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OrganizationalOrganizationalBehavior, 8eBehavior, 8e
Schermerhorn, Hunt, andSchermerhorn, Hunt, and
OsbornOsborn
Prepared by
Michael K. McCuddy
Valparaiso University
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 2
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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 3
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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 4
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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 5
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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 6
What is the perceptual process?
Characteristics of the setting.
– The perceptual process is influenced by thesetting’s:
• Physical context.
• Social context.
• Organizational context.
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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 7
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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 8
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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 9
What is the perceptual process?
Information attention and selection.
– Selective screening.
• Lets in only a tiny proportion all the informationthat bombards a person.
– Two types of selective screening.
• Controlled processing.
• Screening without perceiver’s conscious awareness.
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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 10
What is the perceptual process?
Organization of information.
– Schemas.
• Cognitive frameworks that represent organized knowledgeabout 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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 11
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 aboutinformation.
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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 12
What is the perceptual process?
Information retrieval.
– Attention and selection, organization, andinterpretation are part of memory.
– Information stored in memory must be
retrieved in order to be used.
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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 13
What is the perceptual process?
Response to the perceptual process.
– Thoughts.
– Feelings.
– Actions.
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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 14
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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 15
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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 16
What are common
perceptual distortions?Halo effects.
– Occur when one attribute of a person or
situation is used to develop an overallimpression 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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 17
What are common
perceptual distortions? Selective perception.
– The tendency to single out those aspects of a
situation, person, or object that are consistentwith one’s needs, values, or attitudes.
– Strongest impact is at the attention stage.
– Perception checking with other persons canhelp counter the adverse impact of selective
perception.
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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 18
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 highdegree of self-awareness and empathy.
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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 19
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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 20
What are common
perceptual distortions?Self-fulfilling prophecy.
– The tendency to create or find in another
situation or individual that which one expectedto 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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 21
How can the perceptual
process be managed? Impression management.
– A person’s systematic attempt to behave in
ways that create and maintain desiredimpressions 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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 22
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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 23
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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 24
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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 25
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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 26
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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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 27
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.