Perception is how individuals interpret and make sense of the world around them. It is a subjective process that is influenced by cognitive and mental processes. People perceive the same situations differently based on their unique experiences and perspectives. Understanding these differences in perception is important for minimizing conflicts, making effective hiring decisions, and motivating employees within an organization.

1. Perception and Attribution

9.  Perception is an individual’s own view of
world
 It is the process of selecting, organizing and
interpreting information
 People perceive the same thing differently
 Therefore, understanding the concept of
perception is necessary in order to know
individuals differences at work and to predict
their influences on work behavior

10.  “Perception is mental and cognitive process
that enables us to interpret and understand
our surroundings” – Kreitner and Kinichi
 “Perception is a cognitive process by which
persons make interpretations of the stimulus
or situation they are faced with” – Fred
Luthans

11. 1. Cognitive process: essential to interpret
information to give some meaning
2. Subjective process: different ways of
sensing, collecting, organizing and
interpreting information by individuals
differently
3. Interpretation of situation: interpret the
information obtained from external stimuli
to give it some meaning
4. Based on sensation: selecting stimuli that
pass through our sense organs
5. Not always factual: perceived world may not
be the real world. The sun rises in the east
and sets in the west.

12. 1. Understanding human behavior: every person
perceives the world and life problems
differently
2. Helps to determined needs: managers can
motivate to the employees by fulfilling their
needs through different incentives
3. Helps to minimize conflict: managers need to
establish better and factual process of
perception in the organization
4. Better selection of employees: if manager’s
perception is wrong then right candidate
cannot be selected
5. Helps to minimize errors: understanding
perception of every individual supports the
managers to deal with them properly

13. Sensation Perception
1. Functioning of physical sensory
organs
Functioning of mental and
intellectual process
2. Serves as raw input to be
processed so as to make sense
Serves as selection, organization,
interpretation and response to
environmental stimuli
3. It precedes perception It follow sensation
4. Does not provide any meaning
to external stimuli
Provides meaning to external
stimuli through their interpretation
5. Does not involve complete
mental process
Involves complete mental process
to give some meaning to stimuli
6. Concern with receiving
information from external
environment
Concern with filtering information
received from external
environmental
7. Does not require past
experience and practice
Require past experience and
practice
8. Involve major role of sense Involves major role of brain

14. 1. Stimulus or Situations: physical environment-
office layout, research laboratory, store, factory
floor. Socio-cultural environment-
management styles, belief, values,
discrimination etc.
2. Confrontation: immediate sensual stimulation
of an individual when s/he is facing to total
physical and socio-cultural environment
3. Registration: physiological mechanisms are
registered on the mind of an individual
4. Interpretation: interpretation of a situation is
the most significant cognitive aspect of
perception. It depends on their learning,
motivation and personality

15. 5. Feedback: after interpretation a situation
individual exposes feedback
6. Behaviour: show reaction to a given
situation. Overt or covert
7. Consequences

16.  Attention Factors in Perceptual Selectivity
a. Principle of Contrast: contrast in color, size,
design
b. Principle of Intensity: bright light, loud
noise, heavy cyclone, storm
c. Principle of Motion: flying airplane,
advertisement in electronic visual media in
sports
d. Principle of Size: full page of advertisement
in newspaper attract than a few line

17. e. Principle of Novelty/Familiarity: a person
riding a horse on a busy street. Familiar face or
voice in a crow
f. Principle of Repetition: an advertisement is
given repeatedly
g. Principle of proximity: many employees in
an organization may be identified as a single
group

18.  Perceptual Organization
a. Figure Ground: words in a printed paper as the
figure and the white sheet as the background
b. Perceptual Grouping: Closure (fill in the missing
parts and make it complete), Continuity, Proximity,
Similarity (uniforms of players, army/police,
students)
c. Perceptual Constancy: size, shape, color, brightness
and location of an object are fairly constant despite
any information received by the sense
d. Perceptual Context: a piece of information
communicated in the form of a notice, a
suggestion, a smile face, a raised eyebrow will
acquire a special meaning

19. 1. Characteristics of Perceiver and Perceived:
 Knowing oneself makes it easier to see
others accurately
 One’s own characteristics affect the
characteristics one is likely to see in others
 People who accept themselves are more
likely to be able to see favorable aspects of
other people
 Accuracy in perceiving others is not a single
skill

20. 2. Stereotype (similar): tendency to perceive
another person as belonging to a single class
or category
refers judging someone on the basis of one’s
perception of the group to which that person
belongs
supervisors, young people, old people, union
members, accountants, engineers etc.
3. Halo effect (unique): the process of drawing
general impression about an individual on the
basis of his single trait or characteristic
intelligence, punctuality, appearance,
cooperativeness etc.

