INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN

ORGANIZATIONS

HANDOUT: PERCEPTION

Instructor:
Dr. S. Sahney
Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur

Source: Luthans, Robbins, Daft, and Lenge, McShane and Glinow

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All of us apprehend a stimulus object through sensation.
i.e., flow of information through one or more of our five
senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.

But each of us attends, organizes and interprets this

sensory information in an individual way.

That is why people have different perceptions of the

same situation.

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Definition of perception:

Perceive means: To obtain knowledge through the senses

Perception means: The ability to perceive.

According to Robbins, perception may be defined as “a

process by which individuals organize and interpret their
sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their
environment”.

Perception is the process of selecting, organizing and

interpreting or attaching meaning to the events happening
in the environment.

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Difference between Perception and Sensation:

Sensation is the response of a physical sensory organ;

Perception is broader and more complex.

Although perception depends upon the senses for raw

data, the cognitive processes may filter, modify or
completely change these data.

Two persons, each receiving the same stimuli may

often go their individual process of PERCEPTION and
come to different conclusions.

Example :
Seeing the same picture and perceiving different images. 4
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Features of Perception:

1.Perception is an intellectual process; through which a

person selects the data from the environment, organizes it
and obtains meaning from it; it is a basic cognitive and
psychological process.

2.It is also a subjective process as different people may

perceive the same environmental event differently.

Why do people perceive things differently?

The perceptual process is different because of the different
perceptual mechanisms that take place.
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Perceptual Process:

Perception is a process through which people receive,

select, organize and interpret information from their
environment.

It thus, consists of several sub-processes.

The chief components of the perceptual process are:

-Inputs
-Perceptual mechanisms
-Outputs
-Behavior
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 PERCEPTUAL PROCESS
Characteristics of
stimuli or inputs 4 chief components

Perceptual
Perceptual PERCEPTUAL Outputs
Inputs or MECHANISMS Attitudes, Behavior
Stimuli Selection Opinions,
Objects Organization Beliefs,
Events Interpretation Values
People Feelings

Characteristics of the Characteristics of the

Situation Perceiver
Time Needs and motives
Location Self-concept
Past experiences
Current psychological
state and beliefs
Expectations
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PERCEPTUAL MECHANISMS:

I PERCEPTUAL SELECTION:

-We are confronted with many stimuli at the same time.

-Because all this cannot be processed simultaneously, only the most

relevant things are selected and given attention.

- an individual selects certain objects in the environment for attention.

There are two types of factors which affect the selection of

the stimuli. These are-

A) External and related to the stimuli

B) Internal and related to the perceiver

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A) External and related to the stimuli:
-Consist of environmental influences and are in the form of the
characteristics of perceptual inputs or stimuli. Such characteristics may
be in the form of:

i) Size:
e.g. big and small letters in newspapers.

ii) Intensity:
e.g. a loud sound, a bright light.

iii) Repetition and Frequency:

e.g. advertisements.

iv) Motion:
Moving objects draw more attention as compared to stationary objects
e.g commercials in TV get more attention than print media.

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v) Novelty and Familiarity:
New objects or events in a familiar setting, or familiar objects or events
in a new setting draw better attention.
e.g. new assignments/jobs or even job rotation.

vi) Contrast:
Stimuli that contrast with the surrounding environment are more likely
to be attention catching than the stimuli that blend in.
e.g. letter of bold types, people dressed differently from others.

vii) Colour:
-impact perception.
e.g. consumer perceptions.

viii) Smells:
- serve as cues for current activities
e.g. the aroma of food or drink etc.

ix) Sound:
e.g. impact of music 13
B) Internal and related to the perceiver:

Internal stimuli are related to the individual’s complex psychological

make-up.

People will select out stimuli or situations from the environment that
appeal to, and are compatible with their:

- learning,

- motivation, and

- personality.

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i) Learning:

Learning affects our internal set by creating an expectancy to

perceive in a certain manner.

This implies that people hear and see what they want to see or
hear.

A lot of what a person “sees” in the world is a result of past

experience and teaching.

RESPONSE DISPOSITION
- the tendency to recognize familiar objects more
quickly than unfamiliar ones; a clear recognition of the
importance of past learning on what we perceive in the
present.
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ii) Needs and motives:

- a tendency to focus on objects that relate to our immediate needs or

wants: RESPONSE SALIENCE.

People tend to perceive things they need or want; the

stronger the need, the greater the tendency to ignore
unrelated stimuli in the environment.

iii) Personality:

Personality, values and even age affect the way people perceive the
world around them.

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II PERCEPTUAL ORGANIZATION:

After the information from the situation has been selected, it is

organized to extract meaning out of what is perceived by the individual.

Thus, while selection is a subjective process, organizing is a

cognitive process.

The specific principles underlying perceptual organization are often

referred to as the Gestalt principle.

- the name of the school of psychology that first developed it: Gestalt
psychology.

(Gestalt, in German, means pattern or configuration.) .

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Factors Influencing Gestalt Perception:

1. Stimulus factors are the physical and other observable

characteristics of the person, object, or situation perceived.

