Individual Behaviour

Assignment on Perceptual Bias

Submitted by:

Name: Kirti Prabhu

Roll No: 2018088

Section: B

Characters:

1) Mr. Percy Coelho (My Boss, name changed)

2) Mr. Johann Mc’Millan (My office colleague, name changed)
3) Mr. Albert Bernard (Johann’s Manager, name changed)
4) Ms. Kirti Prabhu (Me)

Situation in Brief:

After my graduation in BBA, I got a job in a start-up financial consulting firm as a HR

Associate. My boss, Mr. Percy Coelho, hired me after taking my interview. Mr. Coelho as a
person is someone who generally encourages people to come to him with ideas. He has an
open door policy and gives employees complete autonomy over their work. He is very vague
when it comes to describing what is expected of an employee from a job related task. At the
start of a project, he would be actively involved in a project, but within a few days he would
lose interest and it would become challenging for the employees to gauge what is expected
from the job. He is very moody and generally cites a family situation whenever he is late or
does not stick to his commitments.

I was given a cabin with Mr. Johann Mc’Millan and Mr. Albert Bernard. Both of them were
from Finance Department. Both of them were quite warm with me from the start. Mr.
Bernard would generally help me with my queries since; I would find Mr. Coelho’s
instructions unclear. Gradually, we three became very good friends.

Mr. Bernard was a very friendly and easily approachable person. He would help all the
employees with their queries as everyone found Coelho’s instructions very vague. He would
happily help them as he knew what was expected. He had been with the same organization
for two years and most of the meetings about the organization were held between him and
Mr. Coelho. He was in the good books of Mr. Coelho.

Mr. Johann on the other hand was in the bad books of Mr. Coelho. Mr. Coelho out rightly
said that the reason behind him not liking Johann was because he would come late to office
and also not deliver projects on time. Mr. Johann didn’t like the job and would be highly
distracted during office hours. He would take long breaks and watch YouTube videos most of
the time. Mr. Bernard would get irritated with this behaviour, but would still tell him to do his
work politely.

Initially Mr. Coelho was very impressed by my work and would give me regular feedbacks
which were positive. As time passed, since I had become good friends with Johann and
Bernard we would sometimes casually talk while working. Mr. Coelho highly despised this
and would often tell Mr. Bernard about how Johann was distracting me due to which my
work output had also lowered. I ignored all these as I perceived that I was doing the same
work with the same amount of efficiency. But later it was perceived by Mr. Coelho that even
I wasn’t working well and spent most of my time in talking.

Biases Identified:

1) Mr. Coelho had developed a “Selective perception” that because I was friends with
Johann, my output had decreased. So he was having an “Anchoring Bias”, wherein he
saw me talking to Johann few times and automatically perceived that we talked all the
time and wasted our time and that all the talks were unrelated to work.
2) I developed a “Hindsight Bias”, I would automatically think that Mr. Coelho would
cite a personal reason for not sticking to his commitments. Whenever he would be late
or make any mistake, I would always come to a conclusion that he will give a
personal reason to justify it.
3) Also I got stuck with ”Bounded Rationality” as I chose the first acceptable solution
and not the optimal one by simply doing my work and not putting in more effort to
reduce the bias against me. I did not put in much thought as to how I could solve the
wrong portrayal against me.

How I would handle the same situation differently, now that I have an understanding of
what biases are and how they influence perception?

Ans. Now that I have an understanding of how perception and biases play a vital role in
decision making, I would have had not neglected the warning signs which made me look bad
in front of Mr Coelho. I would have had adopted a rational decision making approach and
put in more effort in ensuring that I get noticed as an efficient employee and cut down my
talks with Johann. Also I would not automatically assume that my boss would cite a personal
reason for a delay or a mistake. Another major improvement that I would have had done
would be to analyse the situation properly and come up with better alternatives to choose
from rather than sticking with the easiest one.