SBenegaL

Category: Organizational Behavior

  • How are attitudes formed?

    In the last blog, we looked at cognitive dissonance and understood the source of such a dissonance. In today’s blog, we look at how we form attitudes.

    When we reflect on the way we have learnt, we begin to see two distinct manners – one, where we have had direct experiences and second where we learn by observing others and then trying out ourselves.

    Our first few experience with mathematics, the experience which our teachers created for us when we learnt science, or the questions they asked in the exams in history really made our attitude towards these subjects. There were direct experiences in childhood that we carry even today. Such experiences derived from personal experience are stronger, held confidently, and are found to be more resistant than the ones we pick up from indirect experience (those that were just told and believed in by us)

    The second type of learning occurs when we look at our own surroundings – we observer our parents, friends, seniors etc We create “models” in our mind of these people and attempt to create our attitudes by merely observing others. This process of observing and creating our attitude generally would have 4 processes in it:

    1. We would focus and observe our model
    2. What is observed is retained in our mind
    3. We as learners practice what we observed as a behavior
    4. We are constantly motivated to learn from such a model.
    Having shown that we have 2 broad ways in which we learn an attitude, it would be extremely important to understand that society we live in and the cultural context of our operation have a major influence on the way we form our attitudes.

  • Cognitive Dissonance

    In the last blog, we attempted understanding Attitude using the ABC model. In today’s blog we take a situation and understand the underlying issue and how it is handles in real life.


    Assume you are a salesperson who strictly believes that selling damaged goods to customers is an unethical behavior. For the day, you have been posted to the TV section of the show room; you know that a specific model (the last in its model currently available) of TV is damaged. A customer approaches you and asks for the same model and to be delivered immediately. How would you react?


    There are many responses you could take to a situation like this, some of these are: you might refuse to sell the TV, or you could rationalize saying that the defects in the TV are those that wouldn’t harm the customer who doesn’t know about it and move ahead to sell it or any such approach. Invariably in any stance the behavior that you have adopted creates some form of “dissonance” or “discomfort” that is the result of a conflict between the “attitude” and “behavior”.


    Cognitive Dissonance is a state of tension that is produced when an individual experiences conflict between attitude and behavior. It originates from our attempt to be consistent in everything that we believe in and do. We prefer a consistency between our attitude and behavior.


    As manager, one would need to understand cognitive dissonance since the employees who work with them and find themselves in situations in which their attitudes conflict their behavior. If there is a sudden shift in the behavior of an employee, might possibly be due to the attempt to reduce dissonance. In extreme cases it could also lead to one quitting the job.

  • ABC Model – Understanding Attitude

    In the last blog, we
    looked at attitude and began our discussion to understand its nature better. In
    today’s blog we look at the ABC model of understanding Attitude.
    It is clear that only
    when one responds will one be able to evaluate the attitude one holds towards
    an individual, activity or situation. For the sake of clarity on understanding
    attitude, we could break it down into 3 aspects
    1. Affect
    2. Behavioral Intentions
    3. Cognition
    Affect is the emotional
    component of an attitude. Behavioral Intentions is the intention to behave in a
    certain way towards an object or a person. The third component of Cognition
    reflects a person’s perception or belief. 
    To understand this better, let’s take some examples:
    The sentence –
    “I don’t like my work” indicates the emotion/feeling one has – this reflects
    the affective component of an attitude.
    The sentence –
    “I want a transfer to another department” reflects a behavior intention
    of the person – this is the behavioral intensions part of an attitude.
    The sentence –
    “I believe my boss has favorites” reflects a person’s belief, this is
    the cognitive component of an attitude.
    This ABC model to
    understand an attitude suggests that, to completely and thoroughly understand an
    attitude, one must assess all three components.

  • Attitude and its components.

