Perception and attribution

Perception and attribution

definition • A cognitive process of processing information • A unique interpretation of a situation • Perception leads people to react differently to the same situation • The perception in the world of manager could be different form that of subordinates

Perception. • The process by which people select, organize, interpret, retrieve, and respond to information. • Perceptual information is gathered from: • Sight. • Hearing. • Touch. • Taste. • Smell.

Applied to OB an employees perception can be thought of as a “filter” and every employee has a unique filter and the same situation may cause different reactions and behaviour • The filter determines: • which stimulus to notice and ignore • Which stimulus to love or to hate

What is the perceptual process? • Factors influencing the perceptual process. • Characteristics of the perceiver. • Characteristics of the setting. • Characteristics of the perceived.

Perception process • Confrontation • Perception starts with confrontation with external stimulus from the environment • The external stimulus from the environment consists of: • Sensual stimulation - consisting of the five senses ( sight, taste, feeling, smelling, hearing) • Physical environment – office, factory floor, store, climate etc • Social/cultural environnent – management style, values, discrimination

Registration of the stimulus • The stimulus is registered using the physical (sensory and neutral) mechanism e.g. hearing a raised voice • Interpretation of the stimulus • The interpretation may depend on the employee motivation, learning and personality • Feedback • After interpretation, the feedback back occurs and may be seen in terms of fear, anger, panic, pain

Behaviour • This is the reaction form the feedback and can be either covert or overt • Run or move fact – overt behaviour • Make a self evaluation – covert behaviour • Consequences • The consequences of behaviour could be reinforcement, punishment, something destroyed or somebody hurt etc

Perceptual selectivity principles • Numerous stimuli are constantly confronting us: - Noise of papers, people talking, moving cars, phone etc • With all these stimulation on people, how and why do hey select only a few stimuli at a given time? • The answer can be found in the principles of perceptual selectivity • The principles can be divided into external and internal principles • Internal – a those that are based on the individual psychological make up • External – those arising form outside environmental influences

External factors that affect perceptional selectively • Intensity • The more intense the external stimulus, the more likely it is to be perceived e.g. A loud noise, strong smell, bright light • Size • The larger the object, the more likely it is to be perceived. e.g. full page advertisement • Contrast • The external stimulus which stands out against a background or that are not what people expect will receive more attention. E.g. white lettering against a red background on safety sign

Repetition • A repeated external stimulus is more attention getting than a single one. A worker will hear better when direction for a task is repeated more than once. Repeated advertising is more effective • Motion • People will pay more attention to moving objects in their field of vision than those that are stationary – moving adverts on streets • Novelty and familiarity • A novel or familiar external stimulus can serve as an attention getter – new objects or events in a familiar setting will draw the attention of the perceiver

Perceptual organisation • Whereas perceptual selectivity is concerned with external and internal variable than gains an individual attention, perceptual organization focus on what takes place in the perception process once the information is received

Principles of perceptual organisation • Figure-ground principle • The perceived object stand out as a separable from their general background • When reading a book( printed in black and white) for example, the reader perceived patches of irregularly black and white shapes, yet he does not perceive it that way, the reader perceives the black shares -letters, words and sentences – printed against the white background • The reader perceptually organizes incoming stimulus into recognizable figures – words – against a ground – white

2. perceptual grouping • There is a tendency to group several stimuli together into a recognizable pattern • People tend to group stimuli together using any of the four sub principles: • closure • continuity • Proximity • Similarly

Closure • A person will sometimes perceive a whole when one does not actually exist • The persons perception process will close the gap that is unfilled form the sensory input • For example, the head of a team who perceives complete agreement among team members, when in fact there was opposition from several member, - the team leader in this case closed the existing gap and perceived a complete agreement which was not necessarily the case

Continuity principle • Says that a person will tend to perceive continuous lines or patterns • They perceive only the obvious pattern or relationship • This type of continuity may sometimes lead to people being inflexible, and noncreative

Proximity principle • states that ‘ a group of stimuli that are close together will be perceived as a whole pattern or parts belonging together” • E.g. Several employee in an organisation may be identified as a single unit because of physical proximity • If workers on a particular factory floor produce low output, or report grievance, then the management might see all workers in that group as lazy or troubleshooters , yet some are loyal in the group

Similarity principle • States that “ the greater the similarity of the stimulus, the greater the tendency to perceive them as a common group’ • For example if a certain group of employees wear overalls, then they are perceived to me one group

Principle of perceptual constancy • The principle gives the person a sense of stability in a changing word. • Size, shapes, colour, location of the object are all fairly constant regardless of information received by the sense • Perceptual constancy results from pattern which re for most part learned • A world without perceptual constancy may lead to very chaotic and disorganized individuals • E.g.. If a worker must select a tool of the correct size form a variety of tools at varying distances, from a work station, - without perpetual constancy, the size Shape and colours would change as the worker move from about and would make the job almost impossible

Principle of perceptual context • This principle gives meaning and value to simple stimuli, objects, events and other persons in the environment • E.g. the organizational culture an values provides the primary context in which workers and managers do their perceiving. An email message is perceived differently forma verb message ( depending on organizational culture and values )

SOCIAL PERCEPTION • Is concerned with how one individual perceives other individuals • Social perception will be influenced by whether we look at it: • from the perceivers perspective • or from the person who is being perceived

