Chapter 6

Internally vs. Externally cause behaviors

Internally cause behaviors are those an observer believes to be under the personal behavioral control of another individual such as their personality. Externally cause behavior is what we imagine situations or environmental factors influence the individual to react.

Contrast effects

Evaluation of a person's characteristics that is affected by comparisons with other people recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics. This happens because we don't evaluate people in isolation. example is job interviews, people seen before and after you affects the perception of the interviewer.

overconfidence bias

being overconfident in our abilities and others abilities. being overly optimistic.

positive stereotypes

can also be negative people tend to choke when associated with a positive stereotype because it induces pressure to perform at that level. Or people feel depersonalized and react negatively.

Causes of Creative Behavior

causes are creative potential and creative environment. *potential*: Expertise is the foundation of all creative work, smart people have a working memory better for recalling info open individuals with openness to experience are divergent in thinking. *environment*: motivation most important, environment that rewards and recognizes creative work.

decisions

choice made from among two or more alternatives

self fulfilling prophecy and pygmalion effect

situations where expectations of a person affect performance. people do what is expected of them either high or low. people behave ways consistent with anthers perception of them.

Availability bias

tendency to base judgments on info that is readily available. example is the media coverage airplane crashes when crashing in a car way more riskier. or giving more weight to a performance evaluation than behaviors 6 to 9 months earlier.

Anchoring bias

tendency to fixate on initial info and fail to adjust fro subsequent info. when negotiations take place so does anchoring, example is salary previous pay determines pay offer.

blind spots

tendency to see ourselves as more moral than we are and others as less moral than they are.

Confirmation Bias

tendency to seek out info that reaffirms past choice and to discount info that contradicts past judgements. selectively gathering info to confirm what we have already decided or want to hear.

halo effect

the tendency to draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single characteristic. example of a single characteristic is intelligence, sociability, or appearance.

three ethical decision criteria

utilitarnism: greatesest benefit for greatest amount of people justice: protecting peoples rights, freedom from force or fraud. behavioral ethics: analyzing how people actually behave when confronted with ethical dilemmas.

Hindsight Bias

what is clear in hindsight is rarely clear before the fact. after an outcome of an event is actually known believing that one would have accurately predicted that outcome.

three stage model of creativity.

1. causes: creative potential and creative environment 2. creative behavior: core of the mode, causes(predictors of creative behavior) and effects(outcomes of creative behavior). 3. creative outcomes: innovation

Rational decision making model (6 steps)

1. define the problem 2. identify the decision criteria 3. allocate weights to the criteria 4. develop the alternatives 5. evaluation the alternatives 6. select the best alternative this model assumes decision makers has all the facts, able to identify all relevant options in an unbiased manner and will choose option with highest utility.

reducing biases and errors

1. focus on goals: goals help eliminate options inconsistent with your interests. 2. look for info that disconfirms your beliefs: looks for ways you could be wrong. 3. Don't try to create meaning out of random events: some things are coincidence 4. increase your options: diversity when choosing alternatives

Creative Behavior

1. problem formulation-identify problem/opportunity. 2. Info gathering-incubate possible solutions. 3. Idea generation-develop possible solutions with relevant info and knowledge. 4. Idea evaluation-evaluation potential solutions to problems to identify best one.

Attribution theory

An attempt to determine whether an individual's behavior is internally or externally caused.

Individual Differences that constraint decision making

Personality: conscientiousness and self esteem gender: ruminations, reflecting at length mental ability: smarter people just learn from mistakes faster not make less mistakes cultural differences:cultures vary on perception of problems, analysis, importance on rationality etc.

Risk Aversion

Tendency to prefer a sure thing over a riskier one, even if the risker outcome might have a higher expected payoff. or reverse prefer a high risk of loosing more to avoid a certain smaller negative outcome. risk seeking for negative outcomes and risk averse for positive outcomes when under stress.

self-serving bias

The tendency for individuals to attribute their own success to internal factors and put the blame for failures on external factors.

selective perception

The tendency to selectively interpret what on see on the basis of one's interest, background, experience, and attitudes. example the gorilla elevator experiment.

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.

problem

a discrepancy between the current state of affairs and some desired state

creativity

ability to produce novel and useful ideas different from whats been done before but are appropriate for a problem.

Stereotyping "heuristics"

also known as "heuristics", judging someone on the basis of one's perception of the group to which that person belongs. problem occurs when we generalize inaccuratley or too much. stereotypes include gender, age, race, religion, ethnicity,, and even weight. research suggests stereotypes operate emotionally and below level of conscious awareness making it hard to challenge or change.

escalation of commitment

an increased commitment to a previous decision in spite of negative info. staying with a decision even if theres evidence it is wrong and rejecting negative info about it. occurs when people view themselves as responsible for the outcome and feel very invested.

Employment interview

first impression made within a tenth of a second. individual intuition about a job candidate is not reliable in predicting job performance. collecting input from multiple independent evaluators can be. good applicants usually characterized by absence of bad traits then presence of good ones.

Broken windows theory by James Q. WIlson

idea that decayed and disorderly urban environments may facilitate criminal behavior because they signal antisocial norms.

Factors that influence perception

influenced by perceiver, in the object, or target, or situation. when looking at a target your interpretation can be influenced by personal characteristics-attitudes, personality, motives, interest, past experience, and expectations. distinguishable characteristics of the target also affect perception. the time and context influence perception too. such as location, light, heat, or situational factors.

Intuition decision making model

least rational way of making decisions. an unconscious process created out of distilled experiences, an outside conscious thought that is affectively charged meaning engages the emotions. not rational but not wrong can compliment rational analysis. very useful as setting up hypothesis but not proof.

Creative outcomes (innovation)

outcomes as ideas or solutions judged to be novel and useful by relevant stakeholders.

person perception

person perception is the perceptions people form about each other.

Link between perception and individual decision making

problems can sometimes be someone else satisfactory state of affairs. every decision requires interpretation and evaluation of info. you receive data from multiple sources need to screen and process and interpret. decision making occurs as a reaction to a problem when a discrepancy occurs between current affairs and a desired state.

Perception

process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment. influenced by perceiver, in the object, or target, or situation.

Bounded Rationality decision making model

process of a making decisions by constructing simple models that extract the essential features from problems without capturing all their complexity. when people "satisfice" finding the first acceptable choice rather than an optimal one.

OB constructs to decision making

rational decision making, bounded rationality, and intuition.

consistency

refers to looking at a persons actions consistent or inconsistent. does the person respond the same way over time? more consistent behavior the more we are inclined to to attribute it to internal causes.

Distinctivness

refers to whether an individual displays different behaviors in different situations. its wanting know if a certain behavior is unusual for a person, if so we tend to associate it with an external attribution, if not we probably judge it to be internal behavior. example a person always late, its expected and judged as part of their character. person always on time and is running late is unusual therefore associated with external attributions.

Randomness Error

tendency of individuals to believe that they can predict the outcome of random events. examples are superstition thinking we have more control of something than we really do.