1. Perception, Personality, and Emotions
Chapter 2
Perception, Personality, and Emotions
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

2. Perception What Is Perception? Why Is It Important?
The process by which individuals organize and interpret their impressions in order to give meaning to their environment.
Why Is It Important?
Because people’s behaviour is based on their perception of what reality is, not on reality itself.
The world as it is perceived is the world that is behaviourally important.
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on pages 33.
Perception is the process by which individuals organize and interpret their impressions in order to give meaning to their environment. What one perceives can be substantially different from objective reality. Understanding perception is important because people's behaviour is based on their perception of what reality is, not reality itself.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

3. Exercise Form small groups to discuss the following topic:
Think back to your perception of this course and your instructor on the first day of class. What factors might have affected your perceptions of what the rest of the term would be like?
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on page 72.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

4. Exhibit 2-1 Factors that Influence Perception
The Situation
The Perceiver
• Time
• Attitudes • W
ork setting
• Motives
• Social setting
• Interests
• Experience
• Expectations
Perception
The material for this illustration is found on page 35.
The T
arget
• Novelty
• Motion
• Sounds
• Size
• Background
• P r
oximity
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

5. Attribution Theory
We make “attributions”…we judge something to have certain qualities or characteristics. We make attributions about people or behaviour.
When individuals observe behaviour, they attempt to determine whether it is internally or externally caused.
Distinctiveness
Does the individual act the same way in other situations?
Consensus
Does the individual act the same as others in same situation?
Consistency
Does the individual act the same way over time?
The attribution process guides our behaviour, regardless of the truth of the attribution.
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on pages 38.
Attribution Theory says we judge people differently depending on what meaning we attribute to a given behaviour.
We attempt to determine whether the behaviour was internally—or externally—caused.
Externally-caused refers to the environment, while internally-caused behaviour is attributed to those events that are believed to be under the personal control of the individual.
Our determination of internally or externally caused behaviour depends on three factors:
Distinctiveness: Does the individual display different behaviour in different situations?
Consensus: If everyone who is faced with a similar situation responds in the same way, we can say the behaviour shows consensus.
Consistency. Is the person’s actions consistent over time?
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

6. Attribution Theory Errors we make in attributions:
Fundamental Attribution Error
The tendency to underestimate external factors and overestimate internal factors when making judgments about others’ behaviour.
Self-Serving Bias
The tendency to attribute one’s successes to internal factors while putting the blame for failures on external factors.
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on pages
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

7. Perceptual Errors Selective Perception Halo Effect Contrast Effects
People selectively interpret what they see based on their interests, background, experience, and attitudes.
Halo Effect
Drawing a general impression about an individual based on a single characteristic.
Contrast Effects
A person’s evaluation is affected by comparisons with other individuals recently encountered.
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on pages
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

8. Perceptual Errors Projection Stereotyping Prejudice
Attributing one’s own characteristics to other people.
Stereotyping
Judging someone on the basis of your perception of the group to which that person belongs.
Prejudice
An unfounded dislike of a person or group based on their belonging to a particular stereotyped group.
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on pages
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

9. Personality Personality Determinants Personality Traits
The sum total of ways in which an individual react
and interacts with others.
Personality Determinants
Heredity
Environmental Factors
Situational Conditions
Personality Traits
Enduring characteristics that describe an individual’s behaviour.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
The Big Five Model
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on pages
Personality Determinants
(1) Heredity: An approach that argues that the ultimate explanation of an individual's personality is the molecular structure of the genes, located in the chromosomes. The most persuasive research on this comes from studying monozygotic twins who were separated at birth and raised in very different environments. Different research studies with these kinds of twins have determined that genetics accounts for about half of the personality differences in people.
 (2) Environment: The culture in which we are raised, our early conditioning, the norms among our family, friends, and social groups, and other influences that we experience play a critical role in shaping our personalities.
(3) Situation: The situation influences the effects of heredity and environment on personality. Personality can be subdued in some situations. A person will be different in a job interview as compared to being at dinner with friends. We cannot look at personality patterns in isolation.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

