Perception
Perception is a process by which individuals
organize and interpret their sensory impressions
in order to give meaning to their environment.
However, what we perceive can be substantially
different from objective reality.
Why is perception important in the study of OB?
Simply because people’s behavior is based on
their perception of what reality is, not on reality
itself.
Person Perception
Attribution Theory
Attribution theory tries to explain the ways in which we
judge people differently, depending on the meaning we
attribute to a given behavior.
It suggests that when we observe an individual’s behavior,
we attempt to determine whether it was internally or
externally caused.
That determination, however, depends largely on three
factors: (1) distinctiveness, (2) consensus, and (3)
consistency.
Internally caused behaviors are those we believe to be
under the personal control of the individual. Externally
caused behavior is what we imagine the situation
forced the individual to do.
Now let’s discuss the three determining factors.
Distinctiveness refers to whether an individual displays
different behaviors in different situations.
If everyone who faces a similar situation responds in the
same way, we can say the behavior shows consensus.
An observer looks for consistency in a person’s actions.
Distinctiveness refers to whether an
individual displays different behaviors in
different situations. Is the employee who
arrives late today also one who regularly
doesn’t meet commitments?
What we want to know is whether this
behavior is unusual. If it is, we are likely to
give it an external attribution. If it’s not, we
will probably judge the behavior to be
internal.
If everyone who faces a similar situation
responds in the same way, we can say the
behavior shows consensus.
The behavior of our tardy employee meets this
criterion if all employees who took the same
route were also late. From an attribution
perspective, if consensus is high, you would
probably give an external attribution to the
employee’s tardiness, whereas if other
employees who took the same route made it to
work on time, you would attribute his lateness
to an internal cause.
Finally, an observer looks for consistency in
a person’s actions.
Does the person respond the same way
over time? Coming in 10 minutes late for
work is not perceived in the same way for
an employee who hasn’t been late for
several months as it is for an employee who
is late two or three times a week. The more
consistent the behavior, the more we are
inclined to attribute it to internal causes.
If an employee, Kim Randolph, generally performs
at about the same level on related tasks as she
does on her current task (low distinctiveness),
other employees frequently perform differently—
better or worse— than Kim on that task (low
consensus), and Kim’s performance on this
current task is consistent over time (high
consistency); then anyone judging Kim’s work will
likely hold her primarily responsible for her task
performance (internal attribution).
When we make judgments about the behavior of other
people, we tend to underestimate the influence of
external factors and overestimate the influence of internal
or personal factors.
This fundamental attribution error can explain why a
sales manager is prone to attribute the poor performance
of her sales agents to laziness rather than to the
innovative product line introduced by a competitor.
Individuals and organizations also tend to attribute their
own successes to internal factors such as ability or effort,
while blaming failure on external factors such as bad luck
or unproductive co-workers. This is the self-serving bias.
Self-serving bias The tendency for individuals to attribute
their own successes to internal factors and put the blame
for failures on external factors.
A U.S. News & World Report study showed the power of
self serving bias. Researchers asked one group of
people “If someone sues you and you win the case,
should he pay your legal costs?” Eighty-five percent
responded “yes.” Another group was asked “If you sue
someone and lose the case, should you pay his costs?”
Only 44 percent answered “yes.”
The evidence on cultural differences in perception is
mixed, but most suggest there are differences across
cultures in the attributions people make.
One study found Korean managers less likely to use the
self-serving bias—they tended to accept responsibility for
group failure “because I was not a capable leader” instead
of attributing failure to group members.
On the other hand, Asian managers are more likely to
blame institutions or whole organizations, whereas
Western observers believe individual managers should get
blame or praise.
Common Shortcuts in Judging Others
Selective Perception - Any characteristic that makes a
person, an object, or an event stand out will increase
the probability we will perceive it.
Why? Because it is impossible for us to assimilate
everything we see; we can take in only certain stimuli.
Selective perception: The tendency to selectively
interpret what one sees on the basis of one’s interests,
background, experience, and attitudes
This explains why you’re more likely to notice cars like
your own, or why a boss may reprimand some people
and not others doing the same thing. Because we can’t
observe everything going on about us, we engage in
selective perception .
Halo Effect: The tendency to draw a general
impression about an individual on the basis of a single
characteristic
Contrast Effects: Evaluation of a person’s
characteristics that is affected by comparisons with
other people recently encountered who rank higher or
lower on the same characteristics.
Stereotyping: Judging someone on the basis of one’s
perception of the group to which that person belongs.
The link between perception and decision
making.
Decision making occurs as a reaction to a problem .
Unfortunately, most problems don’t come neatly labeled
“problem.” One person’s problem is another person’s
satisfactory state of affairs.
Every decision requires us to interpret and evaluate
information. We typically receive data from multiple
sources and need to screen, process, and interpret them.
Which data are relevant to the decision, and which are
not? Our perceptions will answer that question.
Overconfidence Bias
People are only 50% times right, for all the
times they claimed they are 90% sure.
Anchoring Bias
The anchoring bias is a tendency to fixate on initial
information and fail to adequately adjust for
subsequent information.
It occurs because our mind appears to give a
disproportionate amount of emphasis to the first
information it receives.
Any time a negotiation takes place, so does anchoring.
Confirmation Bias
The rational decision-making process assumes we
objectively gather information. But we don’t. We
selectively gather it.
The confirmation bias represents a specific case of
selective perception: we seek out information that
reaffirms our past choices, and we discount information
that contradicts them.
Availability Bias
The availability bias can also explain why
managers doing performance appraisals give
more weight to recent employee behaviors than
to behaviors of 6 or 9 months earlier
Hindsight Bias
The hindsight bias is the tendency to believe
falsely, after the outcome is known, that we’d
have accurately predicted it.
When we have accurate feedback on the
outcome, we seem pretty good at concluding it
was obvious.
