Self - Concepts
• self beliefs and self- evaluations
1. Complexity
• Numbers of distinct and important roles/identities people perceive themselves (students, friend,
daughter)
• High complexity - many identities but overlap each other
2. Consistency
• high consistency: when most of individual’s self-perceived roles require similar personality traits,
values and other attributes
• Low consistency: some self-perceptions require personal characteristics that con ict with other
characteristics
3. Clarity
• degree to which you have a clear, con dently de ned and stable self-concept
E ects of Self-Concept Characteristics on well being and behaviour
• people tend to have better psychological well being when they have multiple selves (complexity) that
are well established (clarity) and are similarly to each other with personal traits (consistency)
• Protects self esteem when some roles are threatened/damaged
• Have better well being when multiple selves are in harmony with each other
• Improves performance
Self- Enhancement
• person’s motivation to have positive self concept and for others to perceive them
• Positive:
◦Experience more mental/physical health when “overcon dent”
◦Generates “can do” attitude that motivates persistence in di cult tasks
◦Successful companies try to help employees feel valued
• Negative:
◦Causes people to overestimate situations like future returns in investment decisions
◦Take longer to realize mistakes
Self - Veri cation
• person’s motivation to con rm and maintain his/her existing self concept
• Involves seeking feedback (compliments)
• E ects with perceptual process:
◦Employees are more likely to remember info that’s consistent with their self concept
◦Ten to screen out info that’s negative
Self- Evaluations
• three elements:
1. Self- E cacy
• person’s belief that he/she has ability, motivation, correct role perceptions, and favourable situations
to complete a task succesfully “ can do attitude”
2. Self-Esteem
• extent to which people like, respect and are satis ed with themselves
3. Locus of control
• person’s general belief abut amount of control he/she has over personal life events
• Internal:
◦Believe that personal characteristics mainly in uence their life’s outcome (motivation/abilities)
◦Suited for leaders
• External:
◦ Belief that events in their life due mainly to fate, luck, conditions of external environment
Social Self
Personal Identity:
• consists of attributes that make us unique and distinct
• External self-concept
• Social identity theory :
◦People de ne themselves by groups to which they belong to
Perception
• process of receiving info about world and making sense the world around us
• Begins when environment stimuli are received through our senses
Con rmation Bias
• process of screening out info that is contrary to our values and assumptions and to more readily
accept con rming info.
• Looking for message that con rms viewpoint that you already hold
Selective Attention
• process of receiving some info and ignoring other information
• We decide what info to lter
Perceptual Organization and Interpretation
Categorical Thinking
• organizing people and objects into preconceived categories that are stored in our long term memory
• Process of making sense to the world
Mental Models
• form of perceptual organization in the perceptual process
• Internal representations of external world that guid perceptions and behaviour
• knowledge structures we develop to describe, explain, and predict the world around us
• causes us to select and organize stimuli in ways that are consistent with our broad world views
Speci c Perceptual Processes and Problems
1. Stereotyping
• process of assigning traits to people based on their social group/category
• Media, images, cultural prototypes
• Shared belief across entire society and sometimes several cultures
• Positive:
◦Minimizing mental e ort
◦Filling in missing info
◦Supporting our social identity
• Negative:
◦Not accurate
◦Discriminatory
Attribution Theory
• perceptual process of deciding whether an observed behaviour/event is caused largely by internal or
external factors
• External and Internal
• Negatives:
◦Self-serving bias:
‣ Tendency to attribute our favourable outcomes to internal factors and failures to external
factors
‣ We take credit for our successes and blame others for our mistakes
◦Fundamental Attribution Error:
‣ Tendency to see the person rather than situation as main cause (correspondence bias)
Self- Ful lling Prophecy
• Occurs when our expectations of another person causes them to act in a way that is consistent with
those expectations
Contingencies of Self-Ful lling Prophecy
• stronger e ect at beginning wen employees are rst hired
• Strong e ect when several people hold same expectation of individual
Positive organizational Behaviour
• Focuses on building positive qualities and traits within individuals as opposed to what is wrong with
them
Halo E ect
• error whereby our general impression of a person is based on one prominent characteristic
• bad or good impression
False Consenus E ect
• Assuming others hold same views, opinions or beliefs similar to ours
◦We are comforted by our beliefs
Primacy E ect
• Forming an opinion of others based on the rst info we received about them
• rumours
Recency E ect
• most recent info dominates our perceptions of others
IMPROVING PERCEPTIONS
1. Be aware that perceptual biases exist
2. Develop Empathy
3. Improve Self Awareness
4. Diversity Training
5. Postpone Impression formation of others
6. Engage in meaningful interactions to increase mutual understanding
• Consistency, Consenus and Distinctiveness are the three rules determine whether to make internal or
external attributes
• Surface-Level Diversity
◦ Age, sex