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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.

In the last blog, we looked at self-esteem and its implication to a practicing manager. In today’s blog we look at the concept of “self-monitoring” and how a manager could make use of this understanding.

As humans, our survival and success in the process of evolution has been primarily through our ability to adapt to the changing scenario. We pick up cues from the environment and respond to the situation at hand – But do all humans respond to the cue with the same intensity? Absolutely not. This is what the concept of self-monitoring talks about. Self-monitoring refers to the extent to which people base their behavior on cues from other people and situation.

People with high self-monitor are respond to the cues from nature better than low self-monitors who are not so vigilant to situational cues and act from internal states rather than paying attention to the situation. This also means that the behavior of people with low self-esteem is consistent across situation, while the people with strong self-esteem are more unpredictable and less consistent.

It could be seen that people with high self-monitoring would be quickly promoted as they accomplish tasks by reaching the expectations of people they work with. They are extremely flexible; however this flexibility is not suited for every job!

Since, high self-monitors are very receptive to the situation and people around, they demonstrate higher levels of managerial self-awareness – they are able to assess their own workplace behavior pretty accurately. And in managerial positions these people would also be able to read their employees needs and change the way they interact with them based on the needs.

In the last blog we learnt about self-efficacy and its implications for a manager. In today’s blog we will look at the concept of self-esteem and its implication for a manager.

Self-esteem is a pretty common term that we use in our daily lives! In management, it refers to the individual’s general feeling of self worth. It is normal for every person to have strengths as well as weakness – when ones belief that their strengths are more important than their weakness, we say the individual has a high self-esteem. On the contrary, a person with a low self-confidence views themselves negatively. People with low self esteem are seen to be strongly affected by what other people think about them – they complement people who give a favorable feedback while cut down people giving unfavorable feedback.

It is not to say that evaluation of other people doesn’t have an effect at all – If the evaluation is to say the individual is liked for what one is – it is seem to have a more stable effect on individual’s self-esteem; while being liked for ones achievement has a temporary effect on one’s self-esteem.

Self-esteem also has an effect on a host of other aspects including the attitude one has towards things. It has been seen that people with high self-esteem perform better and are more satisfied with their jobs. A team with high self-esteem people is more likely to be successful.

Extremely high self-esteem is not a good thing – it could lead to overconfidence and relation conflicts. Such individuals would also shift their social identities to protect themselves when they do not live up to the standard.

Success tends to raise self-esteem while failure tends to lower it. Given that this is generally a positive characteristics, managers should encourage employees to raise their self-esteem by giving them appropriate challenge and opportunities for success.

In the last blog, we looked at the implication of Locus of Control, in today’s blog we look at Self Efficacy and look at how a manager could make use of this understanding.

Self-efficacy could be seen to be of two types based on the scope of activities – General and Task. General Self-Efficacy refers to the general belief of an individual about one’s ability to meet the job demands in a wide variety of situations. An Employee with a high general self-efficacy would be more confident in their job-related ability and would show a larger positive energy, influence others etc – this in turn affects them perform better at their activity. Individuals with low self-efficacy feel ineffective at their work place and express doubts about their ability to perform a new task well.

An adage that “success attracts success” is in some ways associated with these characteristics of a team to certain extent. When one succeeds in a task, the self-belief increases and this is transferred to the next task they do and so on – there by making it a chain. It is also interesting to note that people with high self-efficacy would like to provide their opinions in the task they do at work. The opportunity to participate is extremely important for the people with high self-efficacy.

A Manager would need to carefully observe the behavior of the employees working with him and create opportunities for people to increase their self-efficacy.

Task specific Self-Efficacy is a similar belief but limits itself to a specific task.