1. Perception, Personality, and Emotion
Chapter 2
Perception, Personality, and Emotion

2. Chapter Outline What is Perception, and Why Is It Important?
Factors Influencing Perception
Perception and Judgement: Attribution Theory
Frequently Used Shortcuts in Judging Others
Personality
Emotions
This material is found at the beginning of the chapter.

3. Perception, Personality, and Emotions
Questions for Consideration
Questions for Consideration
What is perception, and why is it important for understanding the workplace?
To what extent does personality affect behaviour?
Does understanding emotions lead to better understanding how people interact?
This material is found at the beginning of the chapter.

4. Perception What is Perception? Why Is it Important?
A process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory 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.
This material is found on page 36.

5. Why We Study Perceptions
We study this topic to better understand how people make attributions about events.
We don’t see reality. We interpret what we see and call it reality.
The attribution process guides our behaviour, regardless of the truth of the attribution
This material is found on page 36.

6. Factors Influencing Perception
The Perceiver
The Target
The Situation
This material is found on page

7. Exhibit 2-1 Factors that Influence Perception
Factors in the Perceiver
Attitudes
Motives
Interests
Experience
Expectations
Factors in the situation
Time
Work setting
Social setting
Factors in the target
Novelty
Motion
Sounds
Size
Background
Proximity
Perception
This material is found on page 38.

8. Perception and Judgement: Attribution Theory
When individuals observe behaviour, they attempt to determine whether it is internally or externally caused.
Fundamental Attribution Error
The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments about the behaviour of others.
Self-Serving Bias
The tendency for individuals to attribute their own successes to internal factors while putting the blame for failures on external factors.
This material is found on page 38.

9. Frequently Used Shortcuts in Judging Others
Selective Perception
People selectively interpret what they see on the basis of their interest, background, experience, and attitudes.
Halo Effect
Drawing a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single characteristic.
Contrast Effects
Evaluations of a person’s characteristics that are affected by comparisons with other people recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics.
Projection
Attributing one’s own characteristics to other people
Stereotyping
Judging someone on the basis of one’s perception of the group to which that person belongs.
This material is found on page

10. Personality What is Personality? Personality Determinants
The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts and interacts with others.
Personality Determinants
Heredity
Environment
Situation
Personality Traits
Enduring characteristics that describe an individual’s behaviour
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
The Big Five Model
This material is found on page

11. Exhibit 2-2 Sixteen Primary Traits1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
vs.
Outgoing
More intelligent
Emotionally stable
Dominant
Happy-go-lucky
Conscientious
Venturesome
Sensitive
Suspicious
Imaginative
Shrewd
Apprehensive
Experimenting
Self-sufficient
Controlled
Tense
This material is found on page

12. Exhibit 2-3
This material is found on page 47.

13. Exhibit 2-4 The Big Five Model
Extroversion
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Emotional Stability
Openness to Experience
This material is found on page
Extroversion: This dimension captures one’s comfort level with relationships. Extroverts (high in extroversion)tend to be friendly and outgoing and to spend much of their time maintaining and enjoying a large number of relationships. Introverts tend to be reserved and to have fewer relationships, and they are more comfortable with solitude than most people are.
Agreeableness: This dimension refers to an individual’s propensity to defer to others. High agreeable people value harmony more than they value having their say or their way. They are cooperative and trusting of others. People who score low on agreeableness focus more on their own needs than on the needs of others.
Conscientiousness: This dimension refers to the number of goals on which a person focuses. A highly conscientious person pursues fewer goals, in a purposeful way, and tends to be responsible, persistent, dependable, and achievement-oriented. Those who score low on this dimension tend to be more easily distracted, pursuing many goals, and more hedonistic.
Emotional stability: This dimension taps a person’s ability to withstand stress. People with positive emotional stability tend to be characterized as calm, enthusiastic, and secure. Those with high negative scores tend to be nervous, depressed, and insecure.
Openness to experience: The final dimension addresses one’s range of interests. Extremely open people are fascinated by novelty and innovation. They tend to be imaginative, artistically sensitive, and intellectual. Those at the other end of the openness category appear more conventional and find comfort in the familiar.

14. Exhibit 2-4 Big Five Personality Factors and Individual Job and Team Performance
This material is found on page

15. Major Personality Attributes Influencing OB
Locus of Control
Internals
Externals
Machiavellianism
Self-Esteem
Self- Monitoring
Risk Taking
Type A Personality
Type B Personality
This material is found on page There are self-awareness exercises in the chapter for each of these traits.

16. Type A’s and Type B’s Type A Personality Type B Personality
Always moving, walking, and eating rapidly.
Feel impatient with the rate at which most events take place.
Strive to think or do two or more things at once.
Cannot cope with leisure time.
Are obsessed with numbers, measuring their success in terms of how many or how much of everything they acquire.
Type B Personality
Never suffer from a sense of time urgency with its accompanying impatience.
Feel no need to display or discuss either their achievements or accomplishments unless such exposure is demanded by the situation.
Play for fun and relaxation, rather than to exhibit their superiority at any cost.
Can relax without guilt.
This material is found on page

17. Emotions What are Emotions? Felt vs. Displayed Emotions
Can People Be Emotionless?
Gender and Emotions
Why Should We Care About Emotions in the Workplace?
This material is found on page

18. What are Emotions? Three related terms:
Affect: A broad range of feelings that people experience.
Emotions: 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.
This material is found on page

19. Emotional Labour
When an employee expresses organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal interactions.
Employees can experience a conflict between
felt emotions: An individual’s actual emotions
displayed emotions: Emotions that are organizationally required and considered appropriate in a given job.
This material is found on page
Examples:
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.

20. Emotional Intelligence
Noncognitive skills, capabilities, and competencies that influence a person's ability to succeed in coping with environmental demands and pressures
Five dimensions:
Self-awareness
Self-management
Self-motivation
Empathy
Social skills
This material is found on page
Self-awareness. Being aware of what you're feeling. It is exhibited by self-confident, realistic self-assessment, and a self-deprecating sense of humour.
Self-management. The ability to manage one's own emotions and impulses. It is exhibited by trustworthiness and integrity, comfort with ambiguity, and openness to change.
Self-motivation. The ability to persist in the face of setbacks and failures. It is exhibited by a strong drive to achieve, optimism, and high organizational commitment.
Empathy. The ability to sense how others are feeling. It is exhibited by expertise in building and retaining talent, cross-cultural sensitivity, and service to clients and customers.
Social skills. The ability to handle the emotions of others. It is exhibited by persuasiveness, and expertise in building and leading groups and teams.

21. Exhibit 2-5 Facial Expressions Convey Emotions
This material is found on page 57.
Facial expressions are a window into a person's feelings. Notice the difference in facial features: the height of cheeks, the raising or lowering of the brow, the turn of the mouth, the positioning of the lips, and the configuration of muscles around the eyes.

22. Summary and Implications
Perception
Individuals behave based not on the way their external environment actually is but, rather, on what they see or believe it to be
Evidence suggests that what individuals perceive from their work situation will influence their productivity more than will the situation itself
Absenteeism, turnover, and job satisfaction are also reactions to the individual’s perceptions
Personality
Personality helps us predict behaviour
Personality can help match people to jobs, to some extent at least
Emotions
Can hinder performance, especially negative emotions
Can also enhance performance
This material is found on page