character, we will be discussing their components. Broadly categorizing, three primary elements affect human attitudes.

1. Cognitive Element:

In every attitude, you have a belief segment. This component becomes active when you form a perception or opinion regarding any situation, object, or person. Again, your perception may vary, and it can be detrimental, positive, unfavorable, or favourable.

In other words, the cognitive element of your attitude resonates with your beliefs.

2. Affective Element:

Again, each attitude has got a feeling statement, and the affective element represents the same. You must notice that the affective component becomes active when you attach your emotions while disseminating your opinions. Therefore, the affective element is all about your emotions and feelings, that become superficial when you talk about anything.

3. Behavioural Element:

The nomenclature of this element is suggestive enough to explain that it has an association with human behaviour. Unconsciously, people tend to attach their cravings or desires to their actions. In this process, the behavioural element comes into play. It determines the way that a person would react or behave towards something.

While exploring different human attitudes, you will realize that each of these three components remains integrated in a certain proportion.

10 Key Characteristics of Attitudes:

Human attitude and its types have some inherent characteristics or attributes. Generally speaking, attitudes have two primary elements:

• Predisposition or tendency to react
• The direction of this tendency while reacting

Therefore, you may assess attitude as a psychological stature of readiness to organize your thought process and respond to the world. You will come across explicit and implicit attitudes when you go deeper into the types of attitudes in psychology.

• We are consciously aware of certain attitudes. These come into the category of explicit attitudes. You are continually mindful of the impact that these attitudes cast on people around you.
• On the other hand, people are unconscious about their implicit attitudes. They silently influence their behaviors and beliefs.

Before listing down the types of human attitudes, we would compile ten key attributes of attitudes.

• Attitudes arise as a result of complicated combinations of certain things that people refer to as values, beliefs, motivations, and behaviours.
• All people hold some kind of attitude, regardless of their intelligence or social status.
• The attitudes you hold, define your personality and identity. It influences your ability to judge people and guides your course of action.
• The 'belief' and 'feeling' ingredients are internal to every individual. However, others can assess a person's attitude by evaluating behaviour.
• Your attitude enables you to visualize situations and define your behaviour towards the same.
• Attitudes also provide shape the beliefs or internal cognitions of humans about others.
• One's experience often finds a reflection on the attitude. In the process, it is possible to predict his or her behaviour in the future to a certain extent.
• Your attitude also reflects the aggregate of your feelings or inclinations.
• People show different types of attitudes in their respective organizational behaviours. This demonstrates their appreciation, interests, and social conduct.
• Attitudes may be positive, negative, or neutral. The level of education, age, and position of a person impact attitudes.

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Types of Attitudes in Social life and Workplace:

Now, you know what attitudes are. Here, you will come across the different types of attitudes, along with certain examples.

Positive Attitudes:

Some traits representing positive attitude include optimism, confidence, reliability, and sincerity. People cultivating a positive attitude generally focus on the brighter aspects of life rather than indulging with negative people, events, and situations. When you develop a positive attitude towards life, you would accept mistakes as an opportunity and not as a hurdle. When you move ahead in life, you would learn from your blunders. One may have different types of positive attitude, which include the following:

• Optimism
• Confidence
• Sincerity
• Happiness
• Reliability
• Ability to adapt
• Flexibility
• Sense of accountability
• Determination
• Diligence
• Tolerance
• Humility

From a professional perspective, people with positive attitudes are more successful. They remain committed to their work and tend to come up with innovative ways to deal with problems. This leads to their personality development while contributing to organizational growth.

Some of the social attitudes that one demonstrates also include these elements. Based on this, people assess you as confident or pessimistic, responsible or irresponsible, and so on.

Negative Attitudes:

While assessing different types of employee attitudes, you might come across people, who look for weaker attributes in the personality of their peers and colleagues. These individuals are most interested in the negative elements in others' personality, rather than focusing on the positive ones. Besides, they avoid good people and associate more with ones with negative personalities. For instance, you might know a colleague who frequently complains about changes, failing to adapt to the new situation at the workplace. People with negative attitudes blame others when they fail.

In other words, individuals with negative attitudes are more exposed to anger or show their hatred. Along with these, pessimism makes them stoop even more downwards. In the process, they get frustrated and lack credibility. Most of the time, such people tend to be jealous of the accomplishments of others. In the process, they experience an inferiority complex that they develop around themselves.

While exploring various types of negative attitudes, you will come across terms like 'doubt,' 'pessimism,' 'resentment' and 'hatred.' All these resonate with negative energies that make life stagnant.

Well, you might be interested in knowing different types of bad attitudes in the workplace. Here, we present you with a brief list, that would put you on the right track.

