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ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOUR
Personality & Learning
Perception, Attribution, & Jugement

Akash Ijaz
 Can You Solve These Brain
2
Teasers?

MEREPEAT GR 12" AVE

INSULT + GESG
INJURY SEGG
GEGS
GGES
 Last Class
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 Discussed how OB has widespread

applications
 Evolution of OB
 Different roles of managers
 Contemporary concerns (e.g., workplace
diversity)

THIS CLASS
 Personality and learning

 Perception, attribution, and judgment

 Agenda
4

 Personality traits
 Experiment on learning
 Learning theories
 Attribution and Perceptual errors
 Nupath Case
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CH 2: PERSONALITY AND
LEARNING
 Question
6

 An effective manager will always hire the

smartest person available.
 True? False?
 Why? What do you think?
 Personality
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 While intelligence is really important,

personality is more likely to affect employees’
attitudes and behavior
 Question
8

 When you become rich and famous, will your

best friends and family be surprised about
“how much your personality has changed” and
make comments about how different you have
become?
 What is Personality?
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 The relatively stable set of psychological

characteristics that influences the way an
individual interacts with his or her environment
and how he or she feels, thinks, and behaves.
 Dimensions and traits that are determined by
genetic predisposition and one’s long-term
learning history.
 The Dispositional Approach
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 Focuses on individual dispositions and

personality.
 Individuals possess stable traits or
characteristics that influence their attitudes
and behaviours.
 Individuals are predisposed to behave in
certain ways.
 The Situational Approach
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 Characteristics of the organizational setting

such as rewards and punishment influence
people’s feelings, attitudes and behaviour.
 Many studies have shown that situational
factors such as the characteristics of work
tasks predict job satisfaction.
 E.g., Darley and Batson’s (1973) study of
seminary students told to hurry from one
building to another or those told had more
time; help slumped victim
 The Interactionist Approach
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 Organizational behaviour is a function of both

dispositions and the situation.
 To predict and understand organizational
behaviour, we need to know something about
an individual’s personality and the work
setting.
 This is the most widely accepted approach to
organizational behaviour.
 Situational Strength
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 Situations can be described as being either

“weak” or “strong”.
 In weak situations, roles are loosely defined,
there are few rules and weak reinforcement
and punishment contingencies.
 Personality has the strongest effect in weak
situations.
 In strong situations, the roles, rules, and
contingencies are more defined.
 Personality has less of an impact in strong
situations.
 Individual Exercise
14

 Do a personality test
 Answers all 60 questions
 Use the scoring key to find your average score
for each personality trait
 ***Remember that some questions are reverse
scored or worded negatively (answer is
marked with an “R”). So that means if you
answered 4, you would change the answer to
2.***
 “Big Five” personality traits
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Extroversion
 Energized by spending time with others

 Sociable, assertive, comfortable in large

groups
 Tendency to “think out loud”

Agreeableness
 Defers to others

 Cooperative, trusting, not antagonistic

 “Big Five” personality traits
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Emotional stability (neuroticism; emotionality)

 Ability to withstand stress: backbone
 Calm, self-confident, resilient
Openness to experience
 Interested in novel things vs. comfortable with
the familiar
 Adventurous, curious, artistic
Conscientiousness

Reliable, follows through
 Responsible, organized, dependable, persistent
 Question
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 Which personality factor is the strongest

predictor of job performance? Why?
 Personality
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 New factor (e.g., Ashton et al., 2004):

 Honesty / humility
 Integrityor morality
 Sincere, Not conceited, truthful, unpretentious
(modest)
 Not yet part of the “Big Five”
 Not much research on it yet (also not in your textbook)
 Individual Personality Results
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 1) To what degree do you feel this is an

accurate assessment of your personality?
 2) What are your strengths that will serve you
well, especially in terms of a career?
 3) What are your weaknesses which might
hinder you in your career, and how might you
go about addressing one or more of the
weaknesses?
 Locus of Control
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 A set of beliefs about whether

one’s behaviour is controlled
mainly by internal or external
factors.
 Internals believe that the
opportunity to control their own
behaviour resides within
themselves.
 Externals believe that external
forces determine their behaviour.
 Question
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 Which type makes for a better employee

