Chapter 7
Perception & Attribution
Perception
• Cognitive process by which we interpret and
understand our surroundings
• Social perception – how we make sense of
ourselves and others
Perception: An Information Processing
Model
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4
Selective
Attention/Comprehension
Encoding and
Simplification
Storage and
Retrieval and
Response
Retention
A
Competing
environmental
stimuli
 People
 Events
 Objects
B
C
D
E
Interpretation and
categorization
A
C
Memory
C
Judgments
and decisions
F
F
7-3
Stage I: Selective
Attention/Comprehension
• World is full of too much stimuli
• No one can pay attention to it all
• So, we select certain things to pay attention to
and ignore the rest
• Salient Stimuli – different, novel, noticeable
• Tendency to pay more attention to negative
stimuli
Stage II: Encoding & Simplification
• Raw sensory stimulus can’t be kept in memory
– We have to encode it
• Schema – mental picture or summary
– Kept in an orderly fashion in your head
– Connect new information to what you already
know
Why Individual Perceptions Differ
• Your previous experiences have influenced the
schemata that you’ve developed
• Moods and emotions influence what we pay
attention to and how we encode it
• Recent cognitions influence your encoding
• Individuals differences account for differences
in encoding
Stage III: Storage & Retention
• Long term memory consists of related
categories of thoughts
• Event Memory
– Script
• Semantic Memory
• Person Memory
Stage IV: Retrieval & Response
• Use information processed through
perception to make decisions
• Hiring decisions
– Implicit cognition
•
•
•
•
Performance Appraisal
Leadership
Communication
Counterproductive work behaviors
7-9
Perceptual Errors
7-10
Stereotypes
• An individual’s beliefs about the attributes of a
group
• Help us deal with having too much
information to process
• Can lead to poor decisions
• Influenced by the amount of info. available &
motivation to accurately process info.
• Gender, age, race/ethnic, disability
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
• Pygmalion Effect
– Someone’s high expectations for another
person result in high performance
• Galatea Effect
– An individual’s high self-expectations lead
to high performance
• Golem Effect
– Loss in performance due to low leader
expectations
A Model of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
5
Supervisor
expectancy
1
Leadership
Performance
6
2
4
Motivation
3
Subordinate
selfexpectancy
7-13
Causal Attributions
• People attempt to infer causes of observed
behavior
• Tend to be self serving & invalid
• Behavior can be attributed to internal
(something about the person) or external
factors (something about the environment)
Causal Attributions cont’d
• Internal/external attributions are based on:
– Consensus – comparison of an individual’s
behavior with peers
– Distinctiveness – comparison of an individual’s
performance on one task vs. other tasks
– Consistency – comparison of an individual’s
performance on a task and previous performance
on that task
Attribution errors
• Fundamental attribution bias – tendency to
attribute other’s behavior to internal factors
• Self serving bias
– Success – internal
– Failure – external