INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES: PERCEPTION

1. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES:PERCEPTION

2. Interpersonal Influence and Group Behavior Organizational Processes The Individual THE ORGANIZATION’S ENVIRONMENT • Group behavior and work teams • Intergroup conflict and negotiations • Organizational power and politics • Communication • Skills & Abilities • Perception • Personality • Attitudes • Values • Leadership • Communications • Decision making • Reward System • Job Design INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR IN THE ORGANIZATION

3. First law of human behavior: • “People are different. What one person considers a golden opportunity another considers a threat.” • Caveat

4. Perception • Perception is the process by which individuals make sense of their world. • Individuals organize and interpret information from their environments using perceptual filters • personality, psychology, experience, preferences, beliefs-based differences • Objective vs. perceived realities

5. Perception • People perceive the world uniquely • Differences in perceptions can cause problems • Communication • Conflict • Motivation • Judgment • Decision Making

6. Object Perception Proximity – things close together are seen as belonging together.

7. Object Perception Figure-Ground: The figure and the background “switch”

8. Social Perception How we gather information about the social world--about peoples’ behavior, moods, motives, and traits Similar to object perception, but • People are more dynamic than objects • We’re trying to figure out intentions, motives, and causes of behavior

9. Attribution Why did they do that? • internal causes • traits • skills • abilities • external causes • situational constraints

10. 4 attributions for the cause of performance Stable Unstable Internal External

11. How do we determine cause? (Kelley) • Consensus - how do others behave • Consistency - this person on other occasions • Distinctiveness - this person in other situations

12. Errors/Biasesin Social Perception • Selective perception • notice stimuli which are salient due to our interests, background, experiences • Closure • tendency to fill in the gaps when information is missing • Assume what we don’t know is consistent with what we do know

13. Errors/Biasesin Social Perception • Halo Effects • Impression on one dimension affects impression of unrelated dimension • Contrast • Stereotyping • A person has beliefs about a class of stimulus objects and generalizes those beliefs to encounters with members of that class of objects. • Primacy/Recency effects • Disproportionately high weight is given to the first/last information obtained about a stimulus

14. First Impressions • Influences what subsequent information we notice and how it is interpreted • “Fill-in” information consistent with first impression • Anchoring • Failure to adjust for subsequent information • Confirmation Bias • Seek out information & perceive stimuli in ways that confirm expectations • Discount contradictory information • Self fulfilling prophecy (2-way) • Recency—availability bias

15. Errors/Biasesin Social Perception • Actor-observer difference (aka “the fundamental attribution error”) • Actors attribute their behavior to external causes • Observer attribute actors’ behavior to internal cause

16. Errors/Biasesin Social Perception • Fundamental Attribution Error • The tendency to attribute others' bad performance to internal causes & • Attribute their good performance to external causes

17. Errors/Biasesin Social Perception • Self-serving bias • attribute successes to ourselves - internal • attribute failures to the environment – external

18. Performance appraisal and errors in social perception • Supervisor: • Subordinate:

19. Perception Implications

20. Guard against specific biases • Stereotypes • Be aware that stereotyping can occur with very little information, remain open to new information • Recognize that stereotypes rarely apply to a specific individual • Fundamental attribution error? • Primacy/recency? • Halo? • Confirmation?

21. Perception Implications