Chapter 5 Perception Indvl Decision Making What is perception Perception a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment The world as it is perceived is the world that is behaviorally important Factors influencing perception Person Perception Making judgments about others Person perception the perceptions people form about each other Attribution theory Attribution theory an attempt when individuals observe behavior to determine whether it is internally or externally caused 3 factors of determination distinctiveness consensus and consistency o Distinctiveness o Consensus o Consistency respond the same way over time whether an individual displays different behaviors in different situations if everyone who faces a similar situation responds in the same way does the person Internally caused behaviors that are believed to be under personal control of the individual Externally caused behavior seen as resulting from outside causes the person is seen as having been forced into the behavior by the situation Fundamental attribution error the tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments about the behaviors of others Self serving bias the tendency for individuals to attribute their own successes to internal factors while putting the blame for failures on external factors Frequently used shortcuts in judging others Selective perception selectively interpreting what one sees on the basis of one s interests background experience and attitudes Halo effect drawing a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single characteristic Contrast effects evaluation of a person s characteristics that are affected by comparisons with other people recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics Projection attributing one s own characteristics to another person Stereotyping judging someone on the basis of one s perception of the group to which that person belongs Specific applications of shortcuts in organizations Employment review judgments can vary widely First impressions are always important Who I might think is a good candidate may be extremely different from another person s evaluation of a candidate Information elicited early in the interview carries greater weight than information elicited later Performance expectations o Self fulfilling prophecy Pygmalion effect a situation in which one person inaccurately perceives a second person and the resulting expectations cause the second person to behave in ways consistent with the original perception Ethnic profiling o Profiling a form of stereotyping in which a group of individuals is singled out typically on the basis of race or ethnicity for intensive inquiry scrutinizing or investigation Performance evaluation the appraisal is dependent on the perceptual process The evaluator forms a general impression of the employees work To the degree that managers use subjective measures in appraising employee The link between perception and individual decision making Decisions the choices made from among two or more alternatives Problem a discrepancy between some current state of affairs and some desired state How should decisions be made The Rational Decision Making process Rational making consistent value maximizing choices within specified constraints Rational Decision making model Assumptions of the model 1 Problem clarity 2 Known options 3 Clear preferences criteria and alternatives can be ranked and weighted to reflect importance 4 Constant preferences specific decision criteria are constant and that the weights assigned to them are stable over time 5 No time or cost constraints decision maker can obtain full info about criteria and alternatives because it s assumed that there are no time or cost constraints 6 Maximum payoff choose the alternative with highest perceived value Improving Creativity in Decision making Creativity ability to produce novel and useful ideas Creative potential we all have it we just need to learn how to unleash it 3 component model of creativity the proposition that individual creativity requires expertise creative thinking skills and the intrinsic task motivation Expertise the foundation for all creative work Inspirations Creative thinking skills encompasses personality characteristics associated with creativity the ability to use analogies as well as the talent to see the familiar in a different light Intrinsic task motivation the desire to work on something because it s interesting The motivation turns creativity potential into ACTUAL creative ideas How are decisions actually made in organizations Bounded rationality Bounded rationality making decisions by constructing simplified models that extract the essential features from problems without capturing all their complexity Satisfice seek solutions that are satisfactory and sufficient Common Biases and Errors Overconfidence bias individuals whose intellectual and interpersonal abilities are weakest are most likely to overestimate their performance about an issue IE managers and employees become more knowledgeable about an issue the less likely they are to display overconfidence Overconfidence is most likely to surface when organizational members are considering issues or problems that are outside there area of expertise Anchoring bias a tendency to fixate on initial info from which we can then fail to adequately adjust for subsequent information Confirmation bias the tendency to seek out information that reaffirms past choices and to discount information that contradicts past judgments Availability bias the tendency for people to base their judgments on info that is readily available to them Representative bias assessing the likelihood of an occurrence by inappropriately considering the current situation as identical to ones in the past Escalation of commitment an increased commitment to a previous decision in spite of negative information Randomness error the tendency of individuals to believe that they can predict the outcome of random events Winner s curse a decision making dictum that argues that the winning participants in an auction typically pay too much for the winning item Hindsight bias the tendency for us to believe falsely that we d have accurately predicted the outcome of an event after that outcome is actually known Intuition Intuitive decision making an
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