Organizational Behaviour

Saradhika Manjaree
Lecturer
 OB
The Individual The Organization
The Group
- Diversity System
- Group Dynamics
- Attitudes - Culture
- Communication
- Emotions & - Change
moods - Leadership
- Personality & - Power and
Values Politics
- Perceptions
- Motivation

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 The Individual

4. Perception 1-3
 Learning Objectives
After studying this chapter you should be able to:
• Define perception and explain the factors that influence it
• Explain attribution theory and list the three determinants of attribution
• Identify the shortcuts individuals use in making judgments about others

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Activity

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 Perception
• A process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory
impressions in order to give meaning to their environment.
• People’s behaviour is based on their perception of what reality is, not
on reality itself.
• The world as it is perceived is the world that is behaviourally important.

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 The Process of Perception
• Perception is a transformation process.
• The process of perception requires sensation.
• The major senses are:
• Eyes: Seeing
• Nose: Smelling
• Tongue: Taste
• Ear: Listening
• Touch: Feeling

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 The Process of Perception

Input Process Output

(Information about Perception (Selection, Outcomes

people, things and organization &
events) Interpretation) Opinions
Data from the sense Turns Attitudes
Seeing, Touch, Smell, Feel, Transformation Value
Taste

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 Major Influence on the Perception Process

Factors in the perceiver

Attitudes, Motives, Interests,
Experience, Expectation

Perception

Factors in the target

Factors in the situation Novelty, Motion, Sounds, Size,
Time, Work setting, Social setting Background, Proximity,
Similarity
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 Attribution Theory
• Explains the ways in which we judge people differently, depending on the
meaning we attribute to a given behavior
• Attribution theory suggests that when we observe an individual’s behavior,
we attempt to determine whether it was internally or externally caused.
• Internally caused - those that are believed to be under the personal control of the
individual.
• Externally caused - resulting from outside causes.

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Attribution Theory Cont..

• Determination depends on three factors:

1. Distinctiveness
2. Consensus
3. Consistency

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Attribution Theory Cont..
1. Distinctiveness
• refers to whether an individual displays different
behaviors in different situations
• Is the employee who arrives late today also one who
regularly “blows off” commitments?
• 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

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Attribution Theory Cont..
2. consensus
• If everyone who faces a similar situation responds in the same way, we can
say the behavior shows consensus
• The behavior of our late 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 lateness
• whereas if other employees who took the same route made it to work on time, you
would attribute his lateness to an internal cause.

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Attribution Theory Cont..
3. Consistency
• an observer looks for uniformity 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
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Attribution Theory Cont..

Attribution
Observation Interpretation of cause
External
Distinctiveness
Internal

External
Individual Consensus
behavior
Internal

Internal
Consistency
External
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Attribution Theory Cont..
• Fundamental Attribution Error
• We have a tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and
overestimate the influence of internal or personal factors.
• Self-serving Bias
• Individuals attribute their own successes to internal factors.

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 Common Shortcuts in Judging Others
1. Selective Perception
• Any characteristic that makes a person, object, or event stand out will increase
the probability that it will be perceived.
• Since we can’t observe everything going on about us, we engage in selective
perception.

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Common Shortcuts in Judging Others Cont..
2. Halo Effect
• The halo effect occurs when we draw a general impression on the basis of a single
characteristic.
• For example, suppose you perceive a person to be warm and friendly. In that case, you
will attribute a number of other associated traits to that person without any
knowledge that they are true, such as they are generous.

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Common Shortcuts in Judging Others Cont..
3. Contrast Effects
• We do not evaluate a person in isolation.
• Our reaction to one person is influenced by other persons we have recently
encountered.
• For example, an interview situation in which one sees a pool of job applicants
can distort perception.
• Distortions in any given candidate’s evaluation can occur as a result of
his or her place in the interview schedule.

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 Applications of Shortcuts in Organizations
1. Employment Interview
• Evidence indicates that interviewers make perceptual judgments
that are often inaccurate.
• Agreement among interviewers is often poor.

• Most interviewers’ decisions change very little after the first 4 or 5 minutes of an
interview. As a result, information elicited early in the interview carries greater weight
than does information elicited later, and a “good applicant” is probably characterized
more by the absence of unfavorable characteristics than by the presence of favorable
ones

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Applications of Shortcuts in Organizations Cont..
2. Performance Expectations
• Evidence demonstrates that people will attempt to validate their perceptions of
reality, even when those perceptions are faulty.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy or Pygmalion effect characterizes the fact that people’s
expectations determine their behavior.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy and Pygmalion effect describe how an individual’s
behavior is determined by others’ expectations.
• If a manager expects big things from people, they’re not likely to let him down. Or if she
expects only minimal performance, they’ll likely meet those low expectations.
• Expectations become reality
• affect the performance of students, soldiers, and even accountants

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Applications of Shortcuts in Organizations Cont..
3. Performance Evaluation
• An employee’s performance appraisal is very much dependent on the
perceptual process.
• Many jobs are evaluated in subjective terms. Subjective measures are,
by definition, judgmental.
• What the evaluator perceives to be good or bad employee
characteristics or behaviors will significantly influence the outcome of
the appraisal.

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 Developing Perceptual Skills
• Self Understanding
• Self Accepting
• Continuous information processing
• Appropriate schemes for decision making
• Avoid rash judgments
• Empathy

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 Q&A

Thank You

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