(internals or externals)?
 Self-Monitoring
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 The extent to which people observe and

regulate how they appear and behave in social
settings and relationships.
 High self-monitors take great care to observe
and control the images that they project.
 High self-monitors are more involved in their
jobs, perform better, and are more likely to
emerge as leaders.
 Downside: Dealing with unfamiliar cultures
might provoke stress.
 Self-Esteem
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 The degree to which a

person has a positive self-
evaluation.
 People with high self-esteem
have favourable self-images.
 People with low self-esteem
have unfavourable self-
images.
 Question
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 People with high self-esteem have lower job

satisfaction and job performance.
 True? False?
 Why? What do you think?
 Positive and Negative
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Affectivity
 People who are high on p o s itive a ffe c tivity
(PA) experience positive emotions and moods
and view the world in a positive light.
 People who are high on ne g a tive a ffe c tivity
(NA) experience negative emotions and
moods and view the world in a negative light.
 PA and NA are e m o tio na l dispositions that
predict people’s general emotional tendencies.
 Quiz Question
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An individual's personality encompasses:

A) all aspects of the individual's physical and
emotional response to their environment.
B) a relatively stable set of psychological
characteristics.
C) behaviours which are mostly learned through
childhood experience.
D) all aspects of the individual's consciousness.
E) a constantly shifting set of personal
characteristics.
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QUESTIONS?
 What is Learning?
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 A relatively permanent change in behaviour

potential as a result of practice or experience.

Question: What types of skills do employees

learn?
 What do Employees Learn?
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 Practical skills:
 Job-specific skills, knowledge, technical
competence.
 Intrapersonal skills:
 Self: Problem solving, critical thinking, alternative
work processes, risk taking.
 Interpersonal skills:
 Others: Interactive skills such as communicating,
teamwork, conflict resolution.
 Cultural awareness:
 The social norms of organizations, company
 Experiment
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 We need two volunteers

 Increasing Probability of
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Behaviour
 One of the most important consequences that
influences behaviour is reinforcement.
 Re info rc e m e nt is the process by which stimuli
strengthen behaviours.
 A reinforcer is a stimulus that follows some
behaviour and increases or maintains the
probability of that behaviour.
 Positive Reinforcement
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 The application or addition of a stimulus that

increases or maintains the probability of some
behaviour.
 The reinforcer is dependent or contingent on
the occurrence of some desired behaviour.

 E.g., If you participate in class (increase or

maintain behaviour), then you will earn high
participation marks (application of stimulus)
 Video Clip
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 Big Bang Theory video clip

 Negative Reinforcement
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 The removal of a stimulus from a situation that

increases or maintains the probability of some
behaviour.
 Negative reinforcement occurs when a
response p re ve nts some event or stimulus
from occurring.

 E.g., If you participate in class (increase or

maintain behaviour), then I will stop calling on
you (removal of stimulus)
 Experiment Debrief
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 Which technique is more effective?

 How did it feel to be subjected to the different
feedback styles?
 How did you feel while you were giving the
different types of feedback?
 Reducing Probability of
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Behaviour
 Sometimes learned behaviours are
detrimental to the operation of an organization
and they need to be reduced or eliminated.
 There are two strategies that can reduce the
probability of learned behaviour:
 Extinction
 Punishment
 Extinction
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 The gradual dissipation of behaviour following

the termination of reinforcement.
 If the behaviour is not reinforced, it will
gradually dissipate or be extinguished.

 E.g., If you talk to your peers while others are

speaking (unwanted behaviour), then I will
stop smiling.
 Punishment
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 The application of an aversive stimulus

following unwanted behaviour to decrease the
probability of that behaviour.
 A nasty stimulus is a p p lie d after some
undesirable behaviour in order to d e c re a s e the
probability of that behaviour.
 E.g., If you talk to your peers while others are
speaking (unwanted behaviour), then I will ask
you if you would like to share your
conversation with the class (aversive
stimulus).
 Problems using Punishment
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 It does not demonstrate which behaviours

should replace the punished response.
 Punishment indicates only what is not
appropriate.
 Punishment only temporarily suppresses the
unwanted behaviour.
 Punishment can provoke a strong emotional
reaction from the punished individual.
 Question
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 Should we avoid using punishment in the

workplace altogether? What do you think?
 Social Cognitive Theory
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 People learn by observing the behaviour of

others and can regulate their own behaviour
by thinking about the consequences of their
actions, setting goals, monitoring
performance, and rewarding themselves.
 Components of social cognitive theory:
 Modelling
 Self-efficacy
 Self-regulation
 Modelling
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 The process of imitating the behaviour of

others.
 Attractive, credible, competent, high-status
people are most likely to be imitated
 Job shadow
 Self-Efficacy
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 A person’s belief that he or she has the

ability, motivation, and resources to
complete a task successfully (Bandura,
1986)
 Different than self-esteem
 Can change over time
 Question
44

