Organizational

Behavior, 8e
Schermerhorn, Hunt, and
Osborn
Prepared by
Michael K. McCuddy
Valparaiso University

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 2

 Chapter 5
Perception and Attribution

 Study questions.
– What is the perceptual process?
– What are common perceptual distortions?
– How can the perceptual process be managed?
– What is attribution theory?

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 3

 What is the perceptual process?

 Perception.
– The process by which people select, organize,
interpret, retrieve, and respond to information.
– Perceptual information is gathered from:
• Sight.
• Hearing.
• Touch.
• Taste.
• Smell.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 4

 What is the perceptual process?

 Factors influencing the perceptual process.

– Characteristics of the perceiver.

– Characteristics of the setting.

– Characteristics of the perceived.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 5

 What is the perceptual process?

 Characteristics of the perceiver.

– The perceptual process is influenced by the
perceiver’s:
• Past experiences.
• Needs or motives.
• Personality.
• Values and attitudes.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 6

 What is the perceptual process?

 Characteristics of the setting.

– The perceptual process is influenced by the
setting’s:
• Physical context.

• Social context.

• Organizational context.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 7

 What is the perceptual process?

 Characteristics of the perceived.

– The perceptual process is influenced by characteristics
of the perceived person, object, or event, such as:
• Contrast.
• Intensity.
• Figure-ground separation.
• Size.
• Motion.
• Repetition or novelty.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 8

 What is the perceptual process?

 Stages of the perceptual process.

– Information attention and selection.
– Organization of information.
– Information interpretation.
– Information retrieval.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 9

 What is the perceptual process?

 Information attention and selection.

– Selective screening.
• Lets in only a tiny proportion all the information
that bombards a person.
– Two types of selective screening.
• Controlled processing.
• Screening without perceiver’s conscious
awareness.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 10

 What is the perceptual process?

 Organization of information.
– Schemas.
• Cognitive frameworks that represent organized knowledge
about a given concept or stimulus developed through
experience.
– Types of schemas.
• Self schemas.
• Person schemas.
• Script schemas.
• Person-in-situation schemas.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 11

 What is the perceptual process?

 Information interpretation.
– Uncovering the reasons behind the ways
stimuli are grouped.
– People may interpret the same information
differently or make different attributions about
information.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 12

 What is the perceptual process?

 Information retrieval.
– Attention and selection, organization, and
interpretation are part of memory.
– Information stored in memory must be
retrieved in order to be used.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 13

 What is the perceptual process?

 Response to the perceptual process.

– Thoughts.

– Feelings.

– Actions.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 14

 What are common
perceptual distortions?
 Common perceptual distortions include:
– Stereotypes or prototypes.
– Halo effects.
– Selective perception.
– Projection.
– Contrast effects.
– Self-fulfilling prophecy.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 15

 What are common
perceptual distortions?

 Stereotypes or prototypes.
– Combines information based on the category
or class to which a person, situation, or object
belongs.
– Strong impact at the organization stage.
– Individual differences are obscured.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 16

 What are common
perceptual distortions?
 Halo effects.
– Occur when one attribute of a person or
situation is used to develop an overall
impression of the individual or situation.
– Likely to occur in the organization stage.
– Individual differences are obscured.
– Important in the performance appraisal
process.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 17
 What are common
perceptual distortions?
 Selective perception.
– The tendency to single out those aspects of a
situation, person, or object that are consistent
with one’s needs, values, or attitudes.
– Strongest impact is at the attention stage.
– Perception checking with other persons can
help counter the adverse impact of selective
perception.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 18

 What are common
perceptual distortions?
 Projection.
– The assignment of one’s personal attributes to
other individuals.
– Especially likely to occur in interpretation
stage.
– Projection can be controlled through a high
degree of self-awareness and empathy.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 19

 What are common
perceptual distortions?

 Contrast effects.

– Occur when an individual is compared to other

people on the same characteristics on which
the others rank higher or lower.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 20

 What are common
perceptual distortions?
 Self-fulfilling prophecy.
– The tendency to create or find in another
situation or individual that which one expected
to find.
– Also called the “Pygmalion effect.”
– Can have either positive or negative outcomes.
– Managers should adopt positive and optimistic
approaches to people at work.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 21
 How can the perceptual
process be managed?
 Impression management.
– A person’s systematic attempt to behave in
ways that create and maintain desired
impressions in others’ eyes.
– Successful managers:
• Use impression management to enhance their own
images.
• Are sensitive to other people’s use of impression
management.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 22
 How can the perceptual
process be managed?

 Distortion management.
– Managers should:
• Balance automatic and controlled information
processing at the attention and selection stage.
• Broaden their schemas at the organizing stage.
• Be attuned to attributions at the interpretation
stage.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 23

 What is attribution theory?

 Attribution theory aids in perceptual

interpretation by focusing on how people
attempt to:
– Understand the causes of a certain event.
– Assess responsibility for the outcomes of the
event.
– Evaluate the personal qualities of the people
involved in the event.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 24
 What is attribution theory?

 Internal versus external attributions of

causes of behavior.
– Internal causes are under the individual’s
control.
– External causes are within the person’s
environment.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 25

 What is attribution theory?

 Factors influencing internal and external

attributions.
– Distinctiveness — consistency of a person’s
behavior across situations.
– Consensus — likelihood of others responding
in a similar way.
– Consistency — whether an individual
responds the same way across time.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 26

 What is attribution theory?

 Fundamental attribution error.

– Applies to the evaluation of someone’s else
behavior.
– Attributing success to the influence of
situational factors.
– Attributing failure to the influence of personal
factors.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 27

 What is attribution theory?

 Self-serving bias.
– Applies to the evaluation of our own behavior.
– Attributing success to the influence of
personal factors.
– Attributing failure to the influence of
situational factors.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 28

 What is attribution theory?

 Attributions across cultures.

– The fundamental attribution error and self-
serving bias operate differently in different
cultures.

Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 29