Chapter 7 - Social Perception and Attributions

Positive Performance Expectations

1. Recognize that everyone has the potential to increase his or her performance. 2. Set high performance goals. 3. Positively reinforce employees for a job well done. 4. Provide frequent feedback that conveys your belief in employees' ability to complete their tasks. 5. Give employees the opportunity to experience increasingly challenging tasks and projects. 6. Communicate by using facial expressions, voice intonations, body language, and encouraging comments that reflect high expectations. 7. Provide employees with the input, information, and resources they need to achieve their goals. 8. Introduce new employees as if they have outstanding potential. 9. Become aware of your personal prejudices and nonverbal messages that may discourage others. 10. Help employees master key skills and tasks.

Script

A mental picture of an event.

Schemata

A schema represents a person's mental picture or summary of a particular event or type of stimulus.

Sex-Role Stereotypes

A sex-role stereotype is the belief that differing traits and abilities make men and women particularly well suited to different roles.

6. Discuss how the self-fulfilling prophecy is created and how it can be used to improve individual and group productivity.

According to the self-fulfilling prophecy, high managerial expectations foster high employee self- expectations. These expectations in turn lead to greater effort and better performance and yet higher expectations.

Age Stereotypes

Age stereotypes reinforce age discrimination because of their negative orientation. For example, long-standing age stereotypes depict older workers as less satisfied, not as involved with their work, less motivated, not as committed, less productive than their younger coworkers, and more apt to be absent from work. Older employees are also perceived as being more accident prone.

Implicit cognition

Any thought or belief that is automatically activated without conscious awareness.

7. Explain, according to Kelley's model, how external and internal causal attributions are formulated.

Attribution theory attempts to describe how people infer causes for observed behavior. According to Kelley's model of causal attribution: -external (outside forces) attributions tend to be made when consensus and distinctiveness are high and consistency is low. -Internal (personal responsibility) attributions tend to be made when consensus and distinctiveness are low and consistency is high. It is important to remember that consensus relates to other people, distinctiveness relates to other tasks, and consistency relates to time.

Attention

Being consciously aware of something or someone

Micro aggressions

Biased thoughts, attitudes, and feelings that exist at an unconscious level.

Long Term Memory - Person Memory

Categories within this compartment contain information about a single individual (your supervisor) or groups of people (managers).

Causal Attributions

Causal attributions are suspected or inferred causes of behavior. For example, a supervisor who attributes an employee's poor performance to a lack of effort might reprimand that individual.

Consensus

Consensus involves a comparison of an individual's behavior with that of his or her peers. There is high consensus when one acts like the rest of the group and low consensus when one acts differently.

Consistency

Consistency is determined by judging if the individual's performance on a given task is consistent over time. High consistency implies that a person performs a certain task the same, time after time. Unstable performance of a given task over time would mean low consistency.

Distinctiveness

Distinctiveness is determined by comparing a person's behavior on one task with his or her behavior on other tasks. High distinctiveness means the individual has performed the task in question in a significantly different manner than he or she has performed other tasks. Low distinctiveness means stable performance or quality from one task to another.

Research and an Explanatory Model

Finding implies that higher levels of achievement and productivity can be obtained by raising managers' performance expectations of their employees. The model shows that the self-fulfilling process begins with a manager's expectations for his or her direct reports. -(linkage 1) In turn, these expectations influence the type of leadership used by a leader . -(linkage 2) Positive expectations beget positive and supportive leadership, which subsequently leads employees to develop higher self-expectations . -(linkage 3) The positive Galatea effect created by these higher expectations then motivates employees to exert more effort -(linkage 4) ultimately increasing performance -(linkage 5) and supervisory expectations . -(linkage 6) Successful performance also improves an employee's self-efficacy, which then fuels additional self-expectations of success.

8. Contrast the fundamental attribution bias and the self-serving bias.

Fundamental attribution bias involves emphasizing personal factors more than situational factors while formulating causal attributions for the behavior of others. Self-serving bias involves personalizing the causes of one's successes and externalizing the causes of one's failures.

Internal Attributions

In contrast, performance will be attributed to an employee's personal characteristics (an internal attribution) when only the individual in question is performing poorly (low consensus), when the inferior performance is found across several tasks (low distinctiveness), and when the low performance has persisted over time (high consistency).

Cognitive categories

Mental depositories for storing information. "By category we mean a number of objects that are considered equivalent. Categories are generally designated by names, e.g., dog, animal."

Information-Processing Model Stage 2: Encoding and Simplification

Observed information is not stored in memory in its original form. Encoding is required; raw information is interpreted or translated into mental representations. To accomplish this, perceivers assign pieces of information to cognitive categories. People, events, and objects are interpreted and evaluated by comparing their characteristics with information contained in schemata (or schema in singular form).

Managerial Application and Implications

One study revealed that managers gave employees more immediate, frequent, and negative feedback when they attributed their performance to low effort. This reaction was even more pronounced when the manager's success was dependent on an employee's performance. A second study indicated that managers tended to transfer employees whose poor performance was attributed to a lack of ability. These same managers also decided to take no immediate action when poor performance was attributed to external factors beyond an individual's control.

Information-Processing Model Stage 1: Selective Attention/Comprehension

People are constantly bombarded by physical and social stimuli in the environment. Since they do not have the mental capacity to fully comprehend all this information, they selectively perceive subsets of environmental stimuli. This is where attention plays a role.

Information-Processing Model Stage 4: Retrieval and Response

People retrieve information from memory when they make judgments and decisions. Our ultimate judgments and decisions are either based on the process of drawing on, interpreting, and integrating categorical information stored in long-term memory or on retrieving a summary judgment that was already made.

Disability Stereotypes

People with disabilities not only face negative stereotypes that affect their em-ployability, but they also can be stigmatized by the general population.

1. Describe perception in terms of the information processing model.

Perception is a mental and cognitive process that enables us to interpret and understand our surroundings. Social perception, also known as social cognition and social information processing, is a four-stage process. The four stages are: (1)selective attention/comprehension (2)encoding and simplification (3)storage and retention (4)retrieval and response. During social cognition, salient stimuli are matched with schemata, assigned to cognitive categories, and stored in long-term memory for events, semantic materials, or people.

Long Term Memory - Semantic Memory

Semantic memory refers to general knowledge about the world. In so doing, it functions as a mental dictionary of concepts. Each concept contains a definition (e.g., a good leader) and associated traits (outgoing), emotional states (happy), physical characteristics (tall), and behaviors (works hard).

External Attributions

So, for example, when all employees are performing poorly (high consensus), when the poor performance occurs on only one of several tasks (high distinctiveness), and the poor performance occurs during only one time period (low consistency), a supervisor will probably attribute an employee's poor performance to an external source such as peer pressure or an overly difficult task.

2. Identify and briefly explain seven managerial implications of social perception.

Social perception affects: -hiring decisions -performance appraisals -leadership perceptions -communication and interpersonal influence -counterproductive work behaviors -physical and psychological well-being -the design of Web pages Inaccurate schemata or racist and sexist schemata may be used to evaluate job applicants. Similarly, faulty schemata about what constitutes good versus poor performance can lead to inaccurate performance appraisals. Invalid schemata need to be identified and replaced with appropriate schemata through coaching and training. Further, managers are advised to use objective rather than subjective measures of performance. With respect to leadership, a leader will have a difficult time influencing employees when he or she exhibits behaviors contained in employees' schemata of poor leaders. Because people interpret oral and written communications by using schemata developed through past experiences, an individual's ability to influence others is affected by information contained in others' schemata regarding age, gender, ethnicity, appearance, speech, mannerisms, personality, and other personal characteristics. It is very important to treat employees fairly, as perceptions of unfairness are associated with counterproductive work behaviors.

Salient Stimuli

Something is salient when it stands out from its context. For example, a 250-pound man would certainly be salient in a women's aerobics class but not at a meeting of the National Football League Players' Association. Research shows that people have a tendency to pay more attention to negative than positive information. This leads to a negativity bias.

3. Discuss stereotypes and the process of stereotype formation.

Stereotypes represent grossly oversimplified beliefs or expectations about groups of people. Stereo typing is a four-step process that begins by: -categorizing people into groups according to various criteria -infer that all people within a particular group possess the same traits or characteristics -form expectations of others and interpret their behavior according to our stereotypes -stereotypes are maintained by (a) overestimating the frequency of stereotypic behaviors exhibited by others (b) incorrectly explaining expected and unexpected behaviors (c) differentiating minority individuals from oneself. The use of stereotypes is influenced by the amount and type of information available to an individual and his or her motivation to accurately process information.

5. Describe and contrast the Pygmalion effect, the Galatea effect, and the Golem effect.

The Pygmalion effect (self-fulfilling prophecy) describes how someone's high expectations for another person result in high performance for that person. The Galatea effect occurs when an individual's high self-expectations lead to high self-performance. The Golem effect is a loss of performance resulting from low leader expectations.

4. Summarize the managerial challenges and recommendations of sex-role, age, racial and ethnic, and disability stereotypes.

The key managerial challenge is to reduce the extent to which stereotypes influ encedecision making and interpersonal processes throughout the organization. Training can be used to educate employees about the problem of stereotyping and to equip managers with the skills needed to handle situations associated with managing employees with disabilities. Because mixed-group contact reduces stereotyping, organizations should create opportunities for diverse employees to meet and work together in cooperative groups of equal status. Hiring decisions should be based on valid individual differences, and managers can be trained to use valid criteria when evaluating employee performance. Minimizing differences in job opportunities and experiences across groups of people can help alleviate promotional barriers. It is critical to obtain top management's commitment and support to eliminate stereotyping and discriminatory decisions.

Stereotype threat

The predicament in which members of a social group (e.g., African Americans, women) must deal with the possibility of being judged or treated stereotypically, or of doing something that would confirm the stereotype.

Long Term Memory - Event Memory

This compartment is composed of categories containing information about both specific and general events. These memories describe appropriate sequences of events in well-known situations, such as going to a restaurant, going on a job interview, going to a food store, or going to a movie.

Information-Processing Model Stage 3: Storage and Retention

This phase involves storage of information in long-term memory. Long-term memory is like an apartment complex consisting of separate units connected to one another. Although different people live in each apartment, they sometimes interact. In addition, large apartment complexes have different wings.

Encoding Outcomes

We use the encoding process to interpret and evaluate our environment. Interestingly, this process can result in differing interpretations and evaluations of the same person or event. Varying interpretations of what we observe occur due to four key reasons. -First, people possess different information in the schemata used for interpretation. -Second, our moods and emotions influence our focus of attention and evaluations of others. -Third, people tend to apply recently used cognitive categories during encoding. -Fourth, individual differences influence encoding.

Racial and Ethnic Stereotypes

here are many different racial and ethnic stereotypes that exist. For instance, African Americans have been viewed as athletic, aggressive, and angry; Asians, as quiet, introverted, smarter, and more quantitatively oriented; Hispanics, as family oriented and religious; and Arabs, as angry. Racial and ethnic stereotypes are particularly problematic because they are automatically triggered and lead to what researchers call micro aggressions.

Long Term Memory

long-term memory is made up of three compartments (or wings) containing categories of information about events, semantic materials, and people.

Effective Design Web Pages

• Individuals read Web pages in an F pattern. They're more inclined to read longer sentences at the top of a page and less as they scroll down. That makes the first two words of a sentence very important. • Surfers connect well with images of people looking directly at them. It helps if the person in the photo is attractive, but not too good looking. • Images in the middle of a page can present an obstacle course. • People respond to pictures that provide useful information, not just decoration.