Individual Behavior - Organizational Behavior Course

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CHAPTER TWO
INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR

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Individual differences: personality, perception,
and attributions
• The bases for understanding individual differences
steams from Lewin’s early contention that behavior is
a function of the person and the environment.
• Lewins expressed this idea in an equation: B = f (P, E),
where, B = behavior, P = person and E = environment.
• This idea has been developed by the interactional
psychology approach.
• Basically, this approach says that in order to
understand behavior; we must know something
about the situation.

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There are four basic propositions of international
psychology: i.e.
a. Behavior is a function of continuous, multi
directional interaction between the person and the
situation.
b. The person is active in this process and both are
changed by situations and changes situations.
c. People vary in many characteristics, including
cognitive, affective, motivational, and ability factors.
d. Two interpretations of situations are important: the
objective situation and the person’s subjective view
of the situation.

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Figure 2.1. Variables influencing individual Behavior

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o The interactional psychology points out the need to study both
persons and situations.
o The person consists of individual differences such as personality,
perception, attribution, attitudes, values, and ethics.
o The situation consists of environment, the personal life situation,
job characteristics, and many other environmental influences. One
important and fascinating individual difference is personality.
o Personality
o Personality is a base to individual difference that lend consistency
to a person’s behavior.
o It is defined as a relatively stable set of characteristics that
influence an individual’s behavior.
o There are two basic determinant factors for personality. I.e.
heredity and environment

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• Heredity – Identical twins who are raised apart in every
different situation have been found to share personality
traits and job preferences.
• For example, about half of the variation in traits like
extraversion, impressiveness, and flexibility is found to be
genetically determined.
• I.e. identical twins who grew up in different environments
shared those traits.
• In addition, the twins held similar jobs. Thus, there does
not appear to be a genetic influence on personality.
• Environment – Another determinant of personality is the
environment a person is exposed to.
• Family influences, cultural influences, educational
influence, and other environmental forces shaped

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Personality characteristics in organizations
• Managers should learn as much as possible about personality in
order to understand their employees.
• There are five basic characteristics of personality that influences
individual behavior in organizations these are; Locus of control, self
esteem, self efficacy, self monitoring, and positive/negative affect.
Locus of control – individuals generalized belief about internal (self)
versus external (situation or others) control is called locus of control.
 People who belief they control what happens to them are said to
have an internal locus of control,
 where as people who belief that circumstances or other people
control their fate have an external locus of control.

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2. Self esteem (የራስ ግምት) – self esteem is an individual’s general feeling of self
worth.
• Individuals with high self esteem have positive feelings about themselves;
perceive themselves to have strengths as well as weakness, and believe their
strengths are more important than their weakness.
• Individuals with low self esteem view themselves negatively.
• They are more strongly affected by what other people think of them, and they
complement individuals who give them positive feedback while cutting down
people who give them negative feedback.
3. Self efficacy ራስን የቻለ ውጤታማነት– An individual’s beliefs and expectancies about
his or her ability to accomplish a specific task effectively is known as self efficacy.
• Individuals with high self efficacy believe that they have the ability to get things
done, that they are capable of putting forth the effort to accomplish the task and
that they can overcome any obstacles to their success.

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4. Self monitoring - A characteristics with great potential for affecting
behavior in an organizations is self monitoring – the extent to which
people base their behavior on cues from people and situations.
 High self monitors pay to what is appropriate in particular situations
and to the behavior of other people, and they behave accordingly.
 Low self monitors, in contrast, are not as vigilant/alert to situational
cues/signals and act from internal states rather than paying attention
to the situation.
 As a result, the behavior follow self monitors is consistent across
situations.
 High self monitors, because their behavior varies with the situation,
appear to be more un predictable and less consistent.
5. Positive /negative affect – Individuals who focus on the positive
aspects of themselves, other people, and the world in general are said
to have positive affect.

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Positive affect: An individual’s tendency to
emphasize positive aspect/s of him/ herself, other
people, and the world in general.
Negative affect: An individual tendency to
emphasis negative aspects of him or herself, other
people and the world in general.
 Individuals with negative affect report more work
stress. Individual affect also influence the work
group.
 Negative individuals affect produces negative
group affect, and this leads to less cooperative
behavior in the work group.

