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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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: