Of What Value is a Job Attitude? A Socio-Cognitive Analysis

Job attitudes are often weakly predictive of job-related behaviors. A socio-cognitive model is presented to demonstrate why job attitudes are important, to identify their structural and functional properties, and to specify when they predict behavior. According to this model, attitudes are represented in memory by a cognitive structure consisting of an object label, an evaluative summary of that object, and a knowledge structure. This structure serves several functions: it allows individuals to make sense of their social world (heuristic and schematic functions of attitudes) and to maintain self-worth (self functions of attitudes). Finally, we use the socio-cognitive model to identify six propositions for increasing the attitude-behavior relationship.