Transcript Chapter 5: Perception and Attribution

Organizational
Behavior, 8e
Schermerhorn, Hunt, and
Osborn
Prepared by
Michael K. McCuddy
Valparaiso University
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Chapter 5
Perception and Attribution
 Study questions.
– What is the perceptual process?
– What are common perceptual distortions?
– How can the perceptual process be managed?
– What is attribution theory?
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What is the perceptual process?
 Perception.
– The process by which people select, organize,
interpret, retrieve, and respond to information.
– Perceptual information is gathered from:
•
•
•
•
•
Sight.
Hearing.
Touch.
Taste.
Smell.
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What is the perceptual process?
 Factors influencing the perceptual process.
– Characteristics of the perceiver.
– Characteristics of the setting.
– Characteristics of the perceived.
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What is the perceptual process?
 Characteristics of the perceiver.
– The perceptual process is influenced by the
perceiver’s:
• Past experiences.
• Needs or motives.
• Personality.
• Values and attitudes.
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What is the perceptual process?
 Characteristics of the setting.
– The perceptual process is influenced by the
setting’s:
• Physical context.
• Social context.
• Organizational context.
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What is the perceptual process?
 Characteristics of the perceived.
– The perceptual process is influenced by characteristics
of the perceived person, object, or event, such as:
• Contrast.
• Intensity.
• Figure-ground separation.
• Size.
• Motion.
• Repetition or novelty.
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What is the perceptual process?
 Stages of the perceptual process.
– Information attention and selection.
– Organization of information.
– Information interpretation.
– Information retrieval.
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What is the perceptual process?
 Information attention and selection.
– Selective screening.
• Lets in only a tiny proportion all the information
that bombards a person.
– Two types of selective screening.
• Controlled processing.
• Screening without perceiver’s conscious
awareness.
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What is the perceptual process?
 Organization of information.
– Schemas.
• Cognitive frameworks that represent organized knowledge
about a given concept or stimulus developed through
experience.
– Types of schemas.
• Self schemas.
• Person schemas.
• Script schemas.
• Person-in-situation schemas.
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What is the perceptual process?
 Information interpretation.
– Uncovering the reasons behind the ways
stimuli are grouped.
– People may interpret the same information
differently or make different attributions about
information.
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What is the perceptual process?
 Information retrieval.
– Attention and selection, organization, and
interpretation are part of memory.
– Information stored in memory must be
retrieved in order to be used.
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What is the perceptual process?
 Response to the perceptual process.
– Thoughts.
– Feelings.
– Actions.
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What are common
perceptual distortions?
 Common perceptual distortions include:
– Stereotypes or prototypes.
– Halo effects.
– Selective perception.
– Projection.
– Contrast effects.
– Self-fulfilling prophecy.
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What are common
perceptual distortions?
 Stereotypes or prototypes.
– Combines information based on the category
or class to which a person, situation, or object
belongs.
– Strong impact at the organization stage.
– Individual differences are obscured.
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What are common
perceptual distortions?
 Halo effects.
– Occur when one attribute of a person or
situation is used to develop an overall
impression of the individual or situation.
– Likely to occur in the organization stage.
– Individual differences are obscured.
– Important in the performance appraisal
process.
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What are common
perceptual distortions?
 Selective perception.
– The tendency to single out those aspects of a
situation, person, or object that are consistent
with one’s needs, values, or attitudes.
– Strongest impact is at the attention stage.
– Perception checking with other persons can
help counter the adverse impact of selective
perception.
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What are common
perceptual distortions?
 Projection.
– The assignment of one’s personal attributes to
other individuals.
– Especially likely to occur in interpretation
stage.
– Projection can be controlled through a high
degree of self-awareness and empathy.
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What are common
perceptual distortions?
 Contrast effects.
– Occur when an individual is compared to other
people on the same characteristics on which
the others rank higher or lower.
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What are common
perceptual distortions?
 Self-fulfilling prophecy.
– The tendency to create or find in another
situation or individual that which one expected
to find.
– Also called the “Pygmalion effect.”
– Can have either positive or negative outcomes.
– Managers should adopt positive and optimistic
approaches to people at work.
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How can the perceptual
process be managed?
 Impression management.
– A person’s systematic attempt to behave in
ways that create and maintain desired
impressions in others’ eyes.
– Successful managers:
• Use impression management to enhance their own
images.
• Are sensitive to other people’s use of impression
management.
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How can the perceptual
process be managed?
 Distortion management.
– Managers should:
• Balance automatic and controlled information
processing at the attention and selection stage.
• Broaden their schemas at the organizing stage.
• Be attuned to attributions at the interpretation
stage.
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What is attribution theory?
 Attribution theory aids in perceptual
interpretation by focusing on how people
attempt to:
– Understand the causes of a certain event.
– Assess responsibility for the outcomes of the
event.
– Evaluate the personal qualities of the people
involved in the event.
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What is attribution theory?
 Internal versus external attributions of
causes of behavior.
– Internal causes are under the individual’s
control.
– External causes are within the person’s
environment.
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What is attribution theory?
 Factors influencing internal and external
attributions.
– Distinctiveness — consistency of a person’s
behavior across situations.
– Consensus — likelihood of others responding
in a similar way.
– Consistency — whether an individual
responds the same way across time.
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What is attribution theory?
 Fundamental attribution error.
– Applies to the evaluation of someone’s else
behavior.
– Attributing success to the influence of
situational factors.
– Attributing failure to the influence of personal
factors.
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What is attribution theory?
 Self-serving bias.
– Applies to the evaluation of our own behavior.
– Attributing success to the influence of
personal factors.
– Attributing failure to the influence of
situational factors.
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What is attribution theory?
 Attributions across cultures.
– The fundamental attribution error and self-
serving bias operate differently in different
cultures.
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