Person Perception: Making Judgments

About Others

Organizational Behavior / Perception 1

 Person perception /social perception
• 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
 ATTRIBUTION
• People make sense of their surroundings on the basis
of what they consider is the cause and what is the
effect of a phenomenon.
• It suggests that individuals observe their own
behavior or experience,try to figure out what caused
it, and then (whether or not their conclusion is in fact
correct) shape their future behavior accordingly.

Organizational Behavior / Perception 3

 Internal vs. External
• In an internal, or dispositional, attribution,
people infer that an event or a person’s
behavior is due to personal factors such as
traits, abilities, or feelings.
• In an external, or situational, attribution,
people infer that a person’s behavior is due to
situational factors.

Organizational Behavior / Perception 4

 Stable vs. Unstable

• When people make a stable attribution, they

infer that an behavior is due to constant,
unchanging factors.
• When making an unstable attribution, they
infer that an event or behavior is due to
unbalanced, temporary factors

Organizational Behavior / Perception 5

Organizational Behavior / Perception 6
 ATTRIBUTIONAL STYLE

• Optimistic: negative events are explained in

terms of external, unstable and specific
causes; and positive events to internal, stable ,
global causes.
• Pessimistic: negative events explained in
terms of internal, stable, and global terms (I’m
a bad person); positive events in terms of
external, unstable, and specific causes

Organizational Behavior / Perception 7

Organizational Behavior / Perception 8
 Attribution Theory
When individuals observe behavior, they attempt to determine whether it is

internally or externally caused.

observation Interpretation Attribution of cause

H
External
Distictinctiveness
L Internal

H
External
Individual behavior Consensus
L Internal

H
Internal
Consistency
L
External
Organizational Behavior / Perception 9
H –high L- Low
 Attribution theory
Distinctiveness
– uniqueness 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.
 Consistency
Distictiveness Consensus Does this person
Does this person Do other person behave
behave different in Behave in the in this same
similar situation Same manner? manner at other
times ?

YES Yes
YES Externa
HIGH High
HIGH Attributio
Consensus Consistency
Distinctiveness
NO No
NO Low Internal
LOW LOW Attribution
Distinctiveness Consistency
Consensus
Organizational Behavior / Perception 11
 Errors we make while interpreting
• Fundamental attribution error
• Self-serving bias
The Fundamental Attribution Error

• The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to

attribute other people’s behavior to internal factors
such as personality traits, abilities, and feelings.
• The fundamental attribution error is also called the
correspondence bias, because it is assumed that
other people’s behavior corresponds to their
personal attributes.
• When explaining their own behavior, on the other
hand, people tend to attribute it to situational
factors
Organizational Behavior / Perception 13
The Fundamental Attribution Error
The tendency to underestimate the influence of
external factors and overestimate the influence
of internal factors when making judgments
about the behavior of others

Organizational Behavior / Perception 14

 The Self-Serving Bias

• The self-serving bias is the tendency to

attribute successes internal factors and
failures to situational factors.
• This bias tends to increase as time passes after
an event.
• Therefore, the further in the past an event is,
the more likely people are to congratulate
themselves for successes and to blame the
situation for failures
Organizational Behavior / Perception 15
 The Self-Serving Bias

• The tendency for individuals to attribute their

own successes to internal factors while
putting the blame for failures on external
factors.

Organizational Behavior / Perception 16

 Perceptual Errors

• Perceptual error means not seeing reality is Or

Illusion can be understood as reliable
perceptual error (when the constancy doesn’t
hold good)

Organizational Behavior / Perception 17

 There are many types of perceptual
errors
• Selective Perception
• STEREO TYPING
• HORN EFFECT
• HALO EFFECT
• RECENCY EFFECT
• PRIMARY EFFECT
• SIMILAR TO ME EFFECT

Organizational Behavior / Perception 18

 Shortcuts in judging others

Selective Perception
Selective perception is the tendency not to notice and

more quickly forget stimuli that cause emotional

discomfort and contradict our prior beliefs. .

Organizational Behavior / Perception 19

 Stereo Typing
• “Making positive or negative generalizations
about a group or category of people, usually
based on inaccurate assumptions and beliefs
and applying these generalizations to an
individual member of the group.”

Organizational Behavior / Perception 20

• Halo Effect
– Drawing general impression of individual on the
basis of a single characteristic. i.e. if someone is
good at one dimension, he/she is perceived to be
good at other dimensions as well.
• Horn Effect
– Based on one NEGATIVE quality, we assumed
the person is BAD. i.e. we perceived the whole
person, based on ONE quality
•
Organizational Behavior / Perception 21
Primary Effect
– Tendency to form a judgement/opinion quickly
based on the first information we received.
(Subsequently, we may received other
information),but based our judgement on the first
information.
Recency Effect
– when the most RECENT information influence our
judgment, even though we have a whole of other
information on the Person.
Organizational Behavior / Perception 22
• Contrast Effect :

Evaluation of a person’s characteristics that are effected by comparisons with

other people recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same

characteristics.

• Projection :

Attributing one's own characteristics to other people.

Organizational Behavior / Perception 23

 APPLICATION
• Employment Interview
• Performance Expectations
• Self-fulfilling prophecy
• a) Pygmalion Effect
• b) Golem Effect
• Performance Evaluations
• Employee Effort

Organizational Behavior / Perception 24

• Pygmalion 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: A negative instance of the
selffulfilling prophecy, in which people holding
low expectations of another tend to lower
that individual's performance.

Organizational Behavior / Perception 25

Organizational Behavior / Perception 26