Understanding and Adapting to the Work

Environment

DR. TANUSREE CHAKRABORTY

 The process by which people translate
sensory impressions into a coherent and unified view of
the world around them. Though necessarily based on
incomplete and unverified (or unreliable) information,
perception is equated with reality for
most practical purposes and guides human
behavior in general.

Perception is the reality of how the observer’s eye sees

you and your actions.
 Measurable behaviors How often do you:
 Make personal phone calls
 Text friends at work or in meetings
 Check in with Facebook while on the clock
 Talk about your personal life
 Isolate and refuse to engage socially (like
lunch or coffee)
 Do as little as you can do to get by.
 Offer to help others with a project
 Spend time at your desk doing what’s most important
 Going above and beyond your duties
 Help a co-worker who is falling behind
 Warped perceptions can negatively impact your projects,
performance and employer.

 Once we are viewed in a negative light, everything we do from that

point on will be blown out of proportion or questioned.

 People who don’t like you will make matters look far worse than
they really are.

 It takes time to reverse a perception once it’s cracked, but it can be

done.

 Your frustrations will increase because there can seem like there is
no way back to the right perceptions.
1. Distinguish between the concepts of social perception and social identity.
2. Explain how the attribution process works and describe the various
sources of bias in social perception.
3. Understand how the process of social perception operates in the context
of performance appraisals, employment interviews, and the cultivation of
corporate images.

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Personal Identity:
Identity The characteristics that
define a particular individual.

Social Identity:
Identity Who a person is, as defined in
terms of his or her membership in various
social groups.

Social Identity Theory:

Theory A conceptualization
recognizing that the way we perceive others
and ourselves is based on our unique
characteristics and our membership in various
groups.
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 Social Perception:
Perception The process of
combining, integrating, and interpreting
information about others to gain an
accurate understanding of them.

 Attribution:
Attribution The process through which
individuals attempt to determine the
causes behind others’ behavior.

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Judgments about people’s dispositions, traits,
and characteristics, that correspond to what
we have observed of their actions.

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 Causes of Behavior:
Behavior
 Internal:
Internal Explanations based on actions
for which the individual is responsible.
 External:
External Explanations based on
situations over which the individual has no
control.

 Kelley’s Theory of Causal Attribution:

Attribution The
approach suggesting that people will believe
others’ actions to be caused by internal or
external factors based on three types of
information: consensus, consistency, and
distinctiveness.
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 Consensus:
Consensus Information regarding the
extent to which other people behave in the
same manner as the person being judged.

 Consistency:
Consistency Information regarding the
extent to which the person being judged
acts the same way at other times.

 Distinctiveness:
Distinctiveness Information regarding the
extent to which a person behaves in the
same manner in other contexts.

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Beliefs that all
members of specific
groups share similar
traits and are prone to
behave the same way.

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Predispositions that people have to
misperceive others in various ways
.
Types include
 Fundamental attribution error
 Halo effect
 Similar-to-me effect
 First impression error
 Selective perception

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The tendency to attribute others’ actions to
internal causes (e.g., their traits) while largely
ignoring external factors that also may have
influenced behavior.

The tendency for people to perceive in a positive

light others who are believed to be similar to
themselves in any of several different ways.

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The tendency for our overall
impressions of others to affect
objective evaluations of their specific
traits; perceiving high correlations
between characteristics that may be
unrelated.

The tendency to focus on some

aspects of the environment while
ignoring others.

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The tendency to base our judgments of others on our earlier
impressions of them.

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Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:
Prophecy The tendency for someone’s
expectations about another to cause that person to
behave in a manner consistent with those
expectations.

Pygmalion Effect:
Effect A positive instance of the self-
fulfilling prophecy, in which people holding high
expectations of another tend to improve that
individual’s performance.

Golem Effect:
Effect A negative instance of the self-fulfilling
prophecy, in which people holding low expectations of
another tend to lower that individual’s performance.

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 Employees at a corporate call
center have not been spending
enough time at their cubicles
answering phones, as required.
Instead, they have been walking
throughout the facility, talking to
each other about personal matters.
In other words, they are socializing
and goofing off instead of working.
Important calls have gone
unanswered and customer service
problems have arisen as a result.

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 What attributions would you be
prone to make about these
employees, and how might
these be related to the
performance evaluations you
give them?

 What type of errors would you

be prone to make more accurate
judgments?

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 PERCEPTUAL REVERSIBILITY

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 Do not overlook the
external causes of others’
behaviors.
 Identify your stereotypes.
 Evaluate people based on
objective factors.
 Avoid making rash
judgments.

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 Performance Appraisal:
Appraisal The process of evaluating
employees on various work-related dimensions.
 An inherently biased process

 Impresssion Management:
Management Efforts by individuals
(esp. in employment interviews) to improve how they
appear to others.

 Corporate Image:
Image The impressions that people have
of an organization.

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