    In the last blog, we
    looked at the various biases that occur when we attempt to attribute the
    results to a source. In today’s blog we begin our discussion on attitude and
    attempt to understand it.
    Attitude for our
    discussion would mean “a psychological tendency that is expressed by
    evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or
    disfavor”.  This means we could have
    opinions and react favorably towards many things ranging from animals to
    politics!
    One common sentence
    we really hear today is “I wish I could change the attitude of people I
    work with, and feel better about their job”. There is an increasing noise
    in today’s world about job dissatisfaction – this is an attitude people hold
    towards their work. This attitude is important since it defines the way one
    would treat his work and behave in a work place.
    Understanding attitude
    is extremely important as managers – they need to understand the antecedent of
    attitude as well as the consequences of. It is extremely important to
    understand how attitudes are formed and how the major attitudes affect work
    behavior. They could then use this understanding to alter/change the attitude
    of their coworkers and reportees.
    We would begin
    attempting to understand “attitude” using the ABC model in the next
    blog.

  • Biases in Attribution – where do we see them?

    In the last blog, we
    looked at internal and external attribution that we generally do. In today’s
    blog, we look at some of the biases that could creep in – primarily 2 of them –
    the Fundamental attribution error and Self serving bias. Let us begin with
    defining the two.
    • Fundamental
      Attribution Error       refers to the tendency to make attributions to internal
      causes when focusing on someone else’s behavior.
    • Self Serving Bias
      refers to the tendency to attribute one’s own success to internal causes and
      one’s failure to external causes.
    To understand these,
    let us look at a scenario where a manager is asked to cite the cause of the
    company’s employee’s poor performance. The manager might claim that the
    employee’s lack of effort or lack of ability were the causes for this poor performance.
    This is an example of fundamental attribution error.
    If employees were
    asked explain the cause of their own performance problems, they could possibly
    blame it on the lack of support from the manager – this is an example of
    self-serving bias.
    While the above
    examples explain what attribution errors are, it is important to note that
    attribution itself has a very close alignment with the culture of the place.
    The way individuals interpret the events around them has a strong influence on
    their behavior.

  • Whom do I attribute the results of my action?

    In the last blog, we
    looked at impression management and discussed it. In today’s blog we discuss
    some interesting things about the way we attribute the result of our actions
    using the attribution theory.
    The Attribution
    theory     explains how individuals pinpoint the cause of their own behavior and
    that of others. This behavior of ours to have an attribution to the result is
    natural. We are inherently curious and this is the source of our behavior of
    this nature.
    Pretty often, in an
    interview we are asked to explain the cause of previous performance. In many
    ways the reply to this question helps the interviewer assess what our nature is
    with respect to attributing the outcome to. Some might attribute it to an
    external source others would to their internal source.
    It’s a pretty common
    experience after exam; when we ask a student after the exam how the test had
    been, and why he/she thinks it happened that way, we begin to see replies like
    these – “I topped the exam, since I had prepared well” or “The
    paper was an easy one, and I think my luck was good too, so I topped it”.
    In the first reply,
    we see that the person attributes the result to an internal cause – those which
    are within his control. In the second one we see the attribution is to an
    external source to things that are not within ones control.
    Result has shown
    that, achievement oriented individuals attribute their success to ability and
    their failure to lack of effort, to internal causes. Failure oriented individuals
    attribute their failures to lack of ability and they may develop feelings of
    incompetency and in extreme cases even depression.

  • Impression Management – Self directed and other directedd…

    In the last blog, we
    looked at Pygmalion and Galatea effect and understood what role they play in an
    organization. In today’s blog we talk about impression and its management.
    We pretty often come
    across people throwing names of “big” and “famous” personalities,
    and their interaction with these people. Invariably every time you meet them –
    you listen to similar stories. If we think about why one would make such
    references to people we would almost instantaneously recognize that, through
    such actions these people attempt to control impression others have of them.
    Such a process by which individuals try to control the impression others have
    of them is called “impression management“.
    In the above case, we
    also see that individual who attempts to enhance impression of himself/herself by
    “Name-dropping”. Such a mechanism is called self-enhancing. It is the
    same self-enhancing which gets one who is attending interviews to dress up carefully.
    Self-description pitch too could be drafted well to serve the purpose.
    Another common
    technique that people use is that of “other-enhancing”. In this
    technique – the focus is on the individual one is trying to impress rather than
    on self. Flattery is a common example of this technique.
    If one is to ask, if
    these impression management techniques are affective here are some researched
    facts:
    1. Candidates who
      engaged with impression management were found to have obtained site visits with
      potential employers and were more likely to be hired.
    2. Employees who
      engage in impression management are seen more favorably during performance
      appraisal.
    Having said the
    above, it is also important for one to realize that even this has a limit – the
    process if beneficial to organization if this impressions conveyed are
    accurate. If one engages in excessive impression management – he/she would be
    perceived as someone who is manipulative and insincere.