2. Individual response factors are determinants of perception within

the perceiver i.e. interest, needs, motivation, involvement, learning,
attitudes, personality etc.

Principles of perceptual organization:

-figure and ground,
-closure,
-grouping,
-simplification.

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a) Figure and Ground Relationships:
- Stimuli that contrast with their environment are more likely to be
noticed.

- the perceived object, event or person stands out distinct or

separable from its background and gets the cognitive attention of the
individual.

b) Closure:
-If the pattern of stimuli to which they are exposed is incomplete, they
tend to perceive it, nevertheless, as complete; that is, they
consciously or subconsciously fill in the missing pieces.

When faced with incomplete information, a person will fill the gaps
himself to make the information meaningful.

The thus perceive a whole when one does not actually exist.
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c) Grouping:
Continuity, Proximity and Similarity in Groups of Stimuli:

When simple constellations of stimuli are presented to people, they

tend to group them together by continuity, proximity or similarity.

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Continuity:
- The continuity principle says that a person will tend to perceive
continuous lines or patterns.

People tend to perceive sensory data in continuous patterns even if the

data are not actually continuous.

Proximity:
-when stimuli are near each other, people perceive them as being
related.
E.g. Several workers who work on a particular machine may be
perceived as a single whole.

Similarity:
- when stimuli are alike in some way, people tend to group them.
- the greater the similarity of the stimuli, the greater the tendency to
perceive them as a common group.
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d) Simplification:

Whenever people are loaded with information, they try to simplify it

to make it more meaningful and understandable.

In the process of simplification, the perceiver subtracts less salient

information and concentrates on important one.

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III PERCEPTUAL INTERPRETATION:

-Uniquely individual;

-The perceptual inputs that have been organized are interpreted by the
perceiver so that he can sense and extract some meaning of what is
going on in the situation.

Interpretation of stimuli is affected by:

- characteristics of stimuli,

- situation under which the perception takes place and

- characteristics of the perceiver.

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There are often chances of misinterpretation and the perceiver may
commit a mistake in perceiving because of several reasons.

These are called perceptual errors and distortions.

A) Selective perception:

-People tend to perceive what is in accordance with their needs,

motives, interests, background, experience and interests; they may
distort meanings so that they may fit what they want.

-They are more likely to pay attention to those aspects of the

environment which they anticipate or expect or are familiar with
rather than those they do not anticipate or expect or are familiar
with.

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B) Distorting Influences:
i) Physical Appearances:
People tend to attribute the qualities they associate with certain people
to others who may resemble them, whether or not they consciously
recognize the similarity.

ii) Stereotypes:
- the tendency to perceive another person as belonging to a single
class or category.
- The perceiver judges or perceives a person on the basis of
characteristics of the group to which he belongs.

iii) Irrelevant Cues:

When required to form a difficult perceptual judgment, people often
respond to irrelevant stimuli.

iv) First impressions:

People evaluate others on the basis of the first impression. This
may/may not be a true reflection of people being perceived. 29
V) Jumping to conclusions:
Many people tend to jump to conclusions before examining all the
relevant evidence.

vi) Inference:
This happens when there is a tendency to judge others on limited
information.

vii) Halo Effect:

Under the halo effect, a person, product, situation etc is perceived on
the basis of one trait.

Whatever the single trait is, it may override all other traits in forming the
perception.

- The phenomenon of “reverse halo effect” case occur when due to

one factor only all others positive factors of the organization are
negated, in the perception of the employees.
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APPLICATION OF PERCEPTION CONCEPTS
TO OB:

- PERSON PERCEPTION

1. SOCIAL PERCEPTION

2. IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT

3. ATTRIBUTION THEORY

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1. SOCIAL PERCEPTION:

- Consist of those processes by which we interpret other people, how we

categorize them and how we form impressions of them.

- The social aspects of perception play a very important role in OB.

3 basic categories of influence on the way we perceive other

people:

(1) the characteristics of the person being perceived.

(2) the characteristics of the particular situation.

(3) the characteristics of the perceiver.

There are numerous complex factors which enter into social perception like:
Attributions, Stereotyping, Halo effect 32
(1) The characteristics of the person being perceived:

- Physical appearance: age, gender, height, weight, dress sense.

- Verbal and Non-verbal communication: what we say and how we say;

accent, tone, precision, choice of words and language, body language.

- Ascribed attributes: Status, occupation

(2) the characteristics of the particular situation:

- Organizational role and position: employee’s place in the

organizational hierarchy

- Location of event: i.e. context of perceptual activity; where the event

occurs?

(3) the characteristics of the perceiver.

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2. IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT:

- Also called “self presentation”

Impression management, is the process by which people

attempt to manage or control the perceptions others form of
them.

- tendency for people to try to present themselves in such a

way as to impress others in a socially desirable way.

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Impression Management Strategies:

a) Demotion preventive Strategy:

- try to minimize responsibility for some negative event or
to stay out of trouble.

1. Accounts:
Employees’ attempts to excuse or justify their actions.
Eg. Not doing something on time because of another high priority assignment.

