Month: April 2020

1. Objectives of Firm

Company’s general and advertising objectives are the prime considerations in media selection. Those media capable to meet company’s expectations are likely to be selected. Advertising objectives may be to inform, remind, convince, create prestige, or to increase sales and profits. Different media have varying capacity to meet these objectives.

2. Costs Media and Company’s Financial Position

Media selection decision is highly influenced by media costs and firm’s ability to pay. Company has to pay for buying space or time and preparing advertising copy fit for the media to be selected. TV, radio, films are costly in terms of buying time and preparing advertising copy. Print media are relatively cheaper in both space and preparation of advertising message. Some outdoor media are quite low in cost. As per media costs and company’s financial capacity, the appropriate media should be selected.

3. Reach or Number of People Exposed to the Message

It is an important criterion to choose among ad media. Reach means the number of different people exposed to a particular medium at least once during a specified time period. Mass media are capable to reach millions of people by just one exposure. Television has more exposure capacity compared to outdoor media in a particular time.

Local media can expose the message to limited persons. In the same way, frequency (the number of times within a specified time period the average person exposed to the message), and impact (the impact created on audience by an exposure through given medium) are also key criteria to choose among advertising media. Reach, frequency, and impact are important variables that determine cost-effectiveness of various media.

4. Company’s Advertising Policy and Approach

Company’s advertising policy and approach determine which of the media should be selected. For example, if company’s policy is not to spend more money for advertisement and to offer the product at a low price, it may go for cheaper media.

5. Type of Buyers

People to be influenced should be taken into account while selecting the media. Buyers can be classified into various classes as discussed in market segmentation. Each medium has its special viewers, readers, or audience. For the firm, it is important to know whether the target groups can be exposed by the particular medium.

Television is the most common medium, but can be made more particular by selecting the special programme. Magazines are capable to appeal particular sex, age groups, or professionals. Daily newspapers are again very general in nature.

6. Condition under which Customers are Influenced

Readers’/viewers’ mood and interest determine receptivity of message. Television is the best-fit medium to associate advertising message when people are watching or enjoying related programmes. For example, advertising TVS Victor motorbike on television during the live telecast of the TVS Cup One-day Series.

However, it is difficult to determine mood or interest of readers for daily newspapers. It is relatively easy to determine mood of people during a specific programme in radio or television. In case of outdoors media, the place is very important to judge mood of people. For example, hoardings, posters, or banner near gardens or picnic places are more likely to be attracted.

7. Circulation/Coverage

The area covered by (or number of people exposed to) the medium is an important criterion. Some media are capable to cover the globe while some can cover only the limited locality. For example, the local newspapers cover limited areas, the national newspapers like The Time of India and The Economic Times cover the whole nation.

Similarly, certain magazines have national and international circulation. And, the same is true with audio-visual and outdoor media. As per geographical concentration of customers, the suitable media should be selected.

8. Repetition or Frequency

Repetition or frequency implies the number of times within specific time period an average person is exposed to the message by specific medium. Most of the outdoor media hold the message for relatively long time. Magazines or periodicals publish monthly or quarterly; mostly they publish advertisements only in a particular edition.

The more is the repetition of advertising message, the more is the effect of the medium on people. Naturally, advertisement appears frequently is more likely to read or attend than if it appears only once. However, repetition in case of newspapers, TV, radio, etc., depends on company’s ability to pay.

9. Credibility and Image of Media

In case of newspapers and magazines, the factor is critical. Naturally, advertising message appears in the reputed newspapers or magazines carry heavy impression and effect than substandard media. People don’t trust the appeal published in the lower standard media. Prestige of media becomes the prestige of advertiser. Firms opt for credible or prestigious media to carry the advertising message.

10. Past Experience

Company’s own past experience may be instrumental to decide on advertising media. For example, if company has satisfactory experience of using a particular medium, there are more chances to use the same medium and vice versa.

11. Experience of other Companies

Experience of other companies is one of the important considerations in media selection. Company may try to know what other companies say about applicability and usefulness of various media. Views of other companies must be followed with care and caution.

12. Expert Opinion

Marketing experts or consultants who work on professional basis can be consulted to suggest an appropriate medium to carry the message. These experts, on the basis of analysis of market situations in relation to products to be advertised, can recommend the suitable media. Since they have experience and expertise in the field, they are in better position to judge the suitability of each of the media in relation to product and company’s financial position. They charge fees for their consultancy services.

13. Type of Advertising Message

Each advertising message needs specific advertising vehicle. If a message is simple, print media are sufficient. If a message is complicated, and the company wants to demonstrate and explain, audiovisual media suit the needs.

14. Others

Apart from above mentioned factors, there are certain factors that affect media selection decision.

They are listed as under:

• Effectiveness of Media
• Availability of Media
• Government Rules and Regulations
• Time and Place

Media Vehicle

A media vehicle refers to a specific method (like digital, radio, newspaper etc) of media used by a business to deliver advertising messages to its target audience. The first step is to pick a suitable media class, that is, a general category of media, like radio, television, the Internet, newspapers or magazines. This is followed by selection of the right media vehicle, such as a specific radio station, television channel, online website or print publication. The aim is to reach the target consumer group and receive a good response to the advertising messages from the group.

The different kinds of media vehicles have been explained below:

1. Broadcast Vehicles

This includes television and radio stations. Such vehicles can be used to target mass audiences, and the cost per target is low. They are more effective than print media as the ads include audio and video. They can be effectively used for low involvement products because of short ad durations and lack of excessive detail-sharing. Television vehicles in India include networks such as STAR India, Network 18, Zee Network, UTV and so on. Sometimes, small businesses can not afford to advertise on national networks, and so they often associate themselves with local network affiliate stations, or radio vehicles.

2. Print Vehicles

Newspapers are also feasible for small businesses owing to relatively low ad costs. Both national newspapers and community newspapers (that can reach a local audience) are good options. Magazines are not quite as accessible for small businesses as they cater to a niche audience and cost per target is therefore high. However, some regions have local magazines that offer community events, entertainment and themed topics.

3. Digital Vehicles and Others

Online or digital/interactive vehicles along with mobile communication opportunities provide low cost advertising options. Other supportive media vehicles include directories, buses, billboards and benches. These are usually used to reinforce messages that have been delivered through broader mass media. Billboards are comparatively expensive, but they have a very wide reach.

Individual behavior can be defined as a mix of responses to external and internal stimuli. It is the way a person reacts in different situations and the way someone expresses different emotions like anger, happiness, love, etc.

To get a brief idea about the individual behavior let us learn about the individual behavior framework and other key elements related to it.

Individual Behavior Framework

On the basis of these elements, psychologist Kurt Lewin stated the Field theory and outlined the behavior framework. This psychological theory studies the patterns of interaction between an individual and the environment. The theory is expressed using the formula

B = F(P,E)

where, B – Behavior, F – Behavior Function, P – Person, and E – Environment around the person.

Say for example, a well payed person who loses his job in recession may behave differently when unemployed.

Causes of Individual Behavior

Certain individual characteristics are responsible for the way a person behaves in daily life situations as well as reacts to any emergency situations. These characteristics are categorized as −

• Inherited characteristics
• Learned characteristics

1. Inherited Characteristics

The features individuals acquire from their parents or from our forefathers are the inherited characteristics. In other words, the gifted features an individual possesses by birth is considered as inherited characteristics.

Following features are considered as inherited characteristics:

• Color of a person’s eye
• Religion/Race of a person
• Shape of the nose
• Shape of earlobes

2. Learned Characteristics

Nobody learns everything by birth. First our school is our home, then our society followed by our educational institutions. The characteristics an individual acquires by observing, practicing and learning from others and the surroundings is known as learned characteristics.

It consists of the following features:

• Perception: Result of different senses like feeling, hearing etc.
• Values: Influences perception of a situation, decision making process.
• Personality: Patterns of thinking, feeling, understanding and behaving.
• Attitude: Positive or negative attitude like expressing one’s thought.

From Latin “Humanitas”, the concept of Man means human nature, general culture of the mind. It is also “men” in general, the human race taken as a unit. Most philosophers defined as any human being endowed with reason. What man is the ultimate metaphysical question.

Definitions of man by the Philosophers

Simone de Beauvoir:

“Humanity is a discontinuous series of free men permanently isolate their subjectivity. ”

Husserl (phenomenology):

“Each figure is spiritual in nature in the space of world history. This trial shows humanity as a single life kissing men and peoples and linked only by spiritual traits: it envelops a multitude of types of humanity and culture, but by imperceptible transitions, melt into each other. ”

Nietzsche (see Nietzsche Philosophy Summary):

“Mankind! He was never between all the old, old one more horrible (except perhaps the truth is a problem with the use of philosophers?”

“Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman, a rope over an abyss”

Merleau-Ponty:

“Man is a historical idea and not a natural kind”

Sartre (Existentialism is a humanism):

“Man is nothing else than his plan, it exists only insofar as it is realized, so it is nothing but the whole ”

Heidegger (Being and Time)L

“Man is a creature of the distant”

Pascal:

“Man is a reed, the weakest of nature, but it is a thinking reed. It is not necessary that the entire universe arm itself to crush: a vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But when the universe to crush him, man would still be nobler than what kills him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage that the universe has over him The universe knows nothing “

Dissimilarity is principle of nature. No two persons are alike. All the individuals differ from each other in many a respects. Children born of the same parents and even the-twins are not alike. This differential psychology is linked with the study of individual differences. Wundt, Cattel, Kraepelin, Jastrow and Ebbing Haus are the exponents of differential psychology.

This change is seen in physical forms like in height, weight, colour, complexion strength etc., difference in intelligence, achievement, interest, attitude, aptitude, learning habits, motor abilities, skill. Each man has an intellectual capacity through which he gains experience and learning.

Every person has the emotions of love, anger, fear and feelings of pleasure and pain. Every man has the need of independence, success and need for acceptance.

Broadly individual difference may be classified into two categories such as inherited traits and acquired traits:

Factors affecting Individual Differences

There are various causes which are responsible in bringing individual differences.

They are narrated below:

1. Heredity

Some heretical traits bring a change from one individual to other. An individual’s height, size, shape and color of hair, shape of face, nose, hands and legs so to say the entire structure of the body is determined by his heretical qualities. Intellectual differences are also to a great extent influenced by hereditary factor.

2. Environment

Environment brings individual differences in behaviour, activities, attitude, and style of life characteristics. Personality etc. Environment does not refer only physical surroundings but also it refers the different types of people, society, their culture, customs, traditions, social heritage, ideas and ideals.

3. Race and Nationality

Race and Nationality is one cause of individual difference. Indians are very peace loving, Chinese are cruel; Americans are very frank due to race and nationality.

4. Sex

Due to sex variation one individual differs from other. Men are strong in mental power. On the other hand women on the average show small superiority over men in memory, language and aesthetic sense. Women excel the men in shouldering social responsibilities and have a better control over their emotions.

5. Age

Age is another factor which is responsible in bringing individual differences. Learning ability and adjustment capacity naturally grow with age. When one grows in age can acquire better control over our emotions and better social responsibilities. When a child grows then this maturity and development goes side by side.

6. Education

Education is one major factor which brings individual differences. There is a wide gap in the behaviors of educated and uneducated persons. All traits of human beings like social, emotional and intellectual are controlled and modifies through proper education.

This education brings a change in our attitude, behaviour, appreciations, Personality. It is seen that uneducated persons are guided by their instinct and emotions where as the educated persons are guided by their reasoning power.

Educational Implications of Individual Differences

Educational implications of Individual differences are listed below:

(i) Aims of education, curriculum, method of teaching should be linked with individual differences considering the different abilities and traits individual.

(ii) Curriculum should be designed as per the interest, abilities and needs of different students.

(iii) The teacher has to adopt different types of methods of teaching considering individual difference related to interest, need, etc.

(iv) Some co-curricular activities such as Drama, music, literary activities (Essay & Debate Competition) should be assigned to children according to their interest.

(v) Teacher uses certain specific teaching aids which will attract the children towards teaching considering their interest and need.

(vi) Various methods such as playing method, project method, Montessori method, story telling methods are to be used considering/discovering how different children respond to a task or a problem.

(vii) The division of pupils into classes should not be based only on the mental age or chronological age of children but the physical, social and emotional maturity should be given due consideration.

(viii) In case of vocational guidance the counselor is to plan the guidance technique keeping in view the needs and requirements of the students.

Since the earliest times, humans have needed to be sensitive to their surroundings to survive, which means that we have an innate awareness of our environment and seek out environments with certain qualities.

First of all, humans have a strong need for safety and security and look for those attributes in their environment. We also look for physical comfort, such as an environment with the right temperature. In addition, we seek an environment that is psychologically comfortable: for example, environments that are familiar, but offer the right amount of stimulus.

Retailers and the hospitality industry know this very well and try to provide an atmosphere that creates a positive customer experience and offers three important attributes: comfort, safety, and entertainment. These attributes are equally important in healthcare as well.

