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| CHAPTER 3: PERCEPTION AND PERSONALITY IN ORGANIZATIONS | ||||
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OUTLINE I. THE PERCEPTUAL PROCESS
A. Selective Attention 1. Definition: process of filtering information received by one’s senses. 2. Influences on selective attention include size, intensity, motion, repetition, and novelty of the target and by the context in which the target is perceived. 3. Characteristics of the perceiver influence selective attention. a. Perceptual defense is a situation in which a person’s emotions screen out large blocks of information that threaten one’s values and beliefs. b. One way to minimize selective attention is by engaging in splatter vision – taking everything in as a whole while focusing on nothing.
B. Perceptual Organization and Interpretation 1. Perceptual grouping involves organizing information into general categories and interpreting it. 2. Mental models consist of the broad world views or “theories in use” that people rely on to guide their perceptions and behaviors. a. They create the screens through which people select information. b. They guide perceptions and alert people to deviations from the past. c. They help to make sense of one’s environment. d. A disadvantage is that they may blind people from seeing the world in different ways.
II. SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY
A. Definition 1. Social identify theory explains the process of self-perception and social perception. 2. The theory proposes that people develop their perceptions through personal identity and social identity. a. Personal identity includes the individual’s unique characteristics and experiences, such as physical appearance, personality traits, and special talents. b. Social identity refers to a person’s self-perception as memberships in various social groups.
B. Perceiving Others through Social Identity
1. Social identity theory explains the dynamics of social perception – how we perceive others. 2. Social identity is a comparative process, meaning that we define ourselves in terms of our differences with people who belong to groups.
a. People tend to homogenize others within social categories. b. Stereotypes developing from the grouping of traits.
III. ERRORS IN THE PERCEPTUAL PROCESS
A. Stereotyping in Organizational Settings
1. Stereotyping is an extension of social identity. 2. It is the process of assigning traits to people based upon their membership in a social category. a. Scholars say that stereotypes generally have some inaccuracies, some overestimation or underestimation of real differences, and some degree of accuracy. b. One problem with stereotyping is that stereotyped traits do not accurately describe every person in that social category. c. People also develop inaccurate stereotypes under certain conditions, such as the degree to which they interact with people in that group. d. Another problem is that we develop inaccurate stereotypes of groups to enhance our own social identity. 3. Ethical problems with stereotypes. a. The greatest concern is that stereotyping lays the foundation for prejudice – unfounded negative emotions toward people belonging to a particular stereotyped group. b. Stereotyping could also be partly responsible for sexual harassment – the unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature that detrimentally affects the work environment or leads to adverse job-related consequences for victims. 4. Attribution Theory a. The attribution process involves deciding whether an observed behavior or event is largely caused by internal or external factors. b. Internal attribution involves believing that an employee performs the job poorly because he or she lacks the necessary competencies or motivation. c. External attribution occurs if people believe the employee performs the job poorly because he or she lacks sufficient resources to do the task. d. There are three attribution rules: (1) Internal attributions are made when the observed individual behaved this way in the past (high consistency), (2) Did not behave like this toward other people or in different situations (low distinctiveness), (3) Other people do not behave this way in similar situations (low consensus).
5. Attribution errors a. Fundamental attribution error refers to the tendency to attribute the behavior of other people more to internal than external factors. (1) It occurs when there is limited information about the situational factors affecting other people. b. Self-serving bias is the tendency to attribute our favorable outcomes to internal factors and our failures. 6. Self-fulfilling prophesy a. It occurs when our expectations about another person cause that person to act in a way that is consistent with those expectations. b. There are four steps in the self-fulfilling prophecy process: (1) Expectations formed. (2) Behavior toward employees. (3) Effects on the employee. (4) Employee behavior and performance. 7. Primacy Effect a. It relates to the saying that “first impressions are lasting impressions.” b. It is our tendency to quickly form an opinion of people based on the first information we receive about them. 8. Recency Effect a. It occurs when the most recent information dominates our perception of others. b. It is stronger than the primacy effect when there is a long delay between the time when the first impression is formed and the person is evaluated. c. It is found in performance appraisals, for which supervisors must recall every employee’s performance over the previous year. 9. Halo Error a. It occurs when our general impression of a person, usually based on one prominent characteristic, colors our perception of other characteristics of that person. b. One trait important to the perceiver forms a general impression. c. It is most likely to occur when concrete information about the perceived target is missing. 10. Projection a. It occurs when we believe other people have the same beliefs and behaviors that we do. b. It is a defense mechanism to protect our self-esteem.