10. Sixteen Primary Personality Traits
1. Reserved
2. Less intelligent
3. Affected by feelings
4. Submissive
5. Serious
6. Expedient
7. Timid
8. Tough-minded
9. Trusting
10. Practical
11. Forthright
12. Self-assured
13. Conservative
14. Group-dependent
15. Uncontrolled
16. Relaxed
vs.
Outgoing
More intelligent
Emotionally stable
Dominant
Happy-go-lucky
Conscientious
Venturesome
Sensitive
Suspicious
Imaginative
Shrewd
Apprehensive
Experimenting
Self-sufficient
Controlled
Tense
The material for this illustration is found on page 45.
This exhibit shows a list of sixteen traits that have been found to be generally steady and constant sources of behaviour, allowing prediction of an individual’s behaviour in specific situations by weighing the characteristics for their situational relevance.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

11. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Personality test to determine how people usually act or feel in particular situations.
Classifications:
Extroverted (E) or Introverted (I)
Sensing (S) or Intuitive (I)
Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)
Perceiving (P) or Judging (J)
Combined to form types, for example:
ESTP
INTJ
This material is found in more detail on pages
Some examples of types:
INTJs are visionaries.
Usually have original minds and great drive for their own ideas and purposes
Characterized as sceptical, critical, independent, determined, and stubborn
ESTJs are organizers.
Are realistic, logical, analytical, decisive, and have a natural head for business or mechanics
Like to organize and run activities
ENTP types are conceptualizers.
Innovative, individualistic, versatile, and attracted to entrepreneurial ideas
Resourceful in solving challenging problems but may neglect routine assignments
There is no hard evidence that the MBTI is a valid measure of personality.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

12. Big Five Personality Factors
The material for this exhibit is found on page 47.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

13. Big Five Personality Factors and Performance
Relationship to Job Performance
Relationship to Team Performance
Extraversion
* Positively related to job performance in occupations requiring social interaction
* Positively related to training proficiency for all occupations
* Positively related to team performance
* Positively related to degree of participation within team
Agreeableness
* Positively related to job performance in service jobs
* Most studies found no link between agreeableness and performance or productivity in teams
* Some found a negative link between person’s likeability and team performance
Conscientiousness
* Positively related to job performance for all occupational groups
* May be better than ability in predicting job performance
The material for this illustration is found on page 48.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

14. Big Five Personality Factors and Performance
Relationship to Job Performance
Relationship to Team Performance
Emotional Stability
* A minimal threshold amount may be necessary for adequate performance; greater degrees not
related to job performance
* Positively related to performance in service jobs
* May be better than ability in predicting job performance across all occupational groups
Openness to Experience
*Positively related to training proficiency
*Data unavailable
The material for this illustration is found on page 48.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

15. Major Personality Concepts Influencing OB
Locus of Control
Machiavellianism
Self-Esteem
Self-Monitoring
Risk Taking
Type A Personality/Type B Personality
Proactive Personality
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on pages
There are self-awareness exercises in the chapter for each of these traits.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

16. Locus of Control
The degree to which people believe they are in control of their own fate.
Internals
Individuals who believe that they control what happens to them.
Externals
Individuals who believe that what happens to them is controlled by outside forces such as luck or chance.
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on pages 49.
If you believe you control your own destiny you are labelled internal; and if you see your life as being controlled by outside forces you are labelled external. Research shows internals are more satisfied with their jobs, have lower absenteeism, and perform better on certain types of jobs. A self-assessment for locus of control is found at the end of the chapter.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

17. The Effects of Locus of Control on Performance
Material of this illustration is found on page 50.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

18. Machiavellianism
Degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes that ends can justify means.
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on page 49.
Machiavellianism (Mach) —The degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes that ends can justify means. This personality attribute is named after Niccolò Machiavelli, the sixteenth century author of The Prince. A self-assessment for Machiavellianism is found at the end of the chapter.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

