3 Components of Job Satisfaction (Explained)

Components of Job SatisfactionJob satisfaction is one of the most widely used variables in organizational behavior.

It is an employee’s attitudinal response to his or her organization.

As an attitude, the components of job satisfaction are summarized as evaluative, cognitive, and effective, behavioral components.

As with all attitudes, the relationship between Satisfaction and behavior, most specifically job performance and membership, is complex.

Components of job satisfaction are;

  • Evaluative Component.
  • Cognitive Component.
  • Affective Component.

The Evaluative Component

An individual’s overall response to the employing organization is summarized in the evaluative component. It represents dislike vs. like for the organization.

When asked for a single response to the question, how satisfied are you with your job, individuals’ response to their overall evaluation.

In this case, a 5 point positive-negative scale is used where 1 indicates most negative situation and 5 indicates most positive situation to express overall favorable or unfavorable rating of their current job.

The Cognitive Component

An individual’s perceptions, opinion, beliefs and expectations regarding the organization are the focus of his or her cognitions. In this case, different items are measured to assess the cognitive component of job satisfaction.

Here participants rated the adjectives from 1 (Strongly describes) to 5 (Not applicable) how well each term reflected their thoughts or beliefs associated with their current job.

The Affective Component

This component represents the feeling induced by the organization. In general, positive affect results from information, feedback, and situations that affirms or reinforces the individual’s self-worth and self-concept, while negative affect is evoked by invalidating situations.

Self-worth is validated when individuals feel accepted as valued members of the organization and their competencies and core values are confirmed.

The study which is related to finding out the components of job satisfaction, examined two components, these arc- affective and cognitive component.

Cognitive and affective components have a great impact on measuring the level of employees’ job satisfaction. It further proposed including an evaluative component to improve the prediction of job satisfaction.

But this study found minimal support for the inclusion of evaluative component in the measurement of job satisfaction because it is dependent on a single fact.

Relationship between Cognitive and Affective Component

Job satisfaction is one of the most commonly studied variables in the organizational literature. It is related to a huge amount of employee-relevant variables. It refers to the positive attitudes or emotional dispositions people may gain from work or through aspects of work.

Employees’ job satisfaction becomes a central attention in the researchers and discussions in work and organizational psychology because it is believed to have a relationship with the job performance.


Cognitive Component

Affective Component

Reward Inducement System

Individuals develop expectations regarding their pay through negotiations, comparison to others, and promises made.

Satisfaction is increased. when these are met.

Pay is valued as means of purchasing necessary and desirable goods and services.

Pay also has an expressive meaning in that it is used as an indicator of worth and status.

Managerial Inducement SystemSatisfaction with one’s boss is a function of how he or she meets the mental expectations.The extent to which one’s boss indicates that one is a valued and skilled employee through his or her words or actions affects the emotional response to him or her.
Task Inducement SystemWork designs that include variables such as autonomy, responsibility, and task identity tend to lead to high levels of satisfaction with work.Emotional satisfying jobs either are intrinsically pleasures or create the conditions whereby the individuals’ feel that they are making a contribution to something of value and that they have an impact on the success or failure of goals and projects.
Social Inducement SystemThe basis of this inducement system is how coworkers behave relative to the expectations of them and how they help or hinder the job performance.The extent to which employee enjoys social interactions at work and degree to which social interactions are affirming of one’s identity like-acceptance, worth, etc. leads to satisfaction with coworkers.



In the cognitive component of job satisfaction pertains to beliefs regarding one’s job whether it is respectable, mentally demanding / challenging and rewarding and the affective component includes people’s actions in relation to their work such as tardiness, working late, faking illness in order to avoid work.

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