How the environment can impact you?

Below are just a few examples of how the environment can impact you.

1. The environment can facilitate or discourage interactions among people (and the subsequent benefits of social support). For example, an inviting space with comfortable chairs and privacy can encourage a family to stay and visit with a patient.
2. The environment can influence peoples’ behavior and motivation to act. For example, a dingy corridor filled with extra hospital equipment will invite staff to leave another item in the hall, whereas a clean corridor and adequate storage will encourage staff to take the time to put the item away.
3. The environment can influence mood. For example, the results of several research studies reveal that rooms with bright light, both natural and artificial, can improve health outcomes such as depression, agitation, and sleep.

What about stress?

Perhaps most importantly for health, the environment can create or reduce stress, which in turn impacts our bodies in multiple ways. This is because our brain and our nervous, endocrine, and immune systems are constantly interacting. As neuroscientist Candice Pert puts it, “What you are thinking at any moment is changing your biochemistry.”

Thus, the stress of a noisy, confusing hospital room might result in a patient not only feeling worried, sad, or helpless, but experiencing higher blood pressure, heart rate, and muscle tension. In addition, hormones released in response to the emotional stress could suppress the patient’s immune system, causing his wounds to heal more slowly.

Stress is an important medical consideration, and creating an environment that reduces stress is a key piece of improving health outcomes.

The term ‘personality’ is derived from the Latin word ‘persona’ which means a mask. According to K. Young, “Personality is a …. patterned body of habits, traits, attitudes and ideas of an individual, as these are organised externally into roles and statuses, and as they relate internally to motivation, goals, and various aspects of selfhood.” G. W. Allport defined it as “a person’s pattern of habits, attitudes, and traits which determine his adjustment to his environment.”

According to Robert E. Park and Earnest W. Burgess, personality is “the sum and organization of those traits which determine the role of the individual in the group.” Herbert A. Bloch defined it as “the characteristic organization of the individual’s habits, attitudes, values, emotional characteristics……. which imparts consistency to the behaviour of the individual.” According to Arnold W. Green, “personality is the sum of a person’s values (the objects of his striving, such as ideas, prestige, power and sex) plus his non- physical traits (his habitual ways of acting and reacting).” According to Linton, personality embraces the total “organized aggregate of psychological processes and status pertaining to the individual.”

According to Anderson and Parker, “Personality is the totality of habits, attitudes, and traits that result from socialization and characterizes us in our relationships with others.” According to N.L. Munn, “Personality may be defined as the most characteristic integration of an individual’s structure modes of behaviour, interests, attitudes, capacities, abilities and aptitudes.” According to Morton Prince, “Personality is the sum total of all the biological innate dispositions, impulses tendencies and instincts of the individual, and the acquired disposition and tendencies acquired by experience.” According to Young, “Personality is the totality of behaviour of an individual with a given tendency system interacting with a sequence of situations.”

Lawrence A. Pewin has given a working definition of personality in these words, “Personality represents those structural and dynamic properties of an individual or individuals as they reflect themselves in characteristic responses to situations.”

Personality Determinants

Personality is not determined by a single factor, but by an accumulation of many factors. Some of those factors are psychological, while others are physical, biological, and hereditary. I have compiled some of the most influential factors when it comes to determinants of personality.

1. Heredity

Heredity refers to those factors that were determined at conception.

Physical stature, facial attractiveness, sex, temperament, muscle composition and reflexes, energy level, and biological rhythms are characteristics that are considered to be inherent from one’s parents. The heredity approach argues that the ultimate explanation of an individual’s personality is the molecular structure of the genes, located in the chromosomes.

Research on animals has showed that both physical and psychological characteristics can be transmitted through heredity. But research on human beings is in adequate to support this view point. However, psychologists and geneticists have accepted the fact that heredity plays an important role in one’s personality.

2. Brain

The second biological approach is to concentrate on the role that the brain plays in personality. Though researchers make some promising inroads, the psychologists are unable to prove empirically the contribution of human brain in influencing personality. The most recent and exciting possibilities come from the work done with electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB) and split-brain psychology.

Preliminary results from the electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB) research give indication that better understanding of human personality and behaviour might come from the study of the brain. Work with ESB on human subjects is just beginning.

There seem to be definite pleasurable and painful areas in the human brain. This being true, it may be possible physically to manipulate personality through ESB.

3. Biofeedback

Until recently, physiologists and psychologists felt that certain biological functions such as brainwave patterns, gastric secretions, and fluctuations in blood pressure and skin temperature were beyond conscious control. Now some scientists believe that these involuntary functions can be consciously controlled through biofeedback. In BFT the individual learns the internal rhythm of a particular body process through electronic signals feedback from equipment that is wired to the body area. From this biofeedback the person can learn to control the body processing question. More research is needed on biofeedback before any definitive conclusions can be drawn. But its potential impact could be extremely interesting for the future.

4. Physical features

A vital ingredient of the personality, an individual’s external appearance, is biologically determined. The fact that a person is tall or short, fat or skinny, black or white will influence the person’s effect on others and this in turn, will affect the self-concept. Practically all would agree that physical characteristics have at least some influence on the personality. According to Paul H Mussen “a child’s physical characteristics may be related to his approach to the social environment, to the expectancies of others, and to their reactions to him. These, inturn, may have impacts on personality development”.

Type A and Type B personality hypothesis describes two contrasting personality types. In this hypothesis, personalities that are more competitive, highly organized, ambitious, impatient, highly aware of time management and/or aggressive are labeled Type A, while more relaxed, less ‘neurotic’, ‘frantic’, ‘explainable’, personalities are labeled Type B.

The two cardiologists who developed this theory came to believe that Type A personalities had a greater chance of developing coronary heart disease. Following the results of further studies and considerable controversy about the role of the tobacco industry funding of early research in this area, some reject, either partially or completely, the link between Type A personality and coronary disease. Nevertheless, this research had a significant effect on the development of the health psychology field, in which psychologists look at how an individual’s mental state affects physical health.

Type A

The hypothesis describes Type A individuals as outgoing, ambitious, rigidly organized, highly status-conscious, impatient, anxious, proactive, and concerned with time management. People with Type A personalities are often high-achieving “workaholics”. They push themselves with deadlines, and hate both delays and ambivalence. People with Type A personalities experience more job-related stress and less job satisfaction. Interestingly, those with Type A personalities do not always outperform those with Type B personalities. Depending on the task and the individual’s sense of time urgency and control, it can lead to poor results when there are complex decisions to be made.  However, research has shown that Type A individuals are in general associated with higher performance and productivity (Barling & Charbonneau, 1992; Bermudez, Perez-Garcia, & Sanchez-Elvira, 1990; Glass, 1977). Moreover, Type A students tend to earn higher grades than Type B students (Waldron et al., 1980), and Type A faculty members were shown to be more productive than their Type B behavior counterparts (Taylor, Locke, Lee, & Gist, 1984).

In his 1996 book dealing with extreme Type A behavior, Type A Behavior: Its Diagnosis and Treatment, Friedman suggests that dangerous Type A behavior is expressed through three major symptoms:

• Free-floating hostility, which can be triggered by even minor incidents
• Time urgency and impatience, which causes irritation and exasperation usually described as being “short-fused”
• A competitive drive, which causes stress and an achievement-driven mentality. The first of these symptoms is believed to be covert and therefore less observable, while the other two are more overt.

Type A people were said to be hasty, impatient, impulsive, hyperalert, potentially hostile, and angry. Research has also shown that Type A personalities deal with reality and have certain defenses when it comes to dealing with problems.

Janet Spence’s research has shown that the Type A archetype can be broken down into two factors assessed using a modified Jenkins activity survey with 7 questions assessing AS and 5 items assessing II. The two factors are Achievement Striving (AS) and Impatience Irritability (II). AS is a desirable factor which is characterized by being hard working, active, and taking work seriously. II is undesirable and is characterized by impatience, irritability, and anger. Subsequent work by Day and Jreige has further clarified the independence of these two subtypes of type A personality. Additionally they further defined the interactions between AS and II subtypes and psychosocial outcomes.  AS was more strongly linked to job satisfaction while II was linked to self report of satisfaction and life satisfaction.  Associations were demonstrated between AS and II subtypes moderating the impact of job stressors (job control, role overload and role ambiguity) on outcomes of job satisfaction, life satisfaction and perceived stress.

There are two main methods to assessing Type A behaviour. The first being the SI and the second being the Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS) The SI assessment involves an interviewer measuring a persons emotional, nonverbal and verbal responses (your expressive style). The JAS involves a self questionnaire with three main categories: Speed and Impatience, Job Involvement, and Hard-Driving Competitiveness.

