This document discusses how individuals perceive themselves and others. It covers key aspects of self-concept including complexity, consistency and clarity. Factors like self-enhancement and self-verification that influence self-concept are also examined. The document also discusses perception, focusing on selective attention, stereotyping, attribution theory and improving perceptions. Global mindset, or the ability to understand different cultures, is presented as important for accurately perceiving others.

1. PERCEIVING
OURSELVES AND
OTHERS IN
ORGANIZATIONS
HHUMBEHV
Mervyn Maico D. Aldana, Faculty SHTM

2. SELF-CONCEPT:
HOW WE
PERCEIVE
OURSELVES

3. Self-concept • Self-concept refers to an individual’s self-beliefs and
self-evaluations.
• It is the “Who am I” and “How do I feel about myself”
that people ask themselves and that guide their
decisions and actions.
• A growing number of OB experts are discovering that
how people perceive themselves helps to explain their
attitudes, motivation, decisions, and behavior in the
workplace.

4. Self-concept • An individual’s self-concept can be described in three
characteristics: complexity, consistency and clarity.

5. Self-
concept:
Complexity
• Self-concepts vary in their complexity, that is, the
number of distinct and important roles or identities
people perceive about themselves.
• Everyone has some degree of complexity because they
see themselves in more than one role (accountant,
friend, daughter, sports enthusiast, etc.).
• Complexity is determined not only by the number of
selves, but also by the separation of those selves.
• A self-concept has low complexity when the
individual’s most important identities are highly
interconnected, such as when they are all work-related
(manager, engineer, family income-earner).

6. Self-
concept:
Consistency
• A second characteristic of self-concept is its internal
consistency.
• High internal consistency exists when most of the
individual’s self-perceived roles require similar
personality traits, values, and other attributes.
• Low consistency occurs when some self-perceptions
require personal characteristics that conflict with
characteristics required for other aspects of self.

7. Self-
concept:
Clarity
• Clarity is the degree to which you have a clear,
confidently defined, and stable self-concept.
• Clarity occurs when we are confident about “who we
are,” can describe our important identities to others,
and provide the same description of ourselves across
time.
• Self-concept clarity increases with age as well as with
the consistency of the person’s multiple selves.

8. Effects of
Self-concept
Characteristics
on Well-being
and behavior
• Self-concept complexity, consistency, and clarity are
important because they influence a person’s well-
being, behavior, and performance.
• People tend to have a stronger psychological well-
being when they have multiple selves (complexity) that
are well established (clarity) and are similar to each
other and compatible with personal traits
(consistency).

9. Self-enhancement
• People across most (and likely all) cultures are
inherently motivated to perceive themselves (and to
be perceived by others) as competent, attractive,
lucky, ethical, and important.
• Self-enhancement is a person’s inherent motivation to
have a positive self-concept.
• Example – employees rating themselves above
average
• Self-enhancement has both positive and negative
consequences.
– Positive – better mental and physical health
– Negative – can result in bad decision, managers
overestimating the probability of success.

10. Self-
verification
• Self-verification is a person’s inherent motivation to
confirm and maintain his/her existing self-concept.
• Employees actively communicate their self-concept so
co-workers can provide feedback that reinforces the
self-concept.
– Example – you might let your coworkers know you are a
very organized person; later they point out situations
where you have indeed been very organized.
• Implications:
– Employees are more likely to remember information that
is consistent with their self-concept
– The clearer the self-concept, the less he will accept
feedback that contradicts that self-concept
– Employees are motivated to interact with others who
affirm their self-concept.

11. Self-evaluation
• Self-evaluation is mostly defined by three elements:
self-esteem, self-efficacy, and locus of control.
• Self-esteem is the extent to which people like, respect
and are satisfied with themselves.
– People have high self-esteem when they believe they are
connected and accepted by others.
• Self-efficacy refers to a person’s belief that he or she
can have a “can do” attitude.
– Is the perception of one’s competence to perform across
a variety of situations

12. Self-
evaluation
• Locus of Control is defined as a person’s general
beliefs about the amount of control he or she has over
personal life events.
– Internal Locus of control – when people believe their
personal characteristics mainly influence life’s outcomes
– External Locus of control – events in life are mainly due
to fate, luck, or conditions in the external environment

13. The Social
Self
• Each person’s identity is defined by a set of attributes.
• These attributes highlight both the person’s uniqueness
(personal identity) or association with others (social
identity).

14. The Social
Self
• Personal identity (internal self-concept) consists of
attributes that make us unique and distinct from
people in the social groups to which we have a
connection.

15. The Social
Self
• Social Identity (external self-concept) is defined by
the Social IdentityTheory, which says people define
themselves by the groups to which they belong or have
an emotional attachment.

16. PERCEIVING
THE WORLD
AROUND US

17. Perception • Perception is the process of receiving information
about and making sense of the world around us.
• It entails determining which information to notice, how
to categorize this information, and how to interpret it
within the framework of our existing knowledge.

18. Selective
Attention
• Selective attention is the process of attending to
some information received by our senses and ignoring
other information.
• It is influenced by:
– Characteristics of person or object being perceived
– Particular size
– Intensity
– Motion
– Repetition
– And novelty

20. Selective
Attention-
Confirmation
Bias
• Confirmation Bias is the tendency for people to screen
out information that is contrary to their decisions,
beliefs, values, and assumptions; whereas confirming
information is more readily accepted through the
perceptual process.

21. Perceptual
Organization and
Interpretation
• People make sense of information even before they
become aware of it.
• CategoricalThinking – the mostly nonconscious
process of organizing people and objects into
preconceived categories stored in our long-term
memory.
– Ex.You see group of people which includes your teachers
and someone you don’t recognize, you quickly assume
that the person you don’t recognize is also a teacher
– Filling in missing information
– When we see trends in ambiguous situations

22. Perceptual
Organization and
Interpretation
• Mental Models are internal representations of the
external world.They consist of visual or relational
images in our mind.
• Mental models help us make sense of our environment,
but they also make it difficult to see that environment
in new ways.

23. Perceptual
Processes
and
Problems
• Stereotyping – the perceptual process in which we
assign characteristics to an identifiable group and then
automatically transfer those features to anyone we
believe is a member of that group.
• Stereotypes are formed from personal experience, but
they are mainly provided to us through media.

24. Why do we
stereotype?
• It simplifies our understanding of the world.
• We have an innate need to understand and anticipate
how others behave.
• It enhances our self-concept, the combination of social
identity and self-enhancement leads to the process of
categorization, homogenization, and differentiation.
– Categorization – social identity is a comparative
process, comparison begins by categorizing people into
distinct groups.
– Homogenization – we tend to think people within each
group are very similar to each other.
– Differentiation – we assign more favorable
characteristics to people in our groups that to people in
other groups.

25. Problems
with
Stereotyping
• Stereotypes do not accurately describe every person in
a social category.
• It lays foundation for discriminatory attitudes and
behavior.
– Unintentional (systemic) discrimination – whereby
decision makers rely on stereotypes to establish notions
of the “ideal” person in specific roles.
– Intentional discrimination or Prejudice – people hold
unfounded negative attitudes toward those belonging to
a particular group.

26. Attribution
Theory
• Attribution process involves deciding whether an
observed behavior or event is caused mainly by the
person (internal factors) or by the environment
(external factors).
• Internal factors – ability or motivation
• External factors – lack of resources, other people or
just luck
• People rely on three attribution rules:
– If people behaved this way in the past
– If he or she behaves this way toward other people or in
different situations
– And other people do not behave this way in similar
situations

27. Attribution
Errors
• FundamentalAttribution – our tendency to perceive
that another person’s actions are caused mainly by
internal attributions, whereas we recognize both
internal and external causes of our actions.
• Self-serving bias – the tendency to attribute our
failures to external causes, while successes are due
more to internal than external factors.

28. Self-
fulfilling
Prophecy
• Self-fulfilling prophecy – occurs when our
expectations about a person cause that person to act in
way that is consistent with those expectations.
– Leaders need to develop and maintain a positive, yet
realistic, expectation towards all employees to elicit
positive organizational behavior – focusing on the
positive rather than negative aspects of life will improve
organizational success and individual well-being.

29. Other
Perceptual
Effects
• Halo Effect – occurs when our general impression of a
person, usually based on one prominent characteristic,
distorts our perception of that person’s other
characteristics.
• False-consensus Effect – occurs when people
overestimate the extent to which others have similar
beliefs or behavior to our own.
• Primacy Effect – our tendency to quickly form an
opinion on the basis of the first information we receive
about them.
• Recency Effect – occurs when the most recent
information dominates our perceptions.

30. Improving
Perceptions
• Awareness of Perceptual Biases
– The most obvious and widely practiced ways to reduce
perceptual biases is to know they exist.
– Awareness of perceptual biases can reduce them to
some extent by making people more aware of their
thoughts and actions,

31. Improving
Perceptions
• A more successful way to minimize perceptual biases is
to increase awareness.
• We need to be more aware of our beliefs, values, and
attitudes and, from that insight, gain a better
understanding of biases in our own decisions and
behavior.
• Self-awareness tends to reduce perceptual biases by
making people more open-minded and non-
judgmental toward others.

32. Improving
Perceptions
• Approaches to be more self-aware:
– Implicit AssociationTest – it attempts to detect subtle
racial, age, and gender bias by associating positive and
negative words with specific demographic groups.

33. Improving
Perceptions
• Approaches to be more self-aware:
– Johari Window – a model of self-awareness and mutual
understanding that divides information about you into
four “windows” – open, blind, hidden, unknown – based
on whether your own values, beliefs, and experiences are
known to others.
– Open area includes information about you that is known
both to you and others
– Blind area refers to information that is known to others
but not to you
– Hidden are is information known to you but unknown to
others
– Unknown area includes your values, beliefs, and
experiences that aren’t known to you or others.

34. Improving
Perceptions
• Meaningful Interaction
– Self-awareness and mutual understanding can also
improve through meaningful interaction.
– Meaningful interaction is founded on the contact
hypothesis, which states that, under certain conditions,
people who interact with each other will be less
prejudiced or perceptually biased against each other.
– Meaningful interaction also potentially improves
empathy towards others. Empathy refers to
understanding and being sensitive to the feelings,
thoughts, and situations of others.

35. Global
Mindset
• A global mindset refers to an individual’s ability to
perceive, know about, and process information across
cultures.
• It includes:
– Awareness off, openness to, and respect for other views
and practices in the world
– Capacity to empathize and act effectively across cultures
– Ability to possess complex information about novel
environments
– Ability to comprehend and reconcile intercultural
matters with multiple levels of thinking
Global mindset improves as we gain better knowledge of
and more direct experience with people across cultures.