Lesson 4 Pespective On Individual Behaviour - Perception and Learning - 2

 What is perception and why is it important?
 What are the common perceptual distortions?

 What is the link between perception,
attribution, and social learning?
 What is involved in learning by
reinforcement?
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 Perception is the process by which people
select, organize, interpret, retrieve, and
respond to information from the world around
them.
 Recognition of the difference between
perception and reality is vital to the
understanding of organizational behaviour.
 Perception is a way of forming impressions
about ourselves, other people, and daily life
experiences.
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 Feelings about, or towards a person or situation
are based on how the information received was
processed.
 Different people may perceive the same
situation quite differently, such as some say a
person is heartless, while others say the
individual is caring.
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 Factors influencing perception include:
• Characteristics of the Perceiver
• Characteristics of the Setting
• Characteristics of the Perceived.
 The Perceiver: A person’s past experiences,
needs or motives, personality, values, and
attitudes may all influence the perceptual
process.
 Things are translated based on a dominant
factor or driving force.
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 The Setting: The physical, social, and
organizational context can influence the
perception process (ones feeling about an
occasion or event).
 The Perceived: Characteristics of the perceived
person, object, or event such as contrast,
intensity, figure-ground separation, size,
motion, and repetition or novelty, are also
important in the perceptual process.
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 The Perceived: cont’d
 Contrast: One iPad among six Android tablets
will be perceived differently than one of six
iPad computers.
 Intensity: A bright red sports car stands out
from a group of gray sedans.
 Size: Very small or very large objects or people
tend to be perceived differently.
 Motion: Moving objects and people are
perceived differently than stationary ones.
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 Figure-ground
separation: What do
you see, faces or a
vase? It depends on
which image is
perceived as the
background and which
is the figure or object
of our attention.
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 Repetition or frequency: Television advertisers
well know that the more they put something in
front of us the more likely we are to give it
attention.
 Novelty of a situation: A college student in class
with streaks of hair dyed purple may be
perceived differently by an instructor than
others with more common hair color.
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 The ways we process information during the
perception process affect how we respond to
experiences through feelings, thoughts, and
actions taken.
 Four stages of this information processing are:
• Attention and selection
• Organization
• Interpretation
• Retrieval.
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 Attention and selection
• Our senses are constantly bombarded with so
much information that if we don’t screen it, we
quickly become incapacitated with information
overload.
• Selective screening lets in only a portion of
available information to enter our perceptions.
• Two types of selective screening:
 Controlled processing
 Screening without conscious awareness
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 Attention and selection (cont’d)
• Two types of selective screening:
 Controlled processing: consciously deciding
what information to pay attention to and what to
ignore.
 Screening without conscious awareness:
selectivity of attention and automatic information
processing such as driving a car without thinking
about the process.
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 Organization
• Even though selective screening takes place in
the attention stage, it is still necessary to find
ways to organize the information efficiently.
Schemas help us do this.
• Schemas are cognitive frameworks that
represent organized knowledge developed
through experience about a given concept or
stimulus.
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 Organization (cont’d)
• The schemas most commonly used are script
schemas, person schemas, and person-in-
situation schemas.
• Script schema is a knowledge of framework
that describes the appropriate sequence of
events in a given situation. For example: routine
jobs or how meetings are held.
• Self schema contains information about a
person’s own appearance, behavior, and
personality.
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 Organization (cont’d)
• Person schemas sort people into categories
such as types of groups in terms of similar
perceived features.
• Prototypes are pre-set bundles of features
expected to be characteristic of people in
certain categories or roles. E.g the prototype of
a “good teammate” is someone intelligent,
dependable, and hard-working.
• Person-in-situation schema combines
schemas built around persons and events.
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 Interpretation
• Uncovering the reasons behind the ways stimuli
are grouped. People interpret the same
information differently or make different
assumptions about what they perceived.
 For example, compliments from a team member
may be interpreted as due to his being eager and
enthusiastic about a task; or as an attempt at
insincere flattery.
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 Retrieval
• Each stage of the perception process becomes
part of memory.
• Information stored in memory must be retrieved
if it is to be used.
• But all of us at times have trouble retrieving
stored information.
• Memory decays, so that only some of the
information may be retrieved.
• Schemas can make it difficult for people to
remember things not included in them.
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 Impressions Management is the systematic
attempt to behave in ways that will create and
maintain desired impressions in the eyes of
others.
• It is an attempt to influence how others perceive
us by the way we dress, talk, act, and the things
we surround ourselves with.
• Impression management can help us to advance
in jobs and careers, form relationships with
people we admire, and even create pathways to
group memberships.
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 Impressions Management (cont’d)
• Impression management is influenced by such
activities as associating with the “right people”,
“dressing up” and “dressing down” at the right
times, doing favors to gain approval, flattering
others to impress them, taking credit for a
favorable event and apologizing for a negative
one, and agreeing with the opinions of others.
