3. Are perceptual distortions playing a role?

Common shortcuts in judging others are frequently valuable, but they can
get us into trouble when they result in significant distortions. There are many
scenarios explained in the case where Perceptual distortions like Selective
perception, Contrast Effect, stereotyping, projection and self-fulfilling
prophesies etc. have led to wrong judgement about the individuals.
Selective Perception: Jane had worked with Lyndon previously on a couple
of committees and she found him to be very professional and charming. But
she could not assimilate all she had observed, rather the negative
connotation and unenthusiastic behavior of Chuck and the bad performance
reviews forced her to perceive Lyndon as an underperformer.
Contrast Effect: Evaluation of a persons characteristics that are affected
by comparisons with other people (or previous performance of the same
person) recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same
characteristics. The glowing reports given by Chuck about Cheryl and Larry
and at the same time less enthusiasm about Lyndon and his bad
performance reviews and the contrast in the meetings between Jane and the
three created a contrast effect and put a negative impression about Lyndon
on Kravitz.
Stereotype: There were many instance in the case where all three
characters had a stereotypical mindset. Chuck felt that Lyndon needed to be
continuously monitored by Jane since he considered him to be an
underperformer based on his previous performance reviews.
Jane stereotyped Lyndon as he was an African-American and therefore,
assigned himself the African American and Latino vertical markets though he
was concerned with his inexperience marketing to those groups coupled with
his previous problems with inadequate resource and time allocation. In
addition to that, Jane thought Lyndons reasons were vague for going to the
trade show and taking the week off. And when he told her that he would be
staying with his brother to cut down on the companys expenses, Jane made
up a situation in her mind wherein she thought that Lyndon wanted to
combine business and personal trip without confronting her about it.
Projections: Jane projected herself on Lyndon and thought he would react to
the situation the same way she would have and thus took further steps in
motivating Lyndon but she was just concerned with her job-fit and career
development ignoring Lyndons and she was trying to impose of her
submission deadlines upon him while he was already having a lot of tasks to
perform. She also thought Lyndons performance reflected her performance
and she needed him to excel in delivering the sos while he was quite
skeptical of his inexperience.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Lyndon was very concerned and skeptical about
his professional inexperience marketing to the African-American group and

his failure in the same task in the earlier project created a negative
perception of his capabilities in that domain and in addition to that, Chuck
was also very unenthusiastic about Lyndons performance and expected very
less performance from Lyndon which can be seen in his past performance
reviews. The resulting expectations reflected in the performance of Lyndon to
be consistent with the original perception. So neither Chuck nor Jane was
able to motivate him and their lesser expectations led to a decrease in
Lyndons performance. This phenomenon is called Self-Fulfilling Prophecies.