Type B

Type B is a behavior pattern that is lacking in Type A behaviors. A-B personality is a continuum where one either leans to be more Type A or Non Type A (Type B).

The hypothesis describes Type B individuals as a contrast to those of Type A. Type B personality, by definition, are noted to live at lower stress levels. They typically work steadily, and may enjoy achievement, although they have a greater tendency to disregard physical or mental stress when they do not achieve. When faced with competition, they may focus less on winning or losing than their Type A counterparts, and more on enjoying the game regardless of winning or losing. Unlike the Type A personality’s rhythm of multi-tasked careers, Type B individuals are sometimes attracted to careers of creativity: writer, counselor, therapist, actor or actress. Their personal character may enjoy exploring ideas and concepts.

Type B personality types are more tolerant than individuals in the Type A category. This can be evident through their relationship style that members of upper management prefer. Type B individuals can “…see things from a global perspective, encourage teamwork, and exercise patience in decision making…”

Interactions between Type A and Type B

Type A individuals’ proclivity for competition and aggression is illustrated in their interactions with other Type As and with Type Bs. When playing a modified Prisoner’s Dilemma game, Type A individuals elicited more competitiveness and angry feelings from both Type A and Type B opponents than did the Type B individuals. Type A individuals punished their Type A counterparts more than their Type B counterparts, and more than Type Bs punished other Type Bs. Rivalry between Type A individuals was shown by more aggressive behavior in their interactions, including initial antisocial responses, refusal to cooperate, verbal threats, and behavioral challenges.

According to California Management Review, 1995, an analysis, based on extensive review of surveys of employers concluded that “the most important consideration in hiring and biggest deficit among new work force entrants are the attitudes concerning work that they bring with them to their new jobs. ” Attitudes can help in predicting human behaviour at work. An understanding of attitudes is also important because attitudes help people adapt to their work environment.

Four Important Functions of Attitudes (According to D. Katz)

1. The Adjustment Function

Attitudes often help people adjust to their work environment. When employees are well treated they are likely to develop a positive attitude towards the management and the organization, otherwise they are likely to develop a negative attitude towards management and the organization. These attitudes help employees adjust to their environment and are a basis for future behaviour.

For example, if employees who are well treated are asked about management or the organization they are likely to say good things. These employees are very loyal to the management also. On the other hand, if the employees are berated or they are given minimum salary increases or they have less job satisfaction, the reverse may be true.

2. The Ego Defensive Function

Along with the adjustment function, attitudes also help them defend their self images. People often form and maintain certain attitudes to protect their own self images. For example, workers may feel threatened by the employment or advancement of minority or female workers in their organisation. These threatened workers may develop prejudices against the new workers.

They may develop an attitude that such newcomers are less qualified and they might mistreat these workers. This attitude helps the workers protect the ego and is known as an ego defensive attitude. This ego defensive attitude is used by the employees in coping with a feeling of guilt or threat. Unless this feeling is removed, this kind of attitude will Remain unchanged.

3. The Value Expressive Function

Attitudes provide people with a basis for expressing their values. Our value expressive attitudes are closely related to our self concept. A person, whose value system is centralized on freedom, will have a positive attitude towards decentralization of authority in the organization, flexible work schedules etc. Another person who is very ambitious will have a positive attitude towards a job which will offer bright future prospects and chances of promotion.

A manager who believes strongly in work ethics will tend to voice attitudes toward specific individuals or work practices as a means of reflecting this value. For example, a supervisor who wants a subordinate to work harder might put it this way “You’ve got to work harder. That has been the tradition of the family since it was founded. It helped get us where we are today and everyone is expected to subscribe to this ethic”. Thus, the attitudes serve as a basis for expressing one’s central value.

4. The Knowledge Function

Attitudes are often substituted for knowledge. Attitudes help supply standards and frames of reference that allow people to organize and explain the world around them. Regardless of how accurate a person’s view of reality is attitudes towards people, events and objects help the individual make sense out of what is going on. Stereotyping is an example. In the absence of knowledge about a person, we may use a stereotyped attitude for judging the person.

Why should managers know about these attitude functions? Such a knowledge can help the managers in two ways firstly, he will understand and predict how a certain person is likely to behave. Secondly, it can help the management in changing the attitudes of another person. They can do this by changing the conditions that sustain the attitude.