• Exaggerating the mistakes that coworkers make
• Spreading rumours, or speaking ill about others
• Dominating your team without coordination
• Backbiting about your coworkers and managers
• Remaining closed to criticisms
• Expecting too much from your team
• Demotivating others, rather than appreciating their work
• Being rude while expressing your views
• Being non-confidential towards issues in the team
• Being disrespectful towards the emotions of other employees

Neutral Attitude:

Individuals with a neutral approach are well-balanced in their lives. When you cultivate a neutral attitude, you remain indifferent to challenges around you. Instead, you tend to wait for others to come up with some kind of solution or intervene.

Well, people with a neutral attitude often remain complacent and self-satisfied. Most of the time, they remain detached from whatever goes around the world. These people do not show much emotion, and it often turns out difficult to read their minds. However, internally, they are very balanced and have proper control over their emotions.

If you develop a neutral attitude, you won't be heeding others' situations or events. Neutral people wait for others to deal with the problem, as they feel that they need not change the world around them.

When you explore different kinds of neutral attitudes and their meaning, you will realize that these people demonstrate the following traits in their characters:

• Detachment
• Indifference
• Complacence
• Unemotional
• Being disconnected

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Sikken Attitude:

Sikken attitude does not find its place in the list of primary types of attitudes. However, this happens to be one of the most dangerous types of attitudes. People with a sikken attitude demonstrate a negative state of mind. They try to destroy the image of every element that reflects into their mind. However, you may consider it as a type of much more aggressive negative attitude. Since a harmful mentality penetrates their psychology at the base level, it often turns out for the person with such an attitude to mend their ways.

The Connection Between Attitudes and Behaviours:

You must note that although attitudes shape human behaviour to a substantial extent, one's behaviour may not always reflect their attitudes. They tend to be more subtle or less expressive in their character. Studies also reveal that people can change their attitudes. In the process, others notice a change in their behaviour.

Attitudes and behaviours remain connected through a complex chain of psychology. When others point out the inconsistency between the behaviour and belief of a person, changes in behaviours may occur. However, the thumb rule is that good attitudes lead to good behaviour, and bad ones lead to a negative image.

Now, you may be interested in exploring how people develop certain attitudes. You must know that attitudes are mostly based on experiences, which one goes through over the years. However, people also acquire attitudes from others. Your attitudes may be truth-oriented, based on the elements you consider to be true.

All About Changing Attitudes in the Workplace: How To Go About it?

Well, attitudes are not permanent in our characters. When you adopt an attitude, you possess the ability to drop it from your traits. However, this ability to imbibe an attitude or leave it out depends on your individuality. Remember, the affective element of your attitude is powerful enough to overrule your intentions. Therefore, you might find it difficult to have the last say on your attitudes. To change an attitude, it is important to control the other two elements: the behavioural and cognitive components.

In corporate groups, employees sometimes need to change their attitudes for the managerial benefits. It is never too easy to change one's attitude, as several hindrances do exist on the way. From a professional perspective, we have categorized these hindrances under six categories:

• Insufficient information
• Prior commitment
• Consistency and balance
• Weak reward mechanism
• Lack of resources
• Resistance to change

Insufficient information:

The dearth of sufficient information acts as a barrier, even if one tends to change his or her attitude. One may not possibly be able to see a reason compelling enough to change the attitude. Managers need to ensure that employees are better informed.

Prior commitment:

At times, you may remain preoccupied with commitments to others. Under these circumstances, it becomes difficult to prioritize your goals. Therefore, your actions are based on your prior commitments, and not the necessity to change your course of functioning.

Consistency and balance:

You should understand why it becomes difficult to change attitude at the workplace if you know the theory of attitude based on consistency and stability. The reason is, people tend to prefer certain attitudes towards others. This affects their overall attitudes and behaviours towards objects and things.

Weak reward mechanism:

Corporate groups strive to come up with effective reward systems. Incentives motivate employees to give their best. However, the lack of a proper reward mechanism leads to lower spirits in the team.

Lack of resources:

At times, business organizations come up with extremely ambitious plans. However, they lack financial and other resources to execute the same. This makes it difficult for them to show any compelling reason for the employees, which might lead to a change in attitudes.

Resistance to change:

Some people are more obsessed with their individuality, and stay happy with their inherent traits. They tend to think outside their respective organizational goals. In the process, it leads to a resistance to change. Some employees do not like changes in their organizations. This self-imposed resistance to change prevents employees from changing their behaviours.

You simply need to draw a virtual line between negative and positive attitudes, backed by logic, before you change them. A positive attitude would show you the perkier side of life.

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However, some people remain culturally deprived of the realm of existence or environment. This develops hostile attitudes in them to changes that are meant for their betterment. Besides, well-established attitudes may repel changes; therefore, you need to weigh your priorities well.