19. Self-Esteem Individuals’ degree of liking or disliking of themselves.
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on page 50.
Self-esteem: An individual's degree of like or dislike for himself or herself. A self-assessment for self-esteem is found at the end of the chapter.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

20. Self-Monitoring
A personality trait that measures an individual’s ability to adjust behaviour to external situational factors.
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on page 51.
Self-monitoring: A personality trait that measures an individual's ability to adjust his or her behaviour to external situational factors. A self-assessment for self-monitoring is found at the end of the chapter.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

21. Risk-Taking Refers to a person’s willingness to take chances or risks.
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on pages
Risk-Taking: The individual's willingness to take chances. A study of two groups of managers showed that high risk-taking managers make more rapid decisions and use less information in making their choices than low risk-taking managers. Interestingly, the decision accuracy was the same for both groups. A self-assessment for risk-taking is found at the end of the chapter.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

22. Type A Personality Moves, walks, and eats rapidly Impatient Multitasks
Dislikes leisure time
Obsessed with numbers, measures success in terms of how many or how much of everything is acquired
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on pages
Type A Personality: This type of individual is "aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time.” A self-assessment for Type A or B is found at the end of the chapter.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

23. Type B Personality Never suffers from a sense of time urgency
Doesn’t need to display or discuss achievements or accomplishments
Plays for fun and relaxation, not to win
Can relax without guilt
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on pages
Type B Personality: Just the opposite of Type A. They are rarely harried by desires to obtain a wildly increasing number of things or participate in an endlessly growing series of events in an ever decreasing amount of time. A self-assessment for Type A or B is found at the end of the chapter.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

24. Proactive Personality
A person who identifies opportunities, shows initiative, takes action, and perseveres until meaningful change occurs.
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on page 53.
Ask students if they’ve ever notice that some people actively take the initiative to improve their current circumstances or create new ones while others sit by passively reacting to situations. This can help them think about proactive personality and why some people are proactive and others are not.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

25. What Are Emotions? Two related terms: Emotions Moods
Intense feelings that are directed at someone or something.
Moods
Feelings that tend to be less intense than emotions and that lack a contextual stimulus.
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on page 55.
Employees bring an emotional component with them to work every day, and no study of OB could be comprehensive without considering the role of emotions in workplace behaviour.
Emotions are intense feelings that are directed at someone or something. Emotions are reactions to an object, not a trait. They're object-specific. Research has identified six universal emotions: anger, fear, sadness, happiness, disgust, and surprise.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

26. We Can Choose How to Express Emotions
An employee can express organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal interactions.
An employee can express negative emotions that lead to negative workplace behaviours:
Production (leaving early, intentionally working slowly)
Property (stealing, sabotage)
Political (gossiping, blaming co-workers)
Personal aggression (sexual harassment, verbal abuse)
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on page 56.
One way of addressing emotional labour is to discuss the difference between felt and displayed emotions. Felt emotions are an individual's actual emotions. In contrast, displayed emotions are those that are organizationally required and considered appropriate in a given situation. For instance, most of us know that we’re expected to act sad at funerals, regardless of whether we consider the person's death to be a loss; and to pretend to be happy at weddings, even if we don't feel like celebrating. The key point here is that felt and displayed emotions are often different.
Examples of emotional labour:
Effective managers have learned to be serious when giving an employee a negative performance evaluation and to cover up their anger when they've been passed over for promotion.
The salesperson who hasn't learned to smile and appear friendly, but instead reveals his or her true feelings at the moment, isn't typically going to last long on most sales jobs.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

27. Emotional Intelligence
The ability to diagnose and recognize your own emotions.
The ability to control your own emotions.
The ability to recognize and diagnose the emotions of others.
The ability to respond appropriately to emotional cues.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

28. Affective Events Theory
Material for this illustration is found on page 59.
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada

29. Affective Events Theory
Employees react emotionally to things that happen to them at work; this emotional reaction influences their job performance and satisfaction.
Material pertinent to this discussion is found on pages
Chapter 2, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition
Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada