Attitude and Behavior

Someone Asked These Questions: Where does an attitude come from, and how is it formed?  Can managers shape our attitudes and change our behaviors?

My Response:  I theorize that an attitude comes from the id.  The id is that part of the psyche regarded as the reservoir of the instinctual drives and the source of psychic energy.  The pleasure principle and irrational wishing dominate the id.  The development of the ego and superego control its impulses.  Hence, attitudes form through the ego and superego.

Having said those things, I believe managers (and anyone else for that matter) cannot shape our attitudes and change our behaviors.  Managers can influence the shaping of our attitudes and influence the changing of our behaviors.  However, they cannot do those things without our approval.  In other words, only we can shape our attitudes and change our behaviors.

A manager can beat us into submission through fear motivation or physical violence.  However, under those circumstances, attitude and/or behavioral changes are only short lived.  We can effect permanent or long-term changes in our attitudes and behavior only if we desired such changes.

We always have our agency.  That is a given.  We cannot display a happy attitude or disposition if we did not desire it.  We cannot be respectful or kind if we did not desire to display such behavior.  Those are my thoughts on these questions.

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