IV. IMPROVING PERCEPTIONS
A. Diversity Initiatives 1. Companies have been introducing diversity initiatives in order to have a deeply embedded set of values that embrace workforce diversity. 2. The most common initiative is to actively recruit people with diverse backgrounds. 3. Another initiative is to provide reasonable accommodations in the workplace. Examples include: a. Adjusting work hours, job sharing, allowing non-traditional breaks for religious reasons, and on-site childcare.
b.
Diversity awareness
activities that range from celebrations of workplace diversity to focused
awareness training. B. Empathize with Others 1. Empathy refers to a person’s ability to understand and be sensitive to the feelings, thoughts, and situation of others. 2. It helps people to become more sensitive to external causes of another person’s performance and behavior, thereby minimizing attribution errors.
3.
It narrows the
psychological distance between prejudiced people and the targets of their
prejudice. C. Postpone Impression Formation 1. By delaying impression formation until more information is collected, we rely less on stereotyped inferences to understand others.
2.
It also enables people
to engage in a developmental learning process that forms a better
understanding of others. D. Compare Perceptions with Others
1.
By sharing
perceptions, people learn different points of view and potentially gain a
better understanding of the situation. E. Know Yourself: Applying the Johari Window 1. Johari Window is a popular model for understanding how co-workers can increase their mutual understanding. a. Developed by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingram. b. Divides information about yourself into four windows –open, blind, hidden, and unknown – based on whether you own values, beliefs and experiences are know to you. (1) Open area includes information about you that is known to both you and others. (2) Blind area refers to information that is known to others but not to yourself. (3) Hidden area is information known to you but unknown to others. (4) Unknown area includes your values, beliefs, and experiences that aren’t know to you or others. c. Main objective is to increase the size of the open area so that both you and colleagues are aware of your perceptual limitations.
V. PERSONALITY IN ORGANIZATIONS
Personality refers to the stable of behavior and consistent internal states that explain a person’s behavioral tendencies. A. Personality and Organizational Behavior 1. Scholars often explain employee behavior in terms of personality traits and companies regularly administered personality tests to job applicants. 2. Recent studies have reported that certain personality traits predict certain work-related behaviors, stress reactions, and emotions fairly well under certain conditions.
B. Big Five Personality Dimensions 1. Conscientiousness – refers to people who are careful, dependable, and self-disciplined. 2. Emotional stability – characteristics include are poised, secure, and calm. 3. Openness to experience -- the extent that people are sensitive, flexible, creative, and curious. 4. Agreeableness – includes the traits of being courteous, good-natured, empathic, and caring. 5. Extroversion – characterizes people who are outgoing, talkative, sociable, and assertive. a. Introversion – opposite of extroversion – refers to people who are quiet, shy, and cautious. b. Introverts feel comfortable being alone, whereas extroverts do not.
C. Jung’s Psychological Types and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator 1. Jung’s personality theory that identifies the way people prefer to perceive their environment as well as obtain and process information. 2. MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) – a personality test that measures how people focus their attention (extroversion vs. introversion), collect information (sensing vs. intuition), process and evaluate information (thinking vs. feeling), and orient themselves to the outer world (judging vs. perceiving). a. Sensing/Intuition b. Thinking/Feeling c. Judging/Perceiving 3. Effectiveness of the MBTI a. It does a reasonably good job of measuring Jung’s psychological types. b. There is indication of a person’s preferences or skills for particular occupations.
D. Other Personality Traits 1. Locus of control – refers to a generalized belief about the amount of control people have over their own lives. a. Internal locus of control – individuals who feel that they are very much in charge of their own destiny. b. External locus of control --those who think that events in their life are due to fate or luck. 2. Self-monitoring – refers to an individual’s level of sensitivity and ability to adapt to situational cues. a. High self-monitors: adjust behavior quite easily and show little stability in other underlying personality traits; conversationalists, better organizational leaders, and better in boundary-spanning positions. b. Low self-monitors – more likely to reveal their moods and personal characteristics.
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