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Social perception
 Social perception is the process of interpreting
information about other person.
 Virtually all management activities relay on perception.
 In apprising performance, managers use their
perception of an employee’s behavior as a base for
evaluation.
 One work situation that highlights the importance of
perception is the selection interview.
 The consequences of a bad match between an
individual and the organization are devastating for both
parties, so it is essential that the data gathered be
accurate.

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 Perception is also culturally determined.
 Based on our cultural back grounds, we tend to
perceive things in a certain ways.
 Culture affects our interpretation of the data we
gather, as well as the way we add meaning to it.
 Valuing diversity, including cultural diversity, has
been recognized as the key to international
competitiveness.
 This challenge and others make social perception
skills essential to managerial success.

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Factors affecting perception
• There are three major categories of factors influence
our perception of another person: characteristics of
our selves, as a perceiver; characteristics of the target
person we perceive; and characteristics of the
situation in which the interaction takes place.
1. Characteristics of the perceiver
Familiarity: One of the characteristic of the perceiver
can affect is familiarity, with the target (the person
being perceived).
When we are familiar with a person, we have
multiple observations up on which to base our
impression of him or her.

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Fig 2.2 A model for social perception

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 Attitudes: The perceiver’s attitudes also affect the social
perception.
 Suppose you are interviewing candidates for a very important
position in your organization – a position that requires
negotiating contracts with suppliers, most of whom are male.
 You may feel that women are not capable of holding their own
though negotiations.
 This attitude will doubtless affect your perceptions of the
female candidates you interview.
 Mood: Mood can have a strong influence on the way we
perceive someone. We think differently when we are happy
than we do when we depressed.
 When in a positive mood, we form more positive impressions
of others. When we in a negative mood, we tend to evaluate
others unfavorably.

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Self concept: An individual with a positive self concept
tends to notice positive attributes in another person, and
the reverse is true.
 Greater understanding of self allows us to have more
accurate perceptions of others.
Cognitive structure: Cognitive structure is an individual’s
pattern of thinking, also affects social perception.
 Some people have a tendency to perceive physical traits,
such as, height, weight, and appearance, more rapidly.
 Others tend to focus more on central traits, or personality
dispositions.
 Cognitive complexity allows a person to perceive
multiple characteristics of another person rather than
attending to just a few traits.

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2. Characteristics of the target
• Characteristics of the target, who is the person
being perceived, influence social perception.
• The following are some of the typical
characteristics of the target;
a. Physical Appearance: Physical appearance
plays a great role in our perception of others.
 The perceiver will notice the targets physical
features like height, weight, estimated age, race
and gender.
 Clothing and physical attractiveness often colors
our entire impression of another person.

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b. Verbal and non verbal communication:
Verbal communication: from targets also affect our
perception of them. We listen to the topics they speak
about, their voice tone, and their accent and make
judgment based on this input.
Non verbal communication: Conveys a great deal of
information about the target. Eye contact, facial
expression, body movements, and posture all are
deciphered by the perceiver in attempt to form an
impression of the target.
c. Intentions: The intentions of the target are inferred by the
perceiver, who observes the target’s behavior.
 In any case, the perceiver’s interpretation of the target’s
intentions affects the way the perceiver views the target.

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3. Characteristics of the situation
• The situation in which the interaction between the perceiver
and the target takes place has an influence on the perceiver’s
impression of the target.
I. Social context: the social context of the interaction has a
major influence. Getting a professor in his office affects your
impression in a certain way that may contrast with the
impression you would form had you meet the professor in a
local restaurant.
II. Strength of situational cues: the strength of situational cues
also affects the social perception.
Some situations provide strong cues as to appropriate behavior.
In these situations, we assume that the individual’s behavior
can be accounted for the situation, and that it may not reflect
the individual’s disposition.

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Barriers to social perception
• Several factors lead us to form inaccurate impressions
of others.
• The basic five of these perceptions are; Selective
perception, stereotyping, first- impression error, implicit
personality theories, and self fulfilling proficiencies.
1) Selective perception: selective perception is a tendency
to choose information that supports our view points.
Individuals often ignore information that makes them
feel uncomfortable or threatens their view points.
2) Stereo types: A stereo type is a generalization about a
group of people. It reduces information about other
people to a work place level and they are efficient for
compiling and using information.