• Impressions on social media (a bad photo, a bad
nickname, or a bad comment) sends the wrong
impression and can kill a great job opportunity.
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 Attempting to simplify the complexity of the
information streamed to us can cause
inaccuracies in our impressions and in the
perception process more generally.
 Common perceptual distortions are:
 Stereotypes
 Halo effects
 Selective perception
 Projection
 Contrast effects
 Self-fulfilling prophecies
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 Stereotypes occur when we identify someone
with a group or category, and then use the
attributes perceived to be associated with the
group or category to describe the individual.
• Individual differences are obscured.
• Managers may not accurately understand the
needs, preferences, and abilities of others in the
workplace.
• Common stereotypes, at work and in life, relate
to factors such as gender, age, race, ethnicity,
and physical ability.
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 Halo effect occurs when one attribute of a
person or situation is used to develop an
overall impression of the individual or situation.
• Like stereotypes, these distortions are more
likely to occur in the organization stage of
perception.
• Halo effects are particularly important in the
performance appraisal process because they
can influence a manager’s evaluations of
subordinates’ work performance.
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 Halo effect (cont’d)
• For example, people with good attendance
records may be viewed as intelligent and
responsible while those with poor attendance
records are considered poor performers.
• Another example is a person’s willingness to do
certain tasks when asked by the supervisor may
be viewed as a cooperative worker, even though
no assistance is given to any other member in
the section or department.
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 Selective perception is the tendency to single
out for attention those aspects of a situation,
person, or object that are consistent with one’s
needs, values, or attitudes.
• Its strongest impact occurs in the attention stage
of the perceptual process.
• For example: when Executives were asked to
identify the key problem in a comprehensive
business policy case, each person selected a
problem consistent with his or her functional
area work assignments.
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 Projection is the assignment of one’s personal
attributes to other individuals.
• It is especially likely to occur in the
interpretation stage of perception.
• For example, projecting your needs, values, and
views onto others causes their individual
differences to get lost. Instead of meeting their
needs, you do the things that meet your needs.
• Projection errors can be controlled through a
high degree of self-awareness and empathy—
the ability to view a situation as others see it.
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 Contrast effects occur when the meaning or
interpretation of something is arrived at by
contrasting it with a recently occurring event or
situation.
• For example, when a person gives a talk
following a strong speaker or is interviewed for
a job following a series of mediocre applicants.
• A contrast effect occurs when an individual’s
characteristics are contrasted with those of
others recently encountered who rank higher or
lower on the same characteristics.
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 Self-fulling prophesy sometimes referred to
as the “Pygmalion effect” is the tendency to
create or find in another situation or individual
that which one expected to find in the first
place.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy can have both positive
and negative results for managers.
• People strive to validate their perceptions
regardless of the reality, and as such their
actions and behaviour are influenced by their
expectation in an attempt to make it come true.
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 Attribution is the process of developing
explanations or assigning perceived causes for
events.
 Attribution theory helps us understand how
people perceive the causes of events, assess
responsibility for outcomes, and evaluate the
personal qualities of the people involved.
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 Attribution theory (cont’d)
 There are two general types of attributions that
people make:-
• Dispositional attributions (internal causes) are
believed to be under an individual’s control such
as personality traits, motivation or ability.
• Situational attributions (external causes) are
seen as coming from outside a person such as
equipment or social influence from others.
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 Three factors influence the internal or external
determination of causality: distinctiveness,
consensus, and consistency.
• Distinctiveness considers how consistent a
person’s behavior is across different situations.
 Dispositional attributions or internal forces was
responsible for the employee arriving late for work
the entire week.
 Situational attributions or external forces he is
usually early.
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• Consensus takes into account how likely all
those facing a similar situation are to respond in
the same way.
 Dispositional attributions or internal forces he is
the only person late.
 Situational attributions or external forces all the
employees are late.
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• Consistency concerns whether an individual
responds the same way across time.
 Dispositional attributions or internal forces he was
also late last week.
 Situational attributions or external forces he was
early last week.
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 People often fall prey to perception errors
when making attributions about what caused
certain events.
 Fundamental Attribution Error is the
tendency to underestimate the influence of
situational factors and to overestimate the
influence of personal factors when evaluating
someone else’s behavior.
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 When asked to identify causes of their own
poor performance, however, the executives
mostly cited a lack of support—an external, or
situational, deficiency. This demonstrates self-
serving bias.
 Self-serving Bias is the tendency to deny
personal responsibility for performance
problems but to accept personal responsibility
for performance success.
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 Social learning theory describes how
learning takes place through the reciprocal
interactions among people, behavior, and
environment.
 According to the work of Albert Bandura, an
individual uses modeling or vicarious learning
to acquire behavior by observing and imitating
others.
• A model may be a senior manager, co-worker or
mentor who demonstrates desired behaviors.
