Study questions.

What is the perceptual process? What are common perceptual distortions?

How can the perceptual process be managed? What is attribution theory?

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5

 Perception. The process by which people select, organize, interpret, retrieve, and respond to information. Perceptual information is gathered from:

Sight. Hearing. Touch. Taste. Smell.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5

 Factors influencing the perceptual process.

Characteristics of the perceiver. Characteristics of the setting. Characteristics of the perceived.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5

 Characteristics of the perceiver.

The perceptual process is influenced by the

perceivers:
Past experiences. Needs or motives. Personality. Values and attitudes.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5

 Characteristics of the setting.

The perceptual process is influenced by the

settings:
Physical context. Social context. Organizational context.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5

 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.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5

 Stages of the perceptual process.

Information attention and selection. Organization of information. Information interpretation. Information retrieval.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5

 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 perceivers conscious awareness.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5

 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.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5

 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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 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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 Response to the perceptual process.

Thoughts. Feelings. Actions.

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 Common perceptual distortions include: Stereotypes or prototypes. Halo effects. Selective perception. Projection. Contrast effects. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

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 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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 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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 Selective perception.
The tendency to single out those aspects of a

situation, person, or object that are consistent with ones 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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 Projection. The assignment of ones 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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 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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 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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 Impression management. A persons 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 peoples use of impression management.

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 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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 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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 Internal versus external attributions of

causes of behavior.
Internal causes are under the individuals

control.
External causes are within the persons

environment.

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 Factors influencing internal and external

attributions.
Distinctiveness consistency of a persons

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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 Fundamental attribution error.

Applies to the evaluation of someones else

behavior.
Attributing success to the influence of situational

factors.
Attributing failure to the influence of personal

factors.

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 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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 Attributions across cultures.

The fundamental attribution error and self-

serving bias operate differently in different cultures.

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Attribution theory - The conceptual framework within social psychology dealing with lay, or common sense explanations of behaviour. Through life we gradually construct explanations/theories of why people behave in certain ways
1.) Nave psychologist (Heider, 1958) 2.) Correspondent inference (Jones & Davis, 1965) 3.) Kelleys model

1.) What are the main characteristics of attributions? 2.) How are attributions are made?

 Sets

out the foundations of attribution theory common sense psychology Individual as a Nave Scientist Two important contributions 1.) Proposed the idea of internal & external causes of behaviour 2.) Perceivers ignore part or all situational factors when explaining behaviour. (Later theorists who expanded on and developed Heiders ideas: Kelley,1967; Jones & Davis,1965; Weiner, 1979. )

When judging anothers behaviour we use information to draw a correspondent inference where the behaviour is attributed to a disposition/personality characteristic Use various characteristics to do this including:
Social desirability - Non-common effects
-

Important historically, but its impact has been limited

 What

information is used to arrive at a causal attribution? Developed a logical model for judging whether a particular action should be attributed to some characteristic (internal) of the person or the environment (external)

Attribution Theory explains how individuals pinpoint the causes of their own and others behavior Consensus the extent to which peers in the same situation behave the same way Distinctiveness the degree to which the person behaves the same way in other situations Consistency the frequency of a particular behavior over time

Customer has complained about John

There are no complaints about other employees (low consensus)

John has received similar complaints in the past (low distinctiveness)

Complaints about John have been coming in steady (high consistency)

Internal attribution (John's behavior stems mainly from internal causes)

Mary has performed poorly on collections

Other employees are performing poorly on collections (high consensus)

Mary only performs poorly on this task (high distinctiveness)

Most of the time Mary handles collections well (low consistency)

External attribution (Mary's behavior stems mainly from external causes)

Information cues Consensus Consistency Distinctiveness

Perceived source of responsibility

Observation of poor performance

Attribution of poor performance Internal causes External causes

Behavior in response to attribution

Mentoring a work relationship that encourages development and career enhancement for people moving through the career cycle Four phases
initiation cultivation separation redefinition

 e.g.

The majority of the students fell asleep in Dr. Sheppards lecture on theories of attribution. They also fell asleep during her other lectures, but not lectures given by other teaching staff. High consensus High consistency High distinctiveness

Boring lecturer?

 e.g.

The majority of the students fell asleep in Dr. Sheppards lecture on theories of attribution. They never fell asleep during her other lectures, or in lectures given by other teaching staff. High consensus Low consistency Day after formal High distinctiveness
ball? Hot lecture theatre?

 Works

well for person and entity No single clear pattern which can lead to circumstance attributions. These seem to be maximised when consistency is low (Forsterling, 1989; Hewstone & Jaspars, 1987) This can be seen as a limitation to the model

1.) Doesnt work well for circumstance attributions 2.) Covariation does not mean causality 3.) Participants are given pre-packaged info which they might not seek or use in everyday situations (model idealised/normative) 4.) Evidence suggests people are poor at assessing covariation between events (Alloy & Tabachnik, 1984) 5.) It may appear that the covariation principle was used, but the processing used may be completely different (e.g. Nisbett & Ross, 1980) 6.) Requires multiple observations over time- which is not always possible to do

 Causal

Schemata Preconceptions or theories built up from experience about how certain kinds of causes interact to produce a specific effect (abstract-content free i.e. general & apply across content areas) Allows one to interpret information quickly by comparing and integrating it with a schema E.g. multiple sufficient cause schema any of several causes can produce the same effect

 Each

Schema is associated with a number of principles set out by Kelley Discounting principle if different causes can produce the same effect, the role of a given cause in producing the effect is discounted if other plausible causes are present

e.g. Why is your flatmate doing the washing up?

Augmentation principle The role of a given cause is increased (augmented) if an effect occurs in the presence of an inhibitory cause.

e.g. Why did the man in the chicken costume win the race?

 1.)

The existence and functioning of causal schemata has not been successfully demonstrated research supporting it is artificial cant prove 2.) The idea of schemata is content free and thus too abstract

 Statements

implying internal attributions can be rephrased to imply external & vice versa Students asked to write down why they had chosen their degree subject at uni (Nisbett et al, 1973) Statements such as I want to make a lot of money were coded as internal while statements such as Chemistry is a high paying field were external Criticised internal/external categories for being very broad and too heterogeneous (Lalljee,1981) Participants have difficulty understanding the distinction (Taylor & Koivumaki, 1976)

 Other

categorisations of attributions e.g. multidimensional approach (Weiner, 1986)

Locus internal or external? Stability is the cause a stable or unstable one (over time) Controllability to what extent is future task performance under the actors control?
Internal Stable Unstable
Unusual effort

External Stable
Consistent help/hindrance from others

Unstable
Unusual help/hindrance from others

Controllable

Typical effort

Uncontrollable

Ability

Mood

Task difficulty

Luck

 Individual

differences & attributional style

Rotter (1966) argues people differ in terms of the amount of control they believe they have over reinforcements & punishments received measures of locus of control related to range of behaviour e.g. political beliefs, achievement

Internals high personal control over destiny Externals fatalistic, things occur by chance

Attributional style questionnaire (Peterson et al., 1982) sorts explanations on 3 dimensions: internal/external, stable/unstable, global/specific Those who view aversive events as caused by internal, stable, global factors = depressive attributional style

 Interpersonal

relationships Most commonly used in relation to marital success e.g. Fincham & OLeary, 1983
happily married individuals tend to credit partners for positive behaviour by citing internal, stable, global & controllable factors to explain them Negative behaviour is explained away by ascribing to external, unstable, specific & uncontrollable causes Distressed couples do the opposite

Women

continuous engage in attributional thought about relationships men only do so when dysfunctional!!

 Theories

of attribution claim we aim to attribute behaviour to either internal (person) or external (situation) causes Kelley proposed models of covariation (data driven) & configuration (theory driven) In reality these may interact i.e. our expectations (schemata) may influence what data are processed i.e. what observations made