 What advice would you give to someone who

was faced with a new and difficult task; how
would you convince them that he or she could
do it successfully?
 Self-Efficacy Theory
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Enacted Mastery
 You have done the task before

Verbal Persuasion
 You have been told “you can do it”

Vicarious experience
 You have watched someone else complete

the task successfully

Physiological State
 You are not unduly frightened by the task
 Self-Regulation
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 The use of learning principles to regulate

one’s own behaviour
 A key part of the process is people’s pursuit of
self-set goals that guide behaviour
 E.g., you find a gap between how well you
want to do and your performance on a test
 Set specific short-term goals
 Study harder (rehearse)
 Ask others what they do (observe models)
 Quiz Question
47

Ron is a sensitive person, and he works very

hard so that his boss doesn't criticize him.
Criticism is a(n) __________ of Ron's work.
A) punisher
B) positive reinforcer
C) extinguisher
D) negative reinforcer
E) continuous reinforcer
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QUESTIONS?
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CH. 3: PERCEPTION,
ATTRIBUTION, AND
JUDGMENT
 What do you see?
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 What is Perception?
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 The process of interpreting the messages of

our senses to provide order and meaning to
the environment
 Depends on
 Target
 Attributes of a target, relationship of target to others, etc.
 Situation
 Social or work setting, actions of others, etc.
 Perceiver
 Attitudes, experiences, personalities, etc.
 Bruner’s Model of the
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Perceptual Process
 Attribution Theory
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 When individuals observe behaviour, they try

to guess if it is “internally” or “externally”
caused
 e.g., if a colleague does not do his share of the
work, do you assume
 It’s because he is lazy, selfish, incompetent (internal
attribution)
 It’s because his boss asked him to do some other
work (external attribution)
 Attribution Theory
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 Distinctiveness
 IF he acts the same way in other situations
 THEN we assume the behavior is internally
caused
 Consistency
 IF he has acted like this for a long period of time
 THEN we assume the behavior is internally
caused
 Consensus
 IF other people in the same situation behave the
same way… does everyone else do this?
 Biases in Attribution
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Fundamental attribution error

 When judging other people’s SUCCESS we:

 Inflate the role of e x te rna l factors

 Underestimate the role of inte rna l factors

 When judging other people’s FAILURES we:

 Inflate the role of inte rna l factors

 Underestimate the role of e x te rna l factors

Self-serving bias
 Opposite of fundamental attribution error
 Perceptual Errors
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 Primacy effect: First impressions

 e.g., start of the interview, first meet someone
 Recency: Most recent info dominates
perceptions
 e.g., big error a week before performance review
 Halo Effect
 Possession of one excellent characteristic makes
others think that other excellent characteristics
are possessed
 e.g., you know a person is a McMaster alumni, so
you think that they must also be friendly and
 Perceptual Errors
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 Contrast Effect
 When an evaluation is affected by a comparison to
the evaluation that preceded it
 e.g., Give a presentation after an excellent or poor
one
 Projection
 When you assume that other people are similar to you
 e.g., You assume that your housemates will clean
their dishes right away because that’s what you
always do
 Perceptual Errors
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 Stereotyping
 Tendency to generalize about people in a social
category and ignore variations among them
 e.g., older workers don’t work hard
 Self-fulfilling Prophecy
 Occurs when our expectations about another
person cause that person to act in a way that is
consistent with those expectations
 e.g., a person who expects people to be friendly,
may smile more and thus receive more smiles
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QUESTIONS?
 Case: Nupath Foods
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 Form groups of 5 to 6 people

 How does perception play a role in this case?
(ie. What perceptual problems or errors have
occurred?)
 Be prepared to report back to the class
 Summary
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 Intelligence is very, very important, but it is not

the only factor that will affect performance
 There are different tools available to influence
other people’s behaviour
 Being aware of perceptual errors is important
for recruitment and retention efforts