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 Words and symbols used by managers and others help
communicate values, beliefs, and goals and thus serve as guides
to an individual’s behavior.
 At the same time, a person’s self-control and self-efficacy -the
person’s belief that he or she can perform adequately in a
situation, influences his or her own behavior.
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 Reinforcement is the administration of a
consequence as a result of a behavior.
 Managing reinforcement properly can change
the direction, level, and persistence of an
individual’s behavior.
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 Classical conditioning was described by Ivan
Pavlov as a form of learning through
association that involves the manipulation of
stimuli to influence behavior.
 Stimulus is something that incites action and
draws forth a response.
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 Operant conditioning was described by B. F.
Skinner as the process of controlling behavior
by manipulating its consequences. Considered
as ‘learning by reinforcement’.
• The goal is to use reinforcement principles to
systematically reinforce desirable behavior
and discourage undesirable behavior.
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 The basis for operant conditioning rests in E. L.
Thorndike’s law of effect.
 Law of effect states behavior that results in a
pleasant outcome is likely to be repeated while
behavior that results in an unpleasant outcome
is not likely to be repeated.
 The consequences that reinforce behavior
under the Law of Effect are extrinsic rewards—
positively valued work outcomes given to the
individual by another person.
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 Some of these external rewards are contrived
rewards like pay increases and cash bonuses.
• These rewards have direct costs and budgetary
implications.
 Other outcomes could be natural rewards such
as verbal praise and recognition.
• These have no real cost other than the time and
effort expended to deliver them.
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 Organizational behavior modification (OB
Mod) is the use of extrinsic rewards to
systematically reinforce desirable work
behavior and to discourage undesirable work
behavior.
 OB Mod involves the use of four basic
reinforcement strategies:
• Positive reinforcement
• Negative reinforcement (or avoidance)
• Punishment
• Extinction
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 Positive reinforcement is the administration
of positive consequences that tend to increase
the likelihood of repeating the desirable
behavior in similar settings.
• Law of contingent reinforcement states a
reward should be given when the desired
behavior occurs.
• Law of immediate reinforcement states a
reward should be given as soon as possible after
the desired behavior occurs.
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 Shaping is the creation of a new behavior by
the positive reinforcement of successive
approximations to it.
• Behavior is shaped gradually rather than
changed all at once.
 Scheduling Positive reinforcement
• Continuous reinforcement administers a reward
each time a desired behavior occurs.
• Intermittent reinforcement rewards behavior
only periodically (fixed or variable schedules)
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 Intermittent Reinforcement (cont’d)
 Variable schedules typically result in more
consistent patterns of desired behavior than fixed
reinforcement schedules.
• Fixed-interval schedules provide rewards after a
given time.
• Fixed-ratio schedules result in a reward after a given
number of occurrences.
• Variable-interval schedules reward behavior at
random times.
• Variable-ratio schedules reward behavior after a
random number of occurrences.
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Behaviors
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Continuous
Fixed ratio
Variable ratio
Time (Days)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Fixed interval
Variable interval
 Negative reinforcement or avoidance
learning uses the withdrawal of negative
consequences to increase the likelihood of
repeating the desirable behavior.
• For example, a manager who regularly nags a
worker about being late for work and then
doesn’t nag when the worker next shows up on
time.
• Even when the streets are deserted, we still stop
at red lights to avoid getting a traffic ticket.
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 Punishment is the administration of negative
consequences or the withdrawal of positive
consequences to reduce the likelihood of a
behavior being repeated.
 Punishment may be offset by positive
reinforcement received from other sources.
• For example, being praised by peers at the same
time as receiving punishment from a boss. The
positive value of peer support is so great that the
individual chooses to put up with the punishment
and continues the bad behaviour.
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 Extinction is the withdrawal of the reinforcing
consequences in order to weaken undesirable
behavior.
• For example, Jaleel is often late for work and co-
workers provide positive reinforcement by
covering for him. The manager instructs Jaleel’s
co-workers to stop covering, thus withdrawing
the positive consequences of his tardiness.
• Extinction decreases the frequency of or
weakens behavior. It is not “unlearned”, it is not
exhibited and will reappear if reinforced again.
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 Both positive and negative reinforcements are used
to strengthen the desirable behaviour of improving
work quality when it occurs.
 Punishment is used to weaken undesirable
behaviour and involves either administering
negative consequences or withdrawing positive
consequences. Similarly, extinction is used to
weaken undesirable behaviour when it occurs.
 These strategies may be used in combination as
well as independently.
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 Criticisms
• Using reinforcement to influence human behavior is
demeaning and dehumanizing.
• It becomes easy for managers to abuse the power of
their positions when they exert this type of external
control over individual behavior.
 Advocates
• Control of behavior is an irrevocable part of every
manager’s job.
• Reinforcement strategies need to be used in positive
and constructive ways.
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 What is perception and why is it important?

 What are the common perceptual distortions?

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