Category: Organizational Behavior

In the last blog we looked at the characteristics of situation and how that influences the social perception. In today’s blog we begin our discussion on the barriers to social perception.

There are several factors that could lead us to having inappropriate impressions of others – some of these are:

In today’s blog we shall define these and continue the discussion on each of these in the next blog.

Selective Perception refers to the process of selecting information that supports our individual viewpoints while discounting information that threatens our viewpoint

Stereotype refers to the generalization about a group of people

First impression error refers to the tendency to form lasting opinions about an individual based on initial perception

Projection refers to overestimating the number of people who share our own beliefs, values and behavior

Self-fulfilling Prophecy refers to the situation in which our expectations about people affect our interaction with them in such a way that our expectations are fulfilled.

In the last blog, we
looked at the characteristics of the target and its influence in the process of
social perception. In today’s blog, we look at the characteristics of the
situation and the influence of this on the social perception.

The following is a
our common experience as students – When we meet a professor in our class we
would perceive differently, from say when we meet the professor at his room or
at some other social gathering or for that matter of fact after graduation from
the institute. This context of the interactions is called the “social
context“, and definitely these have an influence on the way we perceive
the situation. Again, we would need to remember, that these contexts and
situations and the corresponding behavior would also be perceived differently
from one culture to another.

There are some
situations, in which we get a strong cue of the appropriate behavior. In these
situations, we believe that the behavior of the individual would be influenced
primarily by the situation and may not be the individual’s general behavior.
This is called “Discounting Principle” (The assumption that an individual’s
behavior is accounting for by the situation).

The above two explain
how the characteristics of the situation influence the social perception
process. However, to get an apt understanding of the same, we would need to
consider the combined effect of the characteristics of the perceiver, target
and the situation. However, even a thorough understanding of these
characteristics cannot free us from the barriers of social perception. We shall
discuss about these in the next few blogs.

In the last blog, we
looked at the characteristics of the perceiver which affect social perception.
In today’s blog we look at the characteristics of the target that affect the
social perception.

Target typically
refers to the person who is being perceived – even his characteristics
influences the way we perceive him. Some of the major characteristics of the
target that affect this perception are:

Physical Appearance:
It is pretty common knowledge that an individual’s first impression about any
other person is made by the dress he wears. This common knowledge is what this characteristics
talks about – but this time it’s not just the clothing, it’s the height,
weight, age… and many more. To really understand this, we only need to
reflect and think of a situation where in we were able to identify a newcomer
or a minority in the organization with ease!

Verbal Communication
involves not just the topic of discussion, but also the volume, the tone, the
accent etc – All these create a mental impression which affects our perception
of the individual.

Non verbal
communication includes the eye contact we make with people, the body movements
postures etc – all these too create an impression in the perceivers mind. Again
these would also be affected by the social context of the transaction.

The intentions of the
target could also affect the way we interpret the target – the impressions made
when we have a boss walking into the room indicates the affect of the
intentions of the target has on our social perception!

Familiarity with the target is when we have multiple observations of the target. These observations help us form an impression about the individual. When we get any new information about the individual, we tend to screen out the information which is inconsistent with what we believe the person is like.

Attitude forms another major influence on our social perception – say for example, we have a department in an organization where we find only men working in there and mentally we have formed an attitude. This attitude would begin influencing us when we are taking an interview!

Mood plays a very strong influence on the way we perceive someone – we think very differently when we are happy from when we are upset. When we are in a positive mood, we tend to make a positive opinion of the people we meet!

Another factor that can affect social perception is the perceiver’s self-concept. An individual with a positive self-concept tends to notice positive attributes in another person and a similar aspect for the person with negative self-concept. A greater understanding of self allows us to have more accurate perception of others.

Cognitive structure refers to the thought pattern of an individual. Some of us tend to perceive physical traits before other traits, while others tend to focus on central traits. Cognitive complexity allows a person to perceive multiple characteristics of another personal rather than attending to a few traits.

In the last blog, we began understanding the concept of perception and stated the various factors that influence social perception. We stated that there are 3 primary factors whose characteristics influence social perception. These are:

[Source: The Model is an adapted version from Fig: 3.2 of Organizational Behavior – Nelson & Quick 5th Edition]

We shall discuss these in detail over the next few blogs

In the last blog, we discussed about MBTI and the 16 preferences. In today’s blog, we look at the concept of perception and introduce ourselves to social perception.