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• Stereo types can be accurate, and when they are accurate, they
can be useful perceptual guide lines.
• Most of the time, however, stereotypes are in accurate.
• They harm individuals when in accurate impressions of them
are inferred and are never tested or changed.
• Thus, stereo types may not be effective if they are too rigid or
based on false information.
• In multi cultural work teams, members often stereo type
foreign co workers rather than getting to know them before
forming an impression.
• Team members from less developed countries are often
assumed to have less knowledge simply because their home
land is economically or technologically less developed.
• Stereotypes like this can deflate the productivity of the work
team, as well as create low morale.

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3. First impression: First impression is lasting impressions,
so the saying goes. First impression error means that we
observe a very brief bit of a person’s behavior in our first
encounter and infer that this behavior reflects what the
person is really like.
4. Implicit personality theories: Implicit personality theory
can also leads to in-accurate perceptions. We tend to have
our own mini-theories about how people look and behave.
These theories help us to organize our perceptions and stake
short cuts instead of integrating new information at all time.
5. Self fulfilling proficiencies: Self-fulfilling proficiencies
are also barriers to social perception. Sometimes our
expectations affect the way we interact with others such that
we expect to get what we need before.

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Attitudes – Attitude is a pre disposition to respond
in a positive or negative way to someone or
something in one’s environment.
 Attitudes are evaluating statements – either favorable
or unfavorable concerning objects, people, or events.
 They reflect how one feels about something.
 For example you say that you “like” or “dislike”
someone or something, you are expressing an
attitude.
 It’s important to remember that an attitude is a
hypothetical construct; i.e. one never sees, touches,
or actually isolates an attitude.

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• Attitudes are individual’s general affective, cognitive, and
intentional response towards objects, other people, themselves,
or social issues.
• Attitudes are an integral part of the world of work.
• Managers speak of workers who have “bad attitudes” and
conduct “attitude judgment” talks with employees.
• Often, poor performance attributed to bad attitudes really
steams from lack of motivation, minimal feedback, lack of trust
in management, or other problems. These are areas that
managers to must explore.
• You can see that managers should understand the antecedents to
attitude as well as their consequences.
• Managers also need to understand the different components of
attitudes, how attitude are formed, the major attitudes that affect
work behavior, and how to use persuasion to change attitudes.

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Components of Attitudes
• An attitude has three components: Affect, Behavior, and
Cognition. The ABC model of the attitude describes
these components and including their measures.
• AFFECT – Affect is the emotional or felling
component of an attitude. It refers to an individual
felling about something or someone. Statements such as
“I like this” or “I prefer that “reflect the affective
component of an attitude.
• BEHAVIOURAL COMPONENT – The second
component is the intention to behave in a certain way
toward an object or person. The behavior component of
an attitude indicates the intention to behave in a certain
way toward someone or something.

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• THE COGNITIVE COMPONENT- The third component of an
attitude is cognition (thought), reflects a person’s perception or
beliefs.
• Cognitive elements are evaluative beliefs and are measured by
attitude scales or by asking about thoughts.
• The statement “I believe Japanese workers are industrious” reflect
the cognitive component of an attitude.
• The belief that discrimination is wrong is a value statement. Such an
opinion is the cognitive component of an attitude.
• Suppose, a sales person is required to sell damaged televisions for
the full retail price, without revealing the damage to the customers.
• She believes however, that doing so constitutes unethical behavior.
This creates a conflict between her attitude (concealing information
from customers is un ethical) and her behavior (selling defective
TV’s without informing customers about the damage).

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• The sales person, experiencing the discomfort from
dissonance, will try to resolve the conflict. She might
change her behavior by refusing to sell the defective TV
sets.
• Alternatively, she might rationalize that the defects that
the defects are minor and that the customers will not be
harmed by their lack of awareness of them.
• These are attempts by the sales person to restore
equilibrium between her attitudes and behavior, thereby
eliminating the tension from cognitive dissonance.
• Managers need to understand cognitive dissonance
because employees often find themselves in situations
in which their attitudes conflict with their behavior.

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Attitude formation
• Attitude is learned. Two major influences on attitudes are direct
experience and social learning.
a. Direct experience- Direct experience with an object or person is a
powerful influence on attitude.
 How do we know that you like management and dislike Accounting?
 You have probably form this attitudes from experience in studying
the subjects.
 Attitude that has derived from direct experience are stronger, are held
more confidently, and are more resistant to change than attitudes
formed through indirect experience.
b. Social learning- In social learning the family, peer groups, religious
organizations, and culture shapes an individual attitude in an indirect
manner.
• Substantial social learning occurs through modeling, in which
individual acquires attitudes by merely observing others.

