CHAPTER

THREE
Perceiving Ourselves and
Others in Organizations

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 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Describe the self-concept characteristics and processes, and
explain how each affects an individual’s behavior and well-
being.
2. Outline the perceptual process and discuss the effects of
categorical thinking and mental models in that process.
3. Discuss how stereotyping, attribution, self-fulfilling prophecy,
halo, false consensus, primacy, and recency effects influence
the perceptual process.
4. Discuss ways to improve perceptions, with specific application
to organizational situations.
5. Outline the main features of a global mindset and justify its
usefulness to employees and organizations.

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 Self-Concept
Our self-beliefs and self-evaluations.
We compare situations with our current (perceived self) and
desired (ideal self).
Three levels of self-concept: individual, relational, collective.

There are few women in information technology and related fields. One reason is that
gender stereotyping discourages women from entering or remaining in these fields.
Another reason is that the self-concept most women have of themselves is
incompatible with their image of people in these fields.
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 Self-Concept Model: Three Cs and Four Selves
Exhibit 3.1 Self-Concept Characteristics and Processes.

Three characteristics of self-concept and four self-concept processes

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 Self-Concept Characteristics (3 Cs)
Complexity
• Number of distinct/important identities people perceive about themselves.
• People have multiple self-concepts.
• Higher complexity when selves are separate (not similar).
Consistency
• Multiple selves require similar personality attributes.
• Self-views are compatible with actual attributes.
Clarity
• Self-concept is clear, confidently defined, and stable.
• Clarity increases with age, self-reflection, high consistency.

© McGraw Hill
 Outcomes of Self-Concept Characteristics

People have better well-being with:

• Multiple selves (complexity).
• High-consistency selves.
• Well-established selves (clarity).
Effects on individual behavior and performance.
• Self-concept complexity.
• High: more adaptive, more diverse networks, but more stressful.
• Low: more resources to develop identities.
• Self-concept clarity.
• High: better performance, leadership, career development, less
threatened by conflict.
• Very high: role inflexibility.

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 Self-Concept: Self-Enhancement

Drive to promote and protect a positive self-view.

• Competent, attractive, lucky, ethical, valued.

• Evident in common and important situations.

Self-enhancement outcomes.
• Better mental and physical health.

• Higher motivation due to “can-do” beliefs.

• Riskier decisions, inflated perceived personal causation, slower to

recognize mistakes.

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 Self-Concept: Self-Verification

Motivation to confirm and maintain our self-concept.

Stabilizes our self-concept.

• We communicate self-concept to others.
• We seek confirming feedback.

Self-verification outcomes.
• Affects perceptions.
• Tend to dismiss feedback contrary to self-concept.
• Motivated to interact with those who affirm our self-view.

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 Self-Concept: Self-Evaluation

Self-esteem
• Extent to which people like, respect, and are satisfied with themselves.
• High self-esteem: less influenced by others, more persistent, more logical
thinking.

Self-efficacy
• Belief that we can successfully perform a task (MARS factors).
• General self-efficacy, “can-do” belief across situations.

Locus of control
• General belief about personal control over life events.
• Higher self-evaluation with internal locus of control.

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 Self-Concept: Social Self
Opposing motives:
• Need to be distinctive
and unique (personal
identity).
• Need for inclusion and
assimilation with others
(social identity).

We define ourselves by
groups we are easily
identified with, that have
high status, and our
minority status in a
situation.
Exhibit 3.2 Social Identity Theory Example

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 Perception and Selective Attention
Perception:
Process of receiving information about and making sense of the
world around us.

Selective Attention
Ø Selecting versus ignoring sensory information.
• Affected by characteristics of perceiver and object perceived.
• Emotional markers are assigned to selected information.
Ø Selective attention biases.
• Assumptions and expectations.
• Confirmation bias.

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 Perceptual Organization and Interpretation
Perceptual grouping processes reduce information volume and
complexity.
Categorical thinking: organizing people or things.
Perceptual grouping principles:
• Similarity or proximity.

• Closure: filling in missing pieces.

• Perceiving trends.

Interpreting incoming information.

• Emotional markers automatically evaluate information.

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 Mental Models in Perceptions

Knowledge structures that we develop to describe, explain, and

predict the world around us.
• Visual: image road maps.

• Relational: cause–effect.

• Important for sense-making.

Problem: Mental models make it difficult to see the world in

different ways.
• Need to constantly question our mental models.

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 Stereotyping
Assigning traits to people based on their membership in social
categories.
• Kernels of truth, but embellished, distorted, supplemented.

Why people stereotype:

• Categorical thinking.
• Fulfills drive to comprehend and predict others’ behavior.
• Supports self-enhancement and social identity.

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 Categorization, Homogenization, Differentiation
Social identity and self-enhancement reinforce stereotyping
through:
• Categorization process: categorize people into groups.
• Homogenization process: assign similar traits within a group; different
traits to other groups.
• Differentiation process: assign more favorable attributes to our groups;
less favorable to other groups.

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 Problems with Stereotyping
Problems with stereotyping:
• Overgeneralizes doesn’t represent everyone in category.
• Stereotype threat.
• Foundation of unintentional (systemic) and intentional discrimination
(prejudice)

Overcoming stereotype biases:

• Difficult to prevent stereotype activation.
• Possible to minimize stereotype application.

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 Attribution Theory
The perceptual process of deciding whether an observed
behavior or event is caused mainly by internal or external factors.

Internal Attribution:
• Perceiving that behavior/event is caused mainly by the person (ability or
motivation)

External Attribution:
• Perceiving that behavior/event is caused mainly by factors beyond the
person’s control (resources, co-workers, luck)

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 Attribution Rules

Exhibit 3.4 Attribution Theory Rules

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 Attribution Outcomes and Errors
Importance of the attribution process:
• Improves our mental model of causation.
• We respond differently to internal versus external attributions of our own
behavior and performance.
Self-Serving Bias:
• Attributing failures to external causes, successes to internal causes.
• Due to self-enhancement process.
Fundamental Attribution Error (Correspondence Bias):
• Tendency to overemphasize internal causes of others’ actions.
• Difficult to see external causes of other’s’ behavior.
• Fairly modest error effect.

© McGraw Hill
 Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Cycle

1. Supervisor forms
expectations about the
employee.

4. Employee’s behavior
2. Supervisor’s expectations
becomes more consistent
affect his/her behavior
with the supervisor’s initial
toward the employee.
expectations.

3. Supervisor’s behavior
affects the employee’s ability
and motivation (self-
confidence).

Exhibit 3.5 The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Cycle

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 Contingencies of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Self-fulfilling prophecy effect is strongest:
• At the beginning of the relationship.
• When several people hold same expectations.
• When employee has low achievement.

Leaders need to develop and maintain a positive, yet realistic,

expectation toward all employees.

Minimizing self-fulfilling prophecy error.

• Awareness, minimal benefit.
• Supporting/learning organizational culture.
• Hiring supervisors who are inherently optimistic toward staff.

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 12 Cognitive Biases

Anchoring Bias
Availability Heuristic bias
Bandwagon Bias
Choice Supportive Bias
Confirmation Bias
Ostrich Bias
Outcome Bias
Overconfidence
Placebo bias
Survivorship Bias
Selective Perception Bias
Blind Spot Bias

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 Other Perceptual Effects
Halo effect:
• General impression of person from one trait affects perception of person’s
other traits.

False-consensus effect:
• Overestimate extent that others share our beliefs or traits.

Recency effect:
• Most recent information dominates our perceptions.

Primacy effect:
• Quickly form opinion of others based on first information received about
them.
• Difficult to change first impressions.

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 Improving Perceptions
Awareness of perceptual biases.
• Problems: reinforces stereotypes, limited reduction of bias.

Improving self-awareness.
• Implicit association test.
• Johari Window.

Meaningful interaction.
• People work together on valued activities.
• Based on contact hypothesis.
• Interaction reduces perceptual bias of others.

• Improves empathy.
• Understanding and being sensitive to the feelings, thoughts, and situations of others.

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 Know Yourself (Johari Window)

Exhibit 3.6 Johari Window Model of Self-Awareness and Mutual Understanding

Source: Based on J. Luft, Of Human Interaction (Palo Alto, CA: National Press Books, 1969).

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 Global Mindset Abilities

Adopting a global perspective.

Empathizing and acting effectively across cultures.
Processing complex information about novel environments.
Developing new multilevel mental models.

Developing a Global Mindset

Begins with self-awareness.

Compare own mental models with those of people from other
cultures/regions.
Develop better knowledge of people and cultures, preferably
through immersion.

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