The term Perception in common parlance derives itself from the word – “perceive”. The term perceive means – to recognize, discern, envision, or understand. In the context of our discussion on Organizational Behavior, the term is used a bit differently.

Perception involves the way we look at the world around us – it is the one that adds meaning to what we gather through the five sense – touch, smell, hearing, vision and taste. It is the vehicle through which we understand ourselves and our surrounding. What is of peculiar interest in the context of our discussion is a particular type called – “Social Perception”.

Social Perception is the process of interpreting the information about other people. Almost all of management activities deal with perception – be it appraisal of an individuals performance or interview – it is based on how the current situation is perceived, what my individual opinions are about you (the subject of discussion or observation) and what the subject has actually done.Stated differently, we have the following factors that affect our perception:

In the last blog, we understood the evolution of the MBTI framework and what the different preferences where. The set of 4 preferences lines, lead us to 16 options, the nature of which we have listed as below

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In the last blog, we looked at 3 broad ways in which personality was measured. In today’s blog (and continuing in the next blog) we look at the most commonly used tool for assessing personality – MBTI Instrument.

Origin of the MBTI framework:
The origin of the framework could be traced to the works of Swiss psychiatrist – Carl Jung. His classic work – “psychological types” proposed that there were two basic types of people – Extroverts and Introverts. He also identified that there were two types of perceiving (sensing and intuition) and two types of judgments (thinking and feeling).

This initial work caught the attention of a mother-daughter team – Katherine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers who developed the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator Instrument also called MBTI. This instrument put Jung’s type theory into practice.

MBTI is used extensively in Career Counseling, Team Building, Conflict Management, Understanding Management styles etc.

Preferences

In this section, we shall define the 8 types of preferences:

In the last blog, we looked at the positive and negative affects that an individual’s personality characteristics could have on its work experience. In today’s blog, we take the next step in understanding personality – that is to understand how we can measure personality. We would discuss briefly about the following of the various methods that are used – Projective Tests, Behavioral Measures and Self-Report Questionnaire are the ones we discuss today.

Projective Tests are ones in which, individuals are shown a picture, abstract images, or photos and are asked to describe what they see or to tell a story about what they see. This is based on the rationale that individual responds to the stimulus in a way that reflects his or her unique personality.

Behavioral measures are assessments of personality that involves observing an individual’s behavior in a controlled situation. This however is not without some problems; the observer’s ability to stay focused and the way observer interprets the behavior! The very fact that one is being observed also creates a distortion in the way an individual behaves.

The most common method used to measure personality is the self-report questionnaire. Individuals generally respond to a series of questions usually in agree/disagree or true/false format. There are numerous such tests that are available out of which – MBTI is commonly followed in the industry.

In the last blog, we looked at self-monitoring characteristics of an individual and what does it imply in an organizational context. In today’s blog, we look at Positive/Negative Affect and attempt understanding what this would mean for an organization.

A look at the people around us, and a brief reflection on the experience we had working or sharing some time with them would broadly help us to recollect – 1that with some people, we felt a positive energy to work with, and with some others we were so bogged down by the cribbing and negativity that they spread. In today’s blog this is the very subject matter.

Positive Affect refers to the individual’s tendency to accentuate the positive aspects of himself or herself, other people and the world in general. Negative Affect refers to an individual’s tendency to accentuate the negative aspects of him or herself other people and the world in general.

Positive Affect is generally also linked with job satisfaction; such individuals are found to absent themselves from work to a lower extent than the people with negative affect people. Positive Affect is definitely a very positive asset in a work environment. Managers stretch the extra mile to ensure that positive affect is promoted – this also includes incorporating a participative decision making style. Negative Affect increases work stress.

While discussing the Positive and Negative Affect, it is important not to forget the impact of situations on the work we do. If the situation tends to overwhelm the affects of individual personalities then we call it as strong situation. All individuals more or less interpret the situation in a similar manner, and behave more or less in the same way. A weak situation in contrast has multiple interpretations; the situation doesn’t define what the appropriate response has to be.

Research has found that Organizations present a combination of strong and weak situations and therefore personality would have a stronger effect on behavior in some situations than in others.