Lim Sei Kee @ cK
Perception
 A process by which individuals organize and
interpret their sensory impressions in order to give
meaning to their environment.
 Individuals may look at the same thing, yet perceive
it differently.
FACTORS IN THE PERCEIVER
Attitudes
Motives
Interests
Experience
Expectations
FACTORS IN THE
TARGET
•Motion
•Sounds
•Size
•Background
•Similarity
PERCEPTION
FACTORS IN THE SITUATION
Time
Work setting
Social setting
Attribution theory
 When individuals observe behavior, they attempt to
determine whether it is internally or externally
caused.
 Depends on:
 Distinctiveness –
displays different behaviors in
different situations
 Consensus
– everyone with a similar situation
responds in the same way
 Consistency – respond the same way over time
 Fundamental attribution error – the tendency to
underestimate the influence of external factors and
overestimate the influence of internal factors when
making judgments about the behavior 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.
Shortcuts in judging others
 Selective perceptions
 Halo effect
 Contrast effect
 Projection
 Stereotyping
 Self-fulfilling prophecy
 Profiling
 Selective perception – people selectively interpret
what they see on the basis of their interests,
background, experience and attitudes.
 Halo effect – drawing a general impression about an
individual on the basis of a single characteristics.
 Contrast
effect
–
evaluation
of
a
persno’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.
 Self-fulfilling prophecy – a situation in which one
person inaccurately perceives a second person and the
resulting expectations cause the second person to
behave in ways consistent with the original perceptions.
 Profiling – a group of individuals is singled out –
typically on the basis of race or ethnicity – for intensive
inquiry or investigation.
 Decisions – the choices made from among two or
more alternatives
 Problem – a discrepancy between some current state
of affairs and some desired state
Rational decision-making process
 Making
consistent, value-maximizing choices within
specified constraints.
 Rational decision-making model – a decision-making
model that describes how individuals should behave in
order to maximize some outcome.
Defining the problem
2. Identify the decision criteria
3. Allocate weights to the criteria
4. Develop the alternatives
5. Evaluate the alternatives
6. Select the best alternative
1.
Assumptions of the model
1. Problem clarity
2. Known options
3. Clear preferences
4. Constant preferences
5. No time or cost constraints
6. Maximum payoff
Improving creativity in Decision
Making
 Creativity – the ability to produce useful ideas
 Ideas that are different from what’s been done before
but that are also appropriate to the problem or
opportunity presented.
Three-component model of
creativity
 Proposes that individual creativity requires expertise,
creative-thinking skills and intrinsic task motivation
 Expertise – foundation for all creative work
 Creative-thinking
skills – personality characteristics
associated with creativity.
 Intrinsic task motivation - desire to work on something
Decisions
in
organizations
 Bounded Rationality – individuals make decisions by
constructing simplified models that extract the
essential features from problems without capturing all
their complexity
Common biases and errors
 Overconfidence bias
 Anchoring bias
 Confirmation bias
 Availability bias
 Representative bias
 Escalation of Commitment bias
 Randomness Error
 Hindsight bias
 Overconfidence bias – ‘no problem in judgment and
decision making’
 Anchoring bias – a tendency to fixate on initial
information as a starting point.
 Confirmation bias – a specific case of selective
perception; we seek out information that reaffirms our
past choices, and we discount information that
contradicts past judgments.
 Availability bias – the tendency for people to base
their judgments on information that is readily available
to them
 Representative bias – assessing the likelihood of an
occurrence by trying to match it with a preexisting
category.
 Escalation of Commitment Error – an increased
commitment to a previous decision in spite of negative
information.
 Randomness Error – difficulty dealing with chance.
 Hindsight bias – the tendency for us to believe falsely
that we’d have accurately predicted the outcome of an
event, after that outcome is actually known.
Intuition
 Intuitive decision making – an unconscious process created
out of distilled experience.
 Eight conditions for intuitive decision making –
 When high level of uncertainty exists
 When there is little precedent to draw on
 When variables are less scientifically predictable
 When ‘facts’ are limited
 When facts don’t clearly point the way
 When analytical data are of little use
 When there are several plausible alternative solutions from
which to choose
 When time is limited and there is pressure
Decision making style
 Directive – low tolerance for ambiguity and seek
rationality
 Analytic – greater tolerance for ambiguity
 Conceptual – tend to use data from multiple sources
and consider many alternatives
 Behavioral – strong concern for the people in the
organization and their development
Ethical decision criteria
 Utilitarianism – decisions are made to provide the
greatest good for the greatest number
 Whistle-blowers – individuals who report unethical
practices by their employer to outsiders
 Justice – impose and enforce rules fairly so that there
is an equitable distribution of benefits and costs.
Presentation Q
When relying on intuition, the decision maker often
arrives at a conclusion without using a step-by-step
logical process. Can we just depend on intuition?
Explain.