  • Pygmalion and Galatea effects – how they affect performance

    In the last blog, we looked at stereotype and first-impression
    as barriers to social perception. In today’s blog, we look at two affects
    that influence us – the     Pygmalion and Galatea effects.
    Having an expectation is common human tendency, when
    this expectation could influence to perform better there is nothing
    like it!
    As a manager, the way we treat our subordinates is
    subtly influenced by what we expect them. Employees can generally be
    found to catch these subtle cues and can react to the expectation such
    as to fulfill the underlying expectation. As an example, the supervisor
    fails to praise a staff person’s performance as frequently as he praises
    others. The supervisor talks less to a particular employee. If the manager/supervisor
    is not conscious of this aspect and is not skilled enough to realize
    or react to this – “he leaves scars on the careers of the young
    men (and women), cuts deeply into their self-esteem and distorts their
    image of themselves as human beings. But if he is skillful and has high
    expectations of his subordinates, their self-confidence will grow, their
    capabilities will develop and their productivity will be high. More
    often than he realizes, the manager is Pygmalion.” [- taken from
    http://hbr.org/2003/01/pygmalion-in-management/ar/1]
    Galatea Effect – is found be stronger than Pygmalion
    effect. This is a stronger case of the well known “self-fulfilling
    prophecy” – In this effect the individual’s opinion about one’s
    ability and one’s self-expectations about his performance largely determine
    one’s performance.
    Having mentioned about these effects it is not as
    direct as it sounds to be – there are number of other aspects that add
    to this as well – like, the organization culture, one’s life experiences,
    family background etc.

  • Stereotype and First Impression Errors – how do these affect social perception

    In the last blog, we
    looked at selective perception and projection which affect social perception.
    In today’s blog, we look at stereotype and first-impression errors that affect
    the social perception.
    When work teams in
    the current setting of companies are multicultural in nature, we quite often
    find members often stereotype foreign coworkers rather than getting to know
    them before forming and impression. Team members in the case of co-workers from
    the lesser economically developed countries have been found to assume to be
    having less knowledge simply because their homeland is economically or technically
    not progressive as the developed country. Such stereotypes are found to be
    reducing the productivity of the team overall and also reducing the morale of
    individuals.
    Stereotype is a
    generalization about a group of people – it reduces the information about
    others to a workable level and is found be efficient for compiling and using
    information. They tend to get stronger when they are shared and are validated
    by others. These stereotypes could be accurate, however what is important is to
    realize that these could be wrong and be willing to learn from scratch.
    We have also heard a
    common saying – the first impression is a lasting one; this is also quite true
    – we tend to remember the first perception of a person, and are generally found
    to be reluctant to be changing these. The First impression errors occur when we
    observe a very brief bit of a person’s behavior in our first encounter and
    infer that this behavior reflects what the person is really like. This could be
    a major source of errors while interviewing – one would need to be cautious
    about this.

  • Selective Perception and Projection – who do they affect social perception

    In the last blog, we
    listed the various barriers that could arise in social perception. In today’s
    blog we discuss a few of these for better understanding.
    In organizations,
    when you are a manager you would sometimes finds a situations where a reporting
    employee is not really getting along with his/her colleagues well, but the output
    of the employee is exceptionally good. When we evaluate the performance of the
    employee; many a times, we ignore the negative information regarding the
    employee and only choose to evaluate based on the impact of the work created.
    This tendency to ignore information that makes us feel uncomfortable, while only
    considering aspects that support our view is called Selective Perception.
    We have heard the
    common saying – “Birds of the same feather flock together”. It is
    surprising how much of information this saying could give us when it comes to
    Projections. It is our common nature to be with people who are alike, but this
    could create a bias in our minds which would let us o believe that all people are
    alike and in agreement with us. When interact with the people who do not have
    believe in similar things as we do, we tend to have misperceptions about these
    people. This nature of ours to overestimate the number of people who share our
    beliefs, values and behavior is called Projection, i.e. we project our
    personality on the people around us.