1. Chapter 3 Personality, Perception, and Attribution

2. Learning Outcomes
Describe individual differences and explain why they are important in understanding organizational behavior
Articulate key personality traits and explain how they influence behavior in organizations
Discuss how personality theories may be applied in organizations

3. Learning Outcomes
Define social perception and explain the factors that affect it
Identify five common barriers to social perception and explain the difficulties they cause
Explain the attribution process and how attributions affect managerial behavior

4. Learning Outcome
Describe individual differences and explain why they are important in understanding organizational behavior

5. Individual Differences
Way in which certain factors differ from one individual to another
Interactional psychology: Understanding human behavior by knowing something about the person and the situation

6. Propositions of Interactional Psychology
Behavior is a function of continuous, multidirectional interaction between the person and the situation
Person changes situation and is changed by them
People vary in many characteristics, including cognitive, affective, motivational and ability factors
Aspects of a situation that are important are the objective situation and the person’s subjective view of the situation

7. Figure 3.1 - Variables Influencing Individual Behavior

8. Learning Outcome
Articulate key personality traits and explain how they influence behavior in organizations

9. Personality
Relatively stable set of characteristics that influences an individual’s behavior and lend it consistency
Probable origins
Heredity
Environmental factors
Family, cultural, and educational influences

10. Personality Theories
Trait theory: Breaking down behavior patterns into a series of observable traits in order to understand human behavior
Integrative approach: Describes personality as a composite of one’s psychological processes

11. Table 3.1 - The Big Five Personality Traits
SOURCES: P. T. Costa and R. R. McCrae, The NEO-PI Personality Inventory (Odessa, Fla.: Psychological Assessment Resources, 1992); J. F. Salgado, “The
Five Factor Model of Personality and Job Performance in the European Community,” Journal of Applied Psychology 82 (1997): 30–43.

12. Personality Characteristics in Organizations
Strong situation: Overwhelms the effects of individual personalities by providing strong cues for appropriate behavior
Weak situation - Provides no cues to appropriate behavior and no rewards for any particular behavior
Locus of control: Individual’s generalized belief about internal control versus external control
Internal control - Self-control
External control - Control by the situation or by others

13. Beyond the Book: What’s Your Locus of Control?
Choose A or B for each item:
1. a. Becoming a success is a matter of hard work; luck has little or nothing to do with it.
b. Getting a good job depends mainly on being in the right place at the right time.
2. a. The average citizen can have an influence in government decisions.
b. This world is run by the few people in power, and there is not much the little guy can do about it.
3. a. As far as world affairs are concerned, most of us are the victims of forces we can neither understand nor control.

14. Beyond the Book: What’s Your Locus of Control?
b. By taking an active part in political and social affairs, people can control world events.
4. a. With enough effort we can wipe out political corruption.
b. It is difficult for people to have much control over the things politicians do in office.
Scoring Key:
The internal locus of control answers are: 1a, 2a, 3b, 4a
The external locus of control answers are: 1b, 2b, 3a, 4b

15. Personality Characteristics in Organizations
General self-efficacy: Person’s general belief that he or she is capable of meeting job demands in a wide variety of situations
High - Employees are confident in job-related abilities
Low - Employees feel ineffective at work
Task-specific self-efficacy - Person’s belief that she or he can perform a specific task

16. Self-Esteem Individual’s general feeling of self-worth
People with high self-esteem
People with low self-esteem
Have positive feelings about themselves
Believe their strengths are more important than their weaknesses
Perform better and are more satisfied with their jobs
View themselves negatively
Get affected by what other people think of them
Compliment those who give them positive feedback and cut down people who give them negative feedback

17. Self-Monitoring
Extent to which people base their behavior on cues from other people and situations
High self-monitors
Low self-monitors
Pay attention to the behavior of other people and behave accordingly
Appear unpredictable and less consistent
Demonstrate higher levels of managerial self-awareness
Pay less attention to situational cues and act from internal states
Behave consistently across situations
Less likely to respond to work group norms or supervisory feedback

18. The Role of Affect Positive affect Negative affect
Individual’s tendency to accentuate the positive aspects of herself or himself, other people, and the world in general
Negative affect
Individual’s tendency to accentuate the negative aspects of himself or herself, other people, and the world in general

