Attitude, Perception, and Behavior 1

Written Assignment

Attitude, Perception, and Behavior

University of the People

2020, November 22
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Introduction

Many factors affect an individual attitude, perception, and behavior in an organization. In

this essay, I will look at how the three factors, which include the halo effect, discrimination, and

intersectionality, affect attitude, perception, and behavior.

Halo Effect

In organizational behavior, the Halo effect is a psychological term that was coined by

Edward Thorndike in 1920 that defines a giving positive attribute to an individual based on the

first impression and thus termed as a cognitive bias (Park, 2019). An example of the halo effect

is that a hospital known to be best in Neural Surgery may be perceived as good in other

departments such as orthopedics.

According to McShane & Glinow (2017), people may create an impression of a person’s

personality based on unrelated traits, and this can lead to a negative or positive perception. In the

workplace, the halo effect greatly affected my perception and behavior as I witnessed a case in

which the Human Resource Manager in charge of performance appraisal rated employees based

on physical characteristics rather than the whole work performance or contribution. In the place

I worked, a person was ranked as the best performing employee because he had strong muscles.

The supervisor, in this case, rated the employee based on the perception of a single characteristic,

which is having strong muscles. In another case, I had a positive attitude towards using a

computer, but in a real sense, I knew little about computers. My attitude overshadowed my skills,

and this made the supervisor rate me among the best in the annual performance appraisal.

Discrimination
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Discrimination occurs in cases where an individual is given unjust treatment on the

grounds of sex, race, or even age (Borkowski, 2015). Discrimination affects the attitude of a

person and can lead to change in behavior of an individual or demotivation, thus lowering

performance. In many western nations, many people have been discriminated based on their

color, education, race, and even religious beliefs. Organizations that discriminate employees are

perceived negatively, and people don’t like to be associated with them. For example, I witnessed

a case of discrimination in a construction company in which a female worker was discriminated

against, and her ideas were not taken seriously. Like the employees, we felt bad and our attitude

towards the company changed. During the annual review, it was noted that the action made many

employees perceive the organization badly, which changed our attitude towards the company.

Later this led to low performance as we were demotivated. In this case, discrimination changed

our behavior and attitude.

Intersectionality

In organizational behavior, intersectionality is defined as the ways our unique identities

and traits interact with each other to impact our lived experience (Laegaard & Bindslev, 2006).

Crenshaw developed intersectionality in 1989. This can either be visible or invisible and also

fixed or changing. Intersectionality affects the perception, attitude, and behaviors of people, and

thus inclusive organizations identify the importance of intersectionality. To address injustice in

place of work, people need to acknowledge the way individuals and communities are impacted

by their overlapping identities (Borkowski, 2015). I have experienced a case in which I

experience microaggression and micro-inequities at the place of work. My judgment was being

questioned in my area of expertise, and thus they are required me to provide more evidence of
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my competence to prove myself. This affected my behaviors and attitude for fear of making

mistakes. This escalated to the point that I left the organization.

Conclusion

Halo effect, discrimination, and intersectionality have been reviewed in this paper. These

aspects have been found to affect the attitude, perception, and behaviors of individuals.
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References

Borkowski, N. (2015). Organizational behavior, theory, and design in health care. Jones &

Bartlett Publishers.

Laegaard, J., & Bindslev, M. (2006). Organizational theory. Ventus Publishing ApS &

bookboon.com.

McShane, S., & Glinow, M. A. V. (2017). Organizational behavior. McGraw-Hill Education.

Park, K. (2019). A Study on the Influence of the Perception of Personal Information Security of

Youth on Security Attitude and Security Behavior. Journal of the Korea Industrial

Information Systems Research, 24(4), 79-98.