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Chapter 5 Perception, Attitudes, and Personality
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Page 1: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Chapter 5Perception, Attitudes,

and Personality

Page 2: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Learning Goals

• Understand human perceptual processes and how people form impressions of others

• Describe types of perceptual error and their effects on information people get from their environment

• Explain attribution processes and their effects on perception and attitudes

Page 3: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Learning Goals (Cont.)

• Discuss the nature of attitudes, how they form and how they change

• Explain the different views of human personality development

• Discuss some dimensions of personality and several personality types

• Recognize the effects of different cultures on perception, attitudes, and personality

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Chapter Overview

• Introduction• Perception• Attitudes• Personality• International Aspects of Perception,

Attitudes, and Personality• Ethical Issues in Perception, Attitudes, and

Personality

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Perception, Attitudes,and Personality

Perception Attitudes

Personality

Chapter 5

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Perception

• A cognitive process: lets a person make sense of stimuli from the environment

• Affects all senses: sight, touch, taste, smell, hearing

• Includes inputs to person and choice of inputs to which the person attends

• Stimulus sources: people, events, physical objects, ideas

• Helps adaptation to a changing environment

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Perception (Cont.)

• Perceptual process – Target: object of the person’s perceptual

process– Threshold: minimum information from target

for the person to notice the target• Detection threshold: point at which person notices

something has changed in her or his environment• Recognition threshold: point at which person can

identify the target or change in the target

See text book Figure 5.1

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Perception (Cont.)

• Perceptual process (cont.)– Target emerges from its surrounding context

sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly– Quickly discriminate a high-contrast target

from its background; an ambiguous target takes more time to see

– Contrast can come from the target's size, color, loudness, or smell

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Perception (Cont.)

• Perceptual process (cont.) – People attend more quickly to positively valued

stimuli than to negatively valued stimuli– Example: achievement-oriented employees

notice announcements about promotion opportunities faster than an employee with less achievement motivation

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Perception (Cont.)

• Perceptual defense: shield self from negatively valued stimuli– Example: block out annoying sounds– Organizational example: block some feedback

from a supervisor or coworker when it is negative

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Perception (Cont.)

• Perceptual errors: mistakes in the perceptual process– Perceptual set

• Beliefs about a target based on information about the target or previous experiences with it

• Information about the target from any source

• Beliefs act like instructions for processing stimuli from the target

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Perception (Cont.)

• Perceptual errors (cont.)– Stereotype: beliefs and perceived attributes

about a target based on the target’s group– Examples

• American university students: energetic and spontaneous

• Russian university students: orderly and obedient

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Self-Perception:A View of Self

• Self-perception: process by which people develop a view of themselves

• Develops from social interaction within different groups, including groups encountered on the Internet

• Self-perception has three parts: self-concept, self-esteem, self-presentation

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Self-Perception:A View of Self (Cont.)

• Self-concept:– Set of beliefs people have about themselves– View people hold of their personal qualities and

attributes– Factors affecting a person's self-concept

• Observations of behavior

• Recall of past significant events

• Effect of the surrounding social context

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Self-Perception:A View of Self (Cont.)

• Self-concept (cont.)– Observations of behavior

• People see their behavior, and their situation, in the same way they see the behavior of other people

• Person believes the behavior occurred voluntarily: concludes the behavior happened because of some personal quality or attribute

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Self-Perception:A View of Self (Cont.)

• Self-concept (cont.)– Observations of behavior (cont.)

• People learn about themselves by comparing themselves to other people with similar qualities

• Example: you may want to assess your abilities to hold a supervisory position. You compare yourself to people with backgrounds similar to yours who have had recent promotions

Page 17: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Self-Perception:A View of Self (Cont.)

• Self-concept (cont.)– Recall of past significant events and effect of

the surrounding social context• Recall events important in their lives; not error free

• Tend to recall events they attribute to themselves and not to a situation or other people

• Often overestimate their role in past events

• Place more weight on the effects of their behavior and less on the surrounding situation or other people

Page 18: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Self-Perception:A View of Self (Cont.)

• Self-esteem– Emotional dimension of self-perception– Positive and negative judgments people have of

themselves– People with low self-esteem tend to be

unsuccessful; do not adapt well to stressful events

– Those with high self-esteem have the opposite experiences

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Self-Perception:A View of Self (Cont.)

• Self-awareness– People differ in degree of self-awareness– Two forms

• Private self-consciousness: behave according to attend to inner feelings and standards

• Public self-consciousness: behave according to social standard correct for the situation

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Self-Perception:A View of Self (Cont.)

• Self-presentation– Behavioral strategies people use to affect how

others see them– How they think about themselves– Goals of self-presentation

• Affect other people's impressions to win their approval

• Increase the person's influence in a situation• Ensure that others have an accurate impression of

the person

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Self-Perception:A View of Self (Cont.)

• Self-presentation (cont.)– Highly conscious of public image: change

behavior from situation to situation. Readily conform to situational norms

– People who want others to perceive them in a particular way behave consistently in different situations. They act in ways they perceive as true to themselves with little regard for the norms of the situation

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Social Perception:A View of Others

• Social perception: process by which people come to know and understand each other

• Forming impression of a person: perceiver first observes the person, the situation, and the person's behavior

Page 23: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Social Perception:A View of Others (Cont.)

• Form a quick impression by making a snap judgment about that person, or

• Make attributions and integrate the attributions to form a final impression

• Confirmation biases lead the perceiver to hold tenaciously to it

Page 24: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Social Perception:A View of Others (Cont.)

• Elements of social perception– Three sets of clues help form the impression of

another person• Person

• Situation surrounding the person

• Observed behavior of the person

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Social Perception:A View of Others (Cont.)

• Elements of social perception (cont.)– Developing first impressions

• Use different physical aspects of the person: height, weight, hair color, eyeglasses

• Stereotypes based on physical features– Thin men: tense, suspicious, stubborn– Blond women: fun loving– Neatly dressed people: responsible

• Stereotypes result from attributing qualities to people based on previously formed perceptions

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Social Perception:A View of Others (Cont.)

• Elements of social perception (cont.) – Preconceptions about the situations in which

we see the behavior of other people– Develop from experience with the same or

similar situations– Situation raises expectations about behavior the

situation should cause– Example: when two people are introduced, we

expect both parties to acknowledge the other and probably to shake hands

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Social Perception:A View of Others (Cont.)

• Attribution processes– People use attribution processes to explain the

causes of behavior they see in others– Begins with a quick personal attribution

followed by adjustment based on the characteristics of the situation

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Social Perception:A View of Others (Cont.)

• Personal attribution– Characteristics of the person such as beliefs,

disposition, or personality, and not the situation, caused the person's behavior

– Example: when you conclude that another student spends many hours completing a project because he likes to work hard or values hard work, you are making a personal attribution

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Social Perception:A View of Others (Cont.)

• Situational attribution– Aspects of the situation, not qualities of the

person, cause the person's behavior– Example: a student worked hard because of the

reward of a good grade

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Social Perception:A View of Others (Cont.)

• Perceiver uses three types of information when forming an attribution– Consensus information– Distinctiveness information– Consistency information

Page 31: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Social Perception:A View of Others (Cont.)

• Consensus information– Observe other people in the same or a similar

situation• If other people show the same behavior as the target

person, the situation caused the behavior

• If other people behave differently from the target person, the person caused the behavior

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Social Perception:A View of Others (Cont.)

• Distinctiveness information– Observe the target person in a different

situation• If the response is different in the new situation, the

situation caused the behavior

• If the response is the same, the person caused the behavior

Page 33: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Social Perception:A View of Others (Cont.)

• Consistency information– Observe the target person in a similar situation,

but at a different time• High consistency: same behavior at both times

• Low consistency: different behavior at both times

Page 34: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Social Perception:A View of Others (Cont.)

• Combine consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency information to form attribution– Personal attribution: behavior high in

consistency; low in consensus and distinctiveness

– Situational attribution: behavior high in consensus and distinctiveness; low in consistency

Page 35: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Social Perception:A View of Others (Cont.)

• Fundamental attribution error– Observer underestimates situation as cause of

behavior; overestimates the as cause– Explaining their behavior: tend to ascribe

causes to the situation, not to personal qualities– Explaining other’s behavior: tend to ascribe its

causes to personal qualities, not the situation

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Social Perception:A View of Others (Cont.)

• False consensus – Overestimate the degree to which others agree

with the person's view– Reinforces the view the perceiver has of

another person

Page 37: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Social Perception:A View of Others (Cont.)