2. Apologies:
Apologize to boss for some negative event.
Eg. Gives the impression that the individual is sorry and indicates that it will not
happen again.

3. Disassociation:
When employees are indirectly associated with something that went wrong,
they may secretly tell the boss that they fought for the right thing but were
overruled.
Eg. They are a member of a committee that made a wrong decision.
- such people try to remove themselves both from the group and from the
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responsibility for the problem.
b) Promotion enhancing Strategy:
- try to seek maximum responsibility for a positive outcome
or to look better than they really are.
1. Entitlements:
Employees feel that they have not been given credit for the positive outcome.

2. Enhancements:
Here employees may have received the credit, but they point out that they really
did more and had a bigger impact than originally thought.

3. Obstacle disclosures:
Here employees identify either personal (health or family) or organization (lack of
resources or cooperation) obstacles they had to overcome to accomplish an
outcome.
- i.e. try to crate an impression that they obtained the positive outcome despite
the big obstacles and so they deserve a lot of credit.

4. Association:
The employees make sure to be seen with the right people at the right times,
thus creating an impression that the employee is well-connected and associated
with successful projects. 36
3. ATTRIBUTION THEORY:

- the cognitive process by which people interpret the

reasons or causes for their behavior is an area of study
known as the attribution theory.

-When individuals observe behavior, they attempt to determine whether

it is internally or externally caused.

Internally caused behaviors are those that are believed to be under

the personal control of the individual.

Externally caused behaviors is seen as resulting from outside causes.

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How do people go about judging whether someones’
actions were caused by internal or external causes?

- Kelly’s Theory of Causal Attribution.

According to him, we base our judgements of internal and external

causality on three types of information:

1. Consensus

2. Consistency

3. Distinctiveness

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1. Consensus: the extent to which other people behave in the same
manner as the person we are judging.

If everyone who is faced with a similar situation responds in the same way, we
can say the behavior shows consensus.

If others do behave similarly, consensus is considered high; if they do not,

consensus is considered low.

2. Consistency: the extent to which the person we are judging acts the
same way at other times.

Does the person respond the same way over time?

If the person does acts the same at other times, consistency is high; if he or she
does not, then consistency is low.

3. Distinctiveness: the extent to which this person behaves in the

same manner in other contexts.

If he or she behaves the same way in other situations, distinctiveness is low; if

he or she behaves differently, distinctiveness is high. 39
Attribution of Causality:

If we learn that:

- other people act like this one, (consensus is high),

- this person behaves in the same manner at other times

(consistency is high), and

- this person does not act in the same manner in other

situations (distinctiveness is high),

we are likely to conclude that: this person’s behavior

stemmed from external causes: SITUATIONAL
ATTRIBUTIONS .
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On the other hand, if we learn that:

- other people do not act like this one, (consensus is low),

- this person behaves in the same manner at other times

(consistency is high), and

- this person acts in the same manner in other situations

(distinctiveness is low),

we are likely to conclude that: this person’s behavior

stemmed from internal causes: DISPOSITIONAL
ATTRIBUTION.
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Attributional Bias:

1. Fundamental Attribution Error:

A tendency to underestimate the effects of external or situational
causes of behaviour and to overestimate the effects of internal or
personal causes.

2. Self-Serving Bias:
A tendency for individuals to attribute success on an event or project to
his or her own actions while attributing failure to others.

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SOME ORGANIZATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF
PERCEPTUAL AND ATTRIBUTIONAL BIASES:

1. Employment Interview:

- Evidence indicates that interviewers make perceptual judgements

that are often inaccurate.

A. Interviewers generally draw early impressions that become

very quickly entrenched.
If negative information is exposed early in the interview, it tends to be more
heavily weighted than if that same information comes out later.

B. Different panel members views differ often regarding the

evaluation of the same candidate.

C. Agreement among interviewers is often poor; that is different

interviewers see different things in the same candidate and thus, arrive
at different conclusions about the applicant.
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2. Problem solving and decision-making:

- a committee will blame other groups or departments when problems

occur: the self-serving bias.

- when faced with identifying problems to be solved in a complex

business situation, managers have a tendency to define the problem in
ways that reflect their own functional competence than other functional
areas: to interpret them in terms of our own experiences and capacity
to solve problems.

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3. Performance evaluation:

- dependent on perceptual process;

A. An assessment of an individual’s effort is a subjective judgement

susceptible to perceptual distortions and bias.

B to the degree that managers use subjective measures in appraising

employees, what the evaluator perceives to be good or bad employee
characteristics or behaviours will significantly influence the outcome of the
appraisal.

C Attribution biases.

D Perceptual errors: selection, organization and interpretation.

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4. Self-fulfilling prophecy:

-Pygmalion Effect;

When one person inaccurately perceives a second person and the

resulting expectations, it causes the second person to behave in ways
consistent with the original perception.

- if a manager expects big things from his people, they are not likely to
let him down.

- if a manager expects people to perform minimally, they will tend to

behave so as to meet those low expectations.

Result: Expectations become reality.

5. Ethnic 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. 48