From perceivers perspective: • The degree to which one knows oneself – knowing one self makes it easier to see others accurately • Your own characteristics – ones characteristics affect the characteristics you will see of others. • People who accept themselves will more likely be able to see favourable aspect of others • Skills to perceive others accurately

From the perceived perspective • Status of the person perceived will greatly influence the perception of the person • The role of the person at that specific time • Visible traits of the person - e.g.. Pleasant

Errors in social perception • Stereo typing • This refers to the tendency to perceive another person as belonging to a single class or category • Stereo typing may lead to favourable or unfavorable traits to the person being perceived • Because each individual is unique, the real traits will generally be quite different form those the stereotype would suggest

Common stereo type groups in organisations include: • Manager • Supervisors • Union members • Young/old • Women/men • White collar/blue collar • Accountants/sales people/engineers • Customers etc

Halo effect • This is where a person is perceived on the basis of one trait • E.g. during performance appraisal, a rater makes an error in judging persons total personality or performance based on a single positive/negative trait like intelligence or appearance

Impressions management • Sometimes called “ self presentation” is the process by which people attempt to manager or control the perception of other form of them • The tendency is for people to present themselves so as to impress others in a socially desirable way • It is commonly used during recruitment and selection, performance appraisal etc • It is a political too for one to build image and be successful

Components of impressions management • These are two: • Impression motivation • Impression construction • Impression motivation • Where employees are motivated to control how the boss or fellow employees perceive them • The degree of this motivation to impression manage will depend on several factors

The factors influencing the degree of impression motivation: • Relevance of the impression to individual goal • Value of these goal • The discrepancy between the image one would like to hold and the image one believes others already hold • Impressions construction • Concerned with the specific type of impression people want to make and how to go about it

Factors that have been identified as being relevant to the kind of impression people try to construct: • Self concept • Desire and undesired images • Role constraint • Targets values • Current social image

employees impressions management strategies • There are two basic strategies : • Demotion – preventive strategiesused hen an employee is trying to minimize responsibilities for some negative event or to stay out of trouble • Promotion- enhancement strategies • Used when employee is seeking to maximize responsibility for positive outcome or looked better than they really are

Demotion- preventive strategies • Accounts • These are employees attempts to excuse or justify their actions • For example excuse of not feeling well, not getting something done on time because of another higher priority • Apologies • When there is no logical way out, the employee may apologise to the boss for the negative event – indicate that the event will not happen agent

Disassociation • When employees are indirectly associated with something that went wrong , they may secretly tell their boss that they fought for the right thing but were overruled

Promotion enhancement strategies • Entitlement • Where an employee feel that he has not been given the credit for the positive outcome • They make sure that it is known through formal channels or they may informally note to key people • Enhancement • Employees may have the credit, but they point out that they really did more and had a bigger impact than was originally thought

Obstacle disclosure • Employees identify obstacles ( health , family, lack of organizational resource, lack of cooperation) that they had to overcome to accomplish an outcome • They are trying to create the perception that because they obtained the positive outcome despite the big obstacle, they really deserve credit or merit • Association • Employee may makes sure that they are seen with the right people at the right time • This creates the impression that the employee is well connected and is associated with successful projects/people

Attribution • Attribution – the process through which people explain the causes of their won or someone else's behaviour • Concerned with the ways in which people explain (or attribute) the behavior of others or themselves (self-attribution) with something else. • It explores how individuals attribute" causes to events and how this cognitive perception affects their usefulness in an organization

Attribution cont.. • It is a cognitive process by which people draw conclusion about the factors that influence or make sense of another behaviour • It is an aspect of social perception

Attribution theory • Is concerned with the relationship between social perception and interpersonal behaviour . • Assumptions of attribution: • we seek to make sense of our world • we often attribute people’s actions either to internal and external cause • we do so in a fairly logical ways

Attribution theory cont.. • It is concerned with the “why” question of organizational behaviour. • Because most “causes”, “attributes” and “whys’ are not directly observable, the theory says that people must depend on cognitions, particularly perception. • The attribution theorists assume that humans are rational and motivated to identify and understand the causal structure of their relevant environment

Two types of attributions • Dispositional attribution -Attributes a persons behaviour to internal factors such as personality traits , motivation, ability, fatigue, effort • Situational attribution -Attributes a persons behavior to external factors such as equipment, rules, social influence etc • These two combine actively to determine behaviour • Note that it the perceived, not the actual determinant that are important to behaviour. • People will behave differently if they perceive internal attributes than they will if they perceive external attributes.

General model of the attribution field. ANTICEDENTS ATTRIBUTIONS CONSEQUENCIES Information Beliefs Motivation Perceived causes Behaviour

Attributions errors • There are two potent errors biases recognize in attribution • The fundamental attributions error • research has found that people tend o ignore the powerful situational forces when explain the behaviour of others • People tend to attribute other behaviour to personal factors (e.g. intelligence, attitudes, personality) even when it is very clear that the situation or circumstances cause the person to behave that way

Self serving bias • People tend to present themselves favourably – a self serving bias • People tend to accept credit when they are told they have succeeded ( attributing success to their ability ) yet often attribute failure to external l and situational forces such as bad lack or impossible staff

Perception and attribution