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• For an individual to learn from observing a model, four
processes must take place:
a. The learner must focus attention to the model
b. The learner must retain what was observed from the model.
Retention is accomplished in two basic ways i.e. (symbolic
rehearsal & “stamp in” what was observed by forming a
verbal code for it.)
c. Behavioral reproduction must occur, i.e. the learner must
practice the behavior.
d. The learner must be motivated to learn from the model.
• Culture also plays a definite role in attitude development.
• For example, the contrast in the North American and European
attitude towards vacation and leisure.
• The typical vacation in US is two weeks, and some workers
don’t use all of their vacation time. In Europe, the norm is
longer vacation.

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Attitude and behavior
• Some studies suggest that attitudes and behavior are closely
linked, while others found no relationship at all and others
say have weak /some relationship.
• Attention was given for this matter and they bring that
attitude and behavior relate on the following five basic
points; these are; attitude specificity, attitude relevance,
timing of measurement, personality factors, and social
constraints.
1. Attitude specificity – individuals posses both general and
specific attitudes. The more the attitude specific the stronger
it links with /to behavior.
2. Attitude relevance – attitude that addresses an issue in
which we have some self interest are more relevant for us,
and our subsequent behavior is consistent with our
expressed attitude.

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3. The timing of the measurement – time plays a great important
role for the relation between attitude and behavior, the shorter the
time between the attitude measurement and the observed behavior
the stronger the relationship.
4. Personality factors – it influences the attitude-behavior link. One
personality disposition that affects the consistency between attitude
and behavior is self-monitoring.
• High self monitors display little correspondence their attitude and
behavior, because, they behave according to the situation/ the
environment.
5. Social constraints – social constraints affect the relationship
between attitude and behavior. The social system/ context provide
information about acceptable attitudes and behaviors.
• New employees in the organization have a citizen ship from
Afghanistan have a negative attitude about females on the
managerial position.

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Work attitudes
• Attitudes at work are very important, because it
directly or indirectly affects behavior, for example
the attitude of Japanese workers are towards quality
to the contrary the attitude of Americans workers
are towards productivity/level of production.

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Organizational citizen ship behavior
• Organizational citizen ship is behavior to do a job
which is above and beyond the call of duty.
• Satisfied employees’ are more likely to help their co-
workers, make positive comments above the company
and refrain from complaining when things at work
don’t go well.
• Satisfied workers are more likely to want to give
something back to the organization because they want
to reciprocate their positive experiences.
• Organizational citizen ship influences performance
appraisal, employees who exhibit behaviors such as
helping others, making suggestions, for innovations,
and developing their skills receive higher performance.

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• Job satisfaction also influenced by culture, for example
Japanese have low job satisfaction and Americans have
high level of job satisfaction, also
• Americans influenced by the following basic factors;
style, pay, security.
• And the following are the major influential factors for
job satisfaction for Indians; recognition, innovation, and
absence of conflict.
• Generally, managers should understand the job
satisfaction of employees’ in a work force/ people from
different culture. Since, there is no a single prescription
for employees’ in increasing job satisfaction.

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Organizational commitment
• The strength of individual’s identification with an
organization is known as organizational
commitment. There are two types of
organizational commitment, i.e.
1. Affective commitment – is an employee’s
intention to remain in an organization because, of a
strong desire to do so. It consists of three factors;
• A belief in the goals and values of the organization
• A willingness to put forth effort on behalf of the
organization
• A desire to remain a member of the organization

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• 2. Continuance commitment – is an employee’s
tendency to remain in an organization because the person
cannot afford to leave.
• Sometimes employees believe that if they leave, they will
lose a great deal of their investment in time, effort, and
benefits and that they cannot replace this investment.
• Decision making, job security, participative management,
autonomy, responsibility, and interesting work encourage
commitment.
• And also, organizational commitment decreases
absenteeism, increases quality work and productivity.
So, managers should strive to bring job satisfaction and
organizational commitment among their employees.

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The End of the Second Chapter!

Individual Behavior - Organizational Behavior Course

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