• Integration of attributions to form final impression: disposition of perceiver– Effects of recent experiences: positive or

negative event just before meeting someone for the first time can affect the impression of the person

– Mood at time of first meeting:• Positive impressions in a good mood

• Negative impressions in a bad mood

Page 38: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Attitudes

• An attitude is “a learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a given object”

• Attitude object: physical objects, issues, ideas, events, people, places

Page 39: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Attitudes (Cont.)

• Parts of an attitude– Cognitive: perceptions and beliefs about an

attitude object– Affective: feelings about an attitude object– Behavioral intentions: how the person wants

to behave and what a person says about an attitude object

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Attitudes (Cont.)

• Common work attitudes– Organizational commitment– Satisfaction– Job involvement

• Play a role in employee turnover

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Attitudes (Cont.)

• Some connection between attitudes and behavior, although not strong– People with strong attitudes about an object

will likely behave in accord with their attitude– Strong positive attitudes about Macintosh©

computers leads to buying one– Ardent followers of Jesse Jackson will likely

vote for him

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Attitudes (Cont.)

• Attitude formation: affected by the person’s beliefs about an object and the amount and type of information the person has about the object– Perceives positive attributes: develops positive

attitude– Perceives negative attributes: develops

negative attitude

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Attitudes (Cont.)

• Attitude formation (cont.)– Family upbringing– Peer groups– Work groups– General social experiences

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Attitudes (Cont.)

• Attitude change– Something persuades the person to shift his or

her attitudes (persuasive communication)– Norms of a social group can affect a person’s

attitude (social norms)– Person becomes uncomfortable with some

aspects of her or his beliefs (cognitive dissonance)

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Attitudes (Cont.)

• Persuasive communication– Advertising– Tries to change cognitive part of attitude– Assumes affective part will also change– Attitude change process

• Win target’s attention• Understand message• Accept the influence• Remember the message

Page 46: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Attitudes (Cont.)

• Social influence on attitudes– People are embedded in social groups– Feel pressures to conform to norms– If person values membership in group, likely

will align attitudes with the group norms

Page 47: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Attitudes (Cont.)

• Cognitive dissonance– Hold multiple beliefs or cognitions about an

attitude object– Feel tension when discrepancies develop– Motivated to reduce the tension– Change one or more cognitions– Other parts of attitude also change

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Personality

• Set of traits, characteristics, and predispositions of a person

• Usually matures and stabilizes by about age 30

• Affects how a person adjusts to different environments

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Personality Theories

• Cognitive theory: people develop their thinking patterns as their life unfolds

• Learning theories: behavior patterns develop from the social environment

• Biological theories: personality as genetically inherited

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Personality Theories (Cont.)

• Cognitive theory– Develop thinking patterns as life unfolds– Affects how the person interprets and

internalizes life's events– Cognitive development stages

• Reflexive behavior of infant• More complex modes of perception and interpretation

of events

– Neither driven by instincts nor unwittingly shaped by environmental influences

Page 51: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Personality Theories (Cont.)

• Learning theories– Learn behavior from social interaction with

other people– Young child: early family socialization– Continuously learn from social environment:

stable behavior forms the personality– Uniqueness of each personality follows from

variability in social experiences

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Personality Theories (Cont.)

• Biological theories– Ethological theory

• Develop common characteristics as a result of evolution

• Behavioral characteristics that have helped survival over generations become inborn characteristics

Page 53: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

Personality Theories (Cont.)

• Biological theories (cont.)– Behavior genetics

• Individual's unique gene structure affects personality development

• Personality develops from interactions between a person's genetic structure and social environment

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The Big-FivePersonality Dimensions

• Extroversion– High: talkative, sociable– Low: reserved, introverted

• Emotional stability– High: calm, relaxed– Low: worried, depressed

• Agreeableness– High: cooperative, tolerant– Low: rude, cold

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The Big-FivePersonality Dimensions (Cont.)

• Conscientiousness– High: dependable, thorough– Low: sloppy, careless

• Openness to experience– High: curious, intelligent– Low: simple, conventional

Assess yourself on each dimension

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Personality Types

• Locus of control: people control the consequences of their actions or are controlled by external factors– External control: luck, fate, or powerful

external forces control one’s destiny– Internal control: believe they control what

happens to them

Assess yourself against each type.

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Personality Types (Cont.)

• Machiavellianism– Holds cynical views of other people's motives– Places little value on honesty– Approaches the world with manipulative intent– Maintains distance between self and others– Emotionally detached from other people– Suspicious interpersonal orientation can

contribute to high interpersonal conflict

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Personality Types (Cont.)

• Machiavellianism (cont.)– Focus on personal goals, even if reaching them

requires unethical behavior– Suspicious orientation leads to view of

organizational world as a web of political processes

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Personality Types (Cont.)

• Type A personality: a keen sense of time urgency, focuses excessively on achievement, aggressiveType B personality: strong self-esteem, even tempered, no sense of time urgency

Type A: significant risk factor for coronary heart disease.

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Personality Types (Cont.)

• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)– Popular personality assessment device– Four bi-polar dimensions

• Extroverted (E) - introverted (I)

• Sensing (S) - intuitive (I)

• Thinking (T) - feeling (F)

• Perceiving (P) - judging (J)

– Assigns people to one of sixteen types based on these dimensions

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Personality Types (Cont.)

• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) (cont.)– Extroverts look outward; introverts turn inward– Sensers use data; intuitives use hunches– Thinkers are objective; feelers are subjective– Perceivers are flexible; judgers want closure– ESTJ type: extroverted, sensing, thinking, and

judging

Page 62: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

International Aspects ofPerception, Attitudes,

and Personality• Culturally based stereotypes

– Swiss: punctual– Germans: task-oriented– Americans: energetic– People who hold these stereotypes experience

surprises when they meet people from these countries who do not fit the stereotypes

Page 63: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

International Aspects ofPerception, Attitudes,

and Personality (Cont.)• Culturally based stereotypes (cont.)

– Project aspects of own culture onto people and situations in a different culture

– Assumes that the new culture mirrors their own– Example: Korean manager visiting Sweden

assumes all women seated behind desks are secretaries

– Such behavior would be inappropriate and possibly dysfunctional in Sweden where many women hold management positions

Page 64: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

International Aspects ofPerception, Attitudes,

and Personality (Cont.)• Attitudes about organizational design,

management, and decision making:– U.S. managers: a hierarchical organizational

design helps solve problems and guides the division of labor in the organization

– French and Italian managers: a hierarchical design lets people know authority relationships in the organization

Page 65: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

International Aspects ofPerception, Attitudes,

and Personality (Cont.)• Attitudes (cont.)

– Italian managers: bypassing a manager to reach a subordinate employee is insubordination

– Swedish and Austrian organizations: decentralized decision making

– Philippine and Indian organizations: centralized decision making

Conclusion: Organizations that cross national borders and drawmanagers from many different countries have high conflict potential.

Page 66: Chapter 5  perception attitude and personality

International Aspects ofPerception, Attitudes,

and Personality (Cont.)• Personality characteristics

– People in individualistic cultures (United States) have a stronger need for autonomy than people in group-oriented cultures (Japan)

– People in cultures that emphasize avoiding uncertainty (Belgium, Peru) have a stronger need for security than people in cultures that are less concerned about avoiding uncertainty (Singapore, Ireland)

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Ethical Issues inPerception, Attitudes,

and Personality• Stereotypes and workforce diversity

– Can have inaccurate stereotypes about the ethics of people with different social, racial, and ethnic backgrounds

– These stereotypes can affect the opinions people develop about the ethical behavior of such people in the workplace

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Ethical Issues inPerception, Attitudes,

and Personality (Cont.)• Self-presentation

– Deliberately managing self-presentations so decisions and behavior appear ethical

– Limited experimental evidence suggests one can favorably manage other people's impressions of their ethical attitudes

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Ethical Issues inPerception, Attitudes,

and Personality (Cont.)• Attribution and accountability

– Individual responsibility is central to ethical behavior

• Attribution of responsibility to a person: person behaved ethically or unethically

• Attribution of responsibility to the situation: individual not held accountable

• Example: observer believed the person had behaved unethically because of a directive

– Errors in attribution: could conclude that he or she was not responsible for an unethical act

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Ethical Issues inPerception, Attitudes,

and Personality (Cont.)• Ethical attitudes

– Little reliable and valid information about ethical attitudes

– Some evidence points to the absence of a fixed set of ethical attitudes among managers

– Attitudes about ethics in organizations and decision making are situational and varying

– The morality of behavior and decisions is determined by their social context, not by abstract and absolute rules