21.  Attribution is the process of by which people
interpret the cause of their own and others’ behavior
 Make explanatory interpretations regarding the
causes of events, e.g. someone angry because they
are bad-tempered or because something bad
happened?
 Concern with individuals’ interpretation of events
and its relation to their thinking and behavior
 Try to explain the ways in which we judge people
differently, depending on the meaning we attribute
to a given behavior
 It suggests that when we observe an individual’s
behavior, we attempt to determine whether it was
internally or externally caused

22.  Refers to one’s belief that his behavior is
guided by external control or internal control
 External control factors: luck, fate, chance,
change in technology, high competition etc.
 Internal control factors: ability, skill, effort,
dedication, honesty, hardworking etc.

23. 1. Distinctiveness: refers whether an individual
shows different behavior in different
situation
2. Consensus: refers to whether everyone
faces a similar situation responds in the
same way
3. Consistency: refers to whether a person
shows similar behavior over time

24. 1. Fundamental Attribution Error: making
judgments about the behaviour of other
people by focusing internal factors rather than
external factors
2. Self Servicing Bias: individuals’ attribution of
giving importance for success to internal
factors where as putting the blame for failure
to external factors
3. Other Perceptual Errors
a. Selective Perception: process of selecting
some of the stimuli for interpretation
b. Halo Effect: process of drawing impression
about an individual on the basis of his single
characteristic

25. c. Contrast Effect: process of evaluating a
person on the basis of other persons who are
recently encountered
d. Stereotyping: judging someone on the basis
of one’s perception of the group to which
that person belongs
e. Projection: tendency of seeing one’s own
traits in others
f. Primacy and Regency Effect: providing first
impression to perceiver

26.  Concept: make an effort to control and
influence on other people’s perceptions
about a person, object or event
 It is a self presentation technique that
focuses on improving a person’s image in the
eyes of others
 Impression helps to get the jobs they want in
an organization and, once hired, to get
favorable evaluations, salary increases, and
more rapid promotions

27. 1. Impression Motivation: the degree to which
people are motivated to control how others
see them. People regularly monitor their
impact on others and try to estimate the
impressions other people
2. Impression Construction: the methods
adopted by individuals to create the specific
impression that they want

28. 1. Demotion Preventive Strategies
a. Accounts: employees attempt to excuse or
justify their actions
b. Apologies: when there is no logical
reasoning for negative event, the employee
may apologize to the boss for such
unexpected event
c. Disassociation: try to disassociate
themselves from the group and also from
the responsibility for the problem

29. 2. Promotion Enhancing Strategies
a. Entitlements: employees feel that they have
not been given credit for a positive outcome
b. Enhancements: may have received credit for
their better outcome
c. Obstacle disclosures: employees identify
either personal or organizational obstacles
they had to overcome to accomplish an
expected outcome
d. Association: employees ascertain that they
are seen with the right people at right times

30.  Individual decision making is an important
part of OB
 An individual’s final choices are highly
influenced by their perception
 One person’s problem may be another
person’s satisfactory state of affairs or even
an opportunity as well

31. a. Personality: sum of internal and external
qualities of an individual, an individual’s
ability of dealing with people, problems and
environment
b. Gender: women spend considerable more
time for taking any decision as compare to
men
c. Mental Ability: individuals having high
mental ability are able to process
information more quickly, learn faster, solve
problem more accurately

32. a. Performance Evaluation: managers are strongly
influenced in their decision making by the
criteria on which they are evaluated the
performance
b. Reward System: reward for risk avoidance or
riskier performance
c. Formal Regulations: rules, regulations and
system become constraints to managers for
decision making
d. Time Constraints: time pressure on decision
makers make difficult to gather all the
information for making a final choice
e. Historical foundations: past decisions are
foundation and provide guidance for taking
corrective measure