Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3

Stereotyping

The process of assigning traits to people based on their membership in a social category.

Selective Attention

The process of attending to some information received by our senses and ignoring other information.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

The perceptual process in which our expectations about another person cause that person to act more consistently with those expectations.

Perception

The process of receiving information about and making sense of the world around us.

Confirmation Bias

The process of screening out information that is contrary to our values and assumptions and to more readily accept confirming information.

Self-Serving Bias

The tendency to attribute our favorable outcomes to internal factors and our failures to external factors.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to see the person rather than the situation as the main cause of that person's behavior.

Mental Models

Visual or relational images in our mind representing the external world.

Self-Concept

An individual's self-beliefs and self-evaluations.

Perceptual Process

1. Receiving (from stimuli) 2. Selecting 3. Organizing 4. Interpreting 5. Response

Johari Window

A model of mutual understanding that encourages disclosure and feedback to increase our own open area and reduce the blind, hidden, and unknown areas.

Recency Effect

A perceptual error in which the most recent information dominates our perception of others.

False-Consensus Effect

A perceptual error in which we overestimate the extent to which others have beliefs and characteristics similar to our own.

Primacy Effect

A perceptual error in which we quickly form an opinion of people based on the first information we receive about them.

Halo Effect

A perceptual error whereby our general impression of a person, usually based on one prominent characteristic, colors our perception of other characteristics of that person.

Locus of Control

A person's general belief about the amount of control he or she has over personal events. *Individuals with an internal locus of control believe that their personal characteristics mainly influence life's outcome. *Those with more of an external locus of control believe that events in their life are due mainly to fate, luck, or conditions in the external environment.

Self-Verifcation

A person's inherent motivation to confirm and maintain his/her existing self-concept.

Self-Enhancement

A person's inherent motivation to have a positive self-concept (and to have others perceive him/her favorably), such as being competent, attractive, lucky, ethical, and important.

Empathy

A person's understanding of and sensitivity to the feelings, thoughts, and situations of others.

Positive Organizational Behavior

A perspective of organizational behavior that focuses on building positive qualities and traits within individuals or institutions as opposed to focusing on what is wrong with them.

Social Identity Theory

A theory stating that people define themselves by the groups to which they belong or have an emotional attachment.

Contact Hypothesis

A theory stating that the more we interact with someone, the less prejudiced or perceptually biased we will be agains that person.

Global Mindset

An individual's ability to perceive, appreciate, and emphasize with people from other cultures, and to process complex cross-cultural information.

Problems with Stereotyping

Distorts perception in various ways. Stereotypic features are transferred to a person, even though we have not attempted to verify those characteristics in that person. Lays the foundation for discriminatory attitudes and behaviors.

More Serious Form of Stereotype Bias

Intentional discrimination or prejudice, in which people hold unfounded negative attitudes toward people belong to a particular stereotyped group.

Self-Evaluation

Mostly defined bye three elements: self-esteem, self-efficacy, and locus of control.

Categorical Thinking

Organizing people and objects into preconceived categories that are stored in our long-term memory.

Self-Efficacy

Refers to a person's beliefs that he or she can successfully complete a task.

Self-Esteem

The extent to which people like, respect, and are satisfied with themselves-represents a global self-evaluation.

Attribution Process

The perceptual process of deciding whether an observed behavior or event is caused largely by internal or external factors.