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Perceiving

Ourselves and
Others in
Organizations

McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2013 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Self-Concept Defined

▪ An individual’s self-beliefs and self-evaluations


▪ “Who am I?” and “How do I feel about myself?”
▪ Compare perceived job with our perceived and ideal selves.
▪ Includes three self-concept dimensions and four “selves”
processes

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Self-Concept Dimensions (3
C’s)
▪ Complexity
• People have multiple self-views
▪ Consistency
• Similar personality and values across multiple selves
▪ Clarity
• Clearly and confidently described, internally consistent,
and stable across time.
▪ People have better well-being with:
• multiple selves (complexity)
• well established selves (clarity)
• selves are similar and compatible with traits
(consistency)

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Four “Selves” of Self-Concept

▪ Self-enhancement
• Promoting and protecting our positive self-view
▪ Self-verification
• Affirming our existing self-concept
▪ Self-evaluation
• Evaluating ourselves through self-esteem, self-
efficacy and locus of control
▪ Social self
• Defining ourselves in terms of group membership

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Self-Concept: Self-
Enhancement

▪ Drive to promote/protect a positive self-view


• competent, attractive, lucky, ethical, valued

▪ Positive self-concept outcomes:


• better personal adjustment and mental/physical
health
• inflates personal causation and probability of
success

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Self-Concept: Self-Verification

▪ Motivation to verify/maintain our self-concept


▪ Stabilizes our self-concept
▪ People prefer feedback consistent with their
self-concept
▪ Self-verification outcomes:
• More likely to perceive information consistent with
our self-concept
• We interact more with those who affirm/reflect our
current self-concept

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Self-Concept: Self-Evaluation
▪ Self-esteem
• High self-esteem -- less influenced, more
persistent/logical

▪ Self-efficacy
• Belief in one’s ability, motivation, role perceptions,
and situation to complete a task successfully
• General vs. task-specific self-efficacy

▪ Locus of control
• General belief about personal control over life
events
• Higher self-evaluation with internal locus of control

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Self-Concept: Social Self

• Social identity -- defining ourselves in terms of groups


to which we belong or have an emotional attachment
• We identify with groups that support self-enhancement

Social Identity Contrasting Groups

Edward Jones
Employee Employees at
other firms

American An individual’s People living in


Resident/Citizen social identity other countries

Graduates of
Indiana U. other schools
Graduate
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Perception Defined

▪ The process of receiving


information about and making
sense of the world around us
• Determining which information
gets noticed
• how to categorize this
information
• how to interpret information
within our existing knowledge
framework

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Selective Attention

▪ Selecting vs ignoring sensory


information
▪ Affected by object and
perceiver characteristics
▪ Emotional markers attached to
selected information
▪ Confirmation bias
• Information contrary to our
beliefs/values is screened out

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Perceptual
Organization/Interpretation

▪ Categorical thinking
• Mostly nonconscious process of organizing
people/things
▪ Perceptual grouping principles
• Similarity or proximity
• Closure -- filling in missing pieces
• Perceiving trends
▪ Interpreting incoming information
• Emotional markers automatically evaluate
information

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Mental Models in Perceptions

▪ Internal representations of the external world


▪ Help make sense of situations
• Fill in missing pieces
• Help to predict events
▪ Problem with mental models:
• May block recognition of new
opportunities/perspectives

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Stereotyping

▪ Assigning traits to people based on


social category membership
▪ Occurs because:
• Categorical thinking
• Innate drive to understand and
anticipate others’ behavior
• Enhances our self-concept

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Stereotyping Through
Categorization, Homogenization,
Differentiation
Social identity and self-enhancement
reinforce stereotyping through:
▪ Categorization -- Categorize people into
groups
▪ Homogenization -- Assign similar traits within
a group; different traits to other groups
▪ Differentiation process -- Assign less
favorable attributes to other groups

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Stereotyping
Problems/Solutions

▪ Stereotyping Problems
• Overgeneralizes – doesn’t represent everyone in
the category
• Basis of systemic and intentional discrimination

▪ Overcoming stereotype biases


• Difficult to prevent stereotype activation
• Possible to minimize stereotype application

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Attribution Process

Internal External
Attribution Attribution

Perception that behavior Perception that behavior is


is caused by person’s caused by situation or fate
own motivation or ability -- beyond person’s control

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Attribution Rules

Internal Attribution

Frequently Frequently Seldom

Consistency Distinctiveness Consensus

Seldom Seldom Frequently

External Attribution

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Attribution Errors

▪ Fundamental Attribution Error


• attributing own actions to internal and external
factors and others’ actions to internal factors

▪ Self-Serving Bias
• attributing our successes to internal factors and
our failures to external factors

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Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Cycle

Supervisor
forms
expectations

Employee’s Expectations
behavior matches affect supervisor’s
expectations behavior

Supervisor’s
behavior affects
employee
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Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Effect
is Strongest...
▪ ...at the beginning of the relationship (e.g.
employee joins the team)
▪ ...when several people have similar
expectations about the person
▪ ...when the employee has low rather than
high past achievement

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Other Perceptual Effects

▪ Halo effect
• One trait affects perception of person’s other traits
▪ False-consensus effect
• overestimate how many others have similar beliefs
or traits like ours
▪ Primacy effect
• First impressions
▪ Recency effect
• Most recent information dominates perceptions

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Strategies to Improve
Perceptions

1. Awareness of perceptual biases


2. Improving self-awareness
• Applying Johari Window

3. Meaningful interaction
• Close, frequent interaction toward a shared goal
• Equal status
• Engaged in a meaningful task

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Know Yourself (Johari Window)

Feedback

Known to Self Unknown to Self


Known
to Others Open
Area Open Blind
Disclosure Area Blind
Area Area

Hidden
Area Unknown
Hidden Unknown
Area
Unknown Area Area
to Others

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Meaningful Interaction at
Herschend Family
Entertainment
Herschend Family Entertainment
CEO Joel Manby worked incognito
along-side employees as part of
the television program Undercover
Boss. The experience helped
Manby improve his perceptions of
the workplace as well as his own
leadership behavior.

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Global Mindset

▪ An individual’s ability to perceive, appreciate,


and empathize with people from other cultures,
and to process complex cross-cultural
information.
• awareness of, openness to, and respect for other views
and practices in the world
• capacity to empathize and act effectively across
cultures
• ability to process complex information about novel
environments
• ability to comprehend and reconcile intercultural
matters with multiple levels of thinking

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Developing a Global Mindset

1. Self-awareness activities – understand own


values, beliefs, attitudes
2. Compare mental models with people from
other cultures
3. Cross-cultural training
4. Immersion in other cultures

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Perceiving
Ourselves and
Others in
Organizations

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