19. Proactive Personality
Identify opportunities and act on them
Show initiative, take action, and persevere till the desired objective is achieved
Positively related to job performance, career success, and job search success

20. Discuss how personality theories may be applied in organizations
Learning Outcome
Discuss how personality theories may be applied in organizations

21. Four Measures of Personality
Projective test
Elicits an individual’s response to abstract stimuli
Behavioral measures
Involve observing an individual’s behavior in a controlled situation
Self-report questionnaire
Involves an individual’s responses to a series of questions
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI) instrument
Measures Carl Jung’s theory of individual differences

22. Table 3.2 - Type Theory Preferences and Descriptions
SOURCE: Modified and reproduced by special permission of the Publisher, CPP, Inc., Mountain View, CA from Introduction to Type®, Sixth Edition by Isabel Briggs Myers. Copyright 1998, 2011 by CPP, Inc. All rights reserved. Further reproduction is prohibited without the Publisher’s written consent.

23. Table 3.2 - Type Theory Preferences and Descriptions
SOURCE: Modified and reproduced by special permission of the Publisher, CPP, Inc., Mountain View, CA from Introduction to Type®, Sixth Edition by Isabel Briggs Myers. Copyright 1998, 2011 by CPP, Inc. All rights reserved. Further reproduction is prohibited without the Publisher’s written consent.

24. MBTI Scales ISTJ ISFJ INFJ INTJ ISTP ISFP INFP INTP ESTP ESFP ENFP
ENTP
ESTJ
ESFJ
ENFJ
ENTJ
Introverts
Extraverts
Sensing Types
Intuitive Types

25. Uses of MBTI
Helps employees understand the different viewpoints of others in the organization
Facilitates team building
Shows teams that diversity and differences lead to successful performance
Helps managers develop interpersonal skills

26. Define social perception and explain the factors that affect it
Learning Outcome
Define social perception and explain the factors that affect it

27. Social Perception
Process of interpreting information about another person
Discounting principle: Assumption that an individual’s behavior is accounted for by the situation

28. Figure 3.2 - A Model for Social Perception

29. Beyond the Book: Synesthesia: Unusual Perception
Synesthesia is a rare perceptual condition in which one sensory perception triggers another—for example, music evokes colors or smells.
How quickly can you spot the 2’s in the picture to the right?
Synesthesia: Unusual Perception
Quick, find all the 2s in the box on the top. If you’re like most people, the only way for you to pick out the 2s is to methodically examine each number in the box. But for a small group of people called “synesthetes,” this task is both instantaneous and effortless. Why? Because when they look at the same box of numbers, they see a unique color code, making the 2s stand out in sharp contrast to the 5s (like the box on the bottom). Synesthesia, from the Greek words for “perception” and “together,” is a rare condition in which the perception of one sensory input creates an additional perception. So for some synesthetes, sights have sounds and sounds have tastes. For others, music evokes brilliant colors, with the shade depending on the instrument being played. One researcher, who himself has synesthesia, recalls attending a concert as a child and being convinced that the lights were dimmed so the audience could see the colors better. In his mind’s eye, violins produce bright shades of burgundy, piano music is purple, and cellos produce
sounds that are a rich shade of gold.
While people have described the perception of synesthesia for centuries, scientists have often written it off as a figment of imagination, an artifact of childhood memories, or even a side effect of illicit drug use. While synesthetes have known all along that these experiences were real, not until recently have scientists become convinced. A 2002 study using the box of 2s and 5s shown here provided the definitive evidence that synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon rather than the result of an overactive imagination.
What can synesthesia teach us about organizational behavior? First, people see the world differently. Successful managers often surround themselves with advisors and team members who see the world from a slightly different perspective. Second, what seems impossible to one person may be child’s play to another. Not surprisingly, a large number of synesthetes enjoy creative endeavors such as composing or painting. Sometimes, the solution to a seemingly impossible task is simply to ask for help.
SOURCES: T. J. Palmeri, R. Blake, R. Marois, M. A. Flanery, and
W. Whetsell, Jr., “The Perceptual Reality of Synesthetic Colors,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United
States of America 99 (2003): 4127–4131; V. S. Ramachandran and
E. M. Hubbard, “Hearing Colors, Tasting Shapes: Color-Coded
World,” Scientific American (April 14, 2003),
.com/article.cfm?articleID=000AB1B4-A5D0-1E8F-8EA5809EC588
0000; V. S. Ramachandran, and E. M. Hubbard, “Neural Cross
Wiring and Synesthesia [Abstract],” Journal of Vision 1(3) (2001):
67a; and A. Underwood, “Real Rhapsody in Blue,” Newsweek
(November 25, 2003),
The task is effortless for “synesthetes,” who perceive the 2’s as a different color from the 5’s.

30. Learning Outcome
Identify the common barriers to social perception and explain the difficulties they cause

31. Barriers to Social Perception
Selective perception
Selecting information that supports our individual viewpoints while discounting information that threatens our viewpoints
Stereotype
Generalization about a group of people
First-impression error
Forming lasting opinions about an individual based on initial perceptions

32. Barriers to Social Perception
Projection
Overestimating the number of people who share our own beliefs, values, and behaviors
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Allowing expectations about people to affect our interaction with them in such a way that those expectations are fulfilled
Impression management
Process by which individuals try to control the impressions others have of them

33. Beyond the Book: Racial Stereotypes in Hiring
Despite decades of progress in race relations, discrimination against non-white workers is a harsh reality
In a study of the low-wage labor market in New York city, researchers found that white applicants were twice as more likely to receive a job offer than equally- qualified black counterparts
The study also showed that white individuals just released from prison were just as likely to receive a job offer as blacks or Latinos with no criminal background
SOURCE: Pager, D. et al., “Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment,” American Sociological Review (October 20099),

34. Learning Outcome
Explain the attribution process and how attributions affect managerial behavior

35. Attribution Theory
Explains how individuals pinpoint the causes of their own and others’ behavior
Internal source - Something within the individual’s control
External source - Something outside the individual’s control

36. Attribution Biases Fundamental attribution error Self-serving bias
Tendency to make attributions to internal causes when focusing on someone else’s behavior
Self-serving bias
Attributing one’s successes to internal causes and one’s failures to external causes

37. Because I Said So
Which Big Five personality traits best describe Daphne? Give examples of behavior from the film scene to support your observations.
Which Big Five personality traits best describe Millie? Give examples of behavior from the film scene to support your observations.
Review the discussion of the “Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® instrument” in this chapter. Assess both Daphne and Millie with the content of Table 3.3, “Characteristics Frequently Associated with Each Type.”
Daphne Wilder (Diane Keaton) is trying to find a mate for her last unmarried daughter, Millie (Mandy Moore). Daphne places an ad online, screens the applicants, and submits those she approves to Millie. Along the way, Daphne meets Joe (Stephen Collins), the father of one of the applicants. This scene starts after Daphne answers her cell phone and says the person has the wrong number. It follows the frantic rearrangement of the sofa, which ends up in the same place it started.
Ask your students:
Which Big Five personality traits best describe Daphne? Give examples of behavior from the film scene to support your observations.
Which Big Five personality traits best describe Millie? Give examples of behavior from the film scene to support your observations.
Review the discussion of the “Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® instrument” earlier in this chapter. Assess both Daphne and Millie with the content of Table 3.3, “Characteristics Frequently Associated with Each Type.”

38. Theo Chocolate
Describe the personality traits of Theo Chocolate’s founders.
What is your perception of CEO Joe Whinney? On what do you base your perception?
To what do you attribute Joe Whinney’s success?
When Theo first started its production, the company offered an exotic line of dark and milk chocolate bars and truffles with unusual names like the 3400 Phinney Bar, and Bread & Chocolate. But pitching chocolate to foodies and green consumers didn’t add up to high volume sales. In particular, consumers perceived Theo’s exotic flavors to be off or too funky. To increase product appeal, Theo now offers distinct product lines for two different market segments: a classic line of milk chocolate bars for mainstream customers, and “fantasy flavors” for more adventurous eaters. Appealing to mainstream customers was consistent with Joe Whinney’s belief that everyone should be able to enjoy Theo Chocolate.
Ask your students:
Describe the personality traits of Theo Chocolate’s founders.
What is your perception of CEO Joe Whinney? On what do you base your perception?
To what do you attribute Joe Whinney’s success?