1
COMMERCE 2BA3
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
Class 2
Personality & Learning
Perception, Attribution, & Judgment
Dr. Christa Wilkin
Can You Solve These Brain Teasers?
2
MEREPEAT
INSULT + INJURY
GR 12" AVE
GESG
SEGG
GEGS
GGES
Last Class
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Discussed how OB has widespread applications
Evolution of OB
Different roles of managers
Contemporary concerns (e.g., workplace diversity)
THIS CLASS
 Personality and learning
 Perception, attribution, and judgment
Agenda
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Personality traits
Experiment on learning
Learning theories
Attribution and Perceptual errors
Nupath Case
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CH 2: PERSONALITY AND LEARNING
Question
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An effective manager will always hire the smartest
person available.
 True?
False?
 Why? What do you think?
Personality
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While intelligence is really important, personality is
more likely to affect employees’ attitudes and
behavior
Question
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When you become rich and famous, will your best
friends and family be surprised about “how much
your personality has changed” and make comments
about how different you have become?
What is Personality?
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The relatively stable set of psychological
characteristics that influences the way an individual
interacts with his or her environment and how he or
she feels, thinks, and behaves.
Dimensions and traits that are determined by
genetic predisposition and one’s long-term learning
history.
The Dispositional Approach
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Focuses on individual dispositions and personality.
Individuals possess stable traits or characteristics
that influence their attitudes and behaviours.
Individuals are predisposed to behave in certain
ways.
The Situational Approach
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Characteristics of the organizational setting such as
rewards and punishment influence people’s feelings,
attitudes and behaviour.
Many studies have shown that situational factors
such as the characteristics of work tasks predict job
satisfaction.
E.g., Darley and Batson’s (1973) study of seminary
students told to hurry from one building to another
or those told had more time; help slumped victim
The Interactionist Approach
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Organizational behaviour is a function of both
dispositions and the situation.
To predict and understand organizational
behaviour, we need to know something about an
individual’s personality and the work setting.
This is the most widely accepted approach to
organizational behaviour.
Situational Strength
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Situations can be described as being either “weak”
or “strong”.
In weak situations, roles are loosely defined, there
are few rules and weak reinforcement and
punishment contingencies.
Personality has the strongest effect in weak
situations.
In strong situations, the roles, rules, and
contingencies are more defined.
Personality has less of an impact in strong situations.
Individual Exercise
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Do a personality test
Answers all 60 questions
Use the scoring key to find your average score for
each personality trait
***Remember that some questions are reverse
scored or worded negatively (answer is marked
with an “R”). So that means if you answered 4, you
would change the answer to 2.***
“Big Five” personality traits
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Extroversion
 Energized by spending time with others
 Sociable, assertive, comfortable in large groups
 Tendency to “think out loud”
Agreeableness
 Defers to others
 Cooperative, trusting, not antagonistic
“Big Five” personality traits
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Emotional stability (neuroticism; emotionality)
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Ability to withstand stress: backbone
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Calm, self-confident, resilient
Openness to experience
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Interested in novel things vs. comfortable with the
familiar
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Adventurous, curious, artistic
Conscientiousness
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Reliable, follows through
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Responsible, organized, dependable, persistent
Question
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Which personality factor is the strongest predictor
of job performance? Why?
Personality
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New factor (e.g., Ashton et al., 2004):
 Honesty
/ humility
 Integrity
or morality
 Sincere, Not conceited, truthful, unpretentious (modest)
 Not
yet part of the “Big Five”
 Not
much research on it yet (also not in your textbook)
Individual Personality Results
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1) To what degree do you feel this is an accurate
assessment of your personality?
2) What are your strengths that will serve you well,
especially in terms of a career?
3) What are your weaknesses which might hinder
you in your career, and how might you go about
addressing one or more of the weaknesses?
Locus of Control
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A set of beliefs about whether one’s
behaviour is controlled mainly by
internal or external factors.
Internals believe that the opportunity
to control their own behaviour resides
within themselves.
Externals believe that external forces
determine their behaviour.
Question
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Which type makes for a better employee (internals
or externals)?
Self-Monitoring
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The extent to which people observe and regulate
how they appear and behave in social settings and
relationships.
High self-monitors take great care to observe and
control the images that they project.
High self-monitors are more involved in their jobs,
perform better, and are more likely to emerge as
leaders.
Downside: Dealing with unfamiliar cultures might
provoke stress.
Self-Esteem
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The degree to which a person
has a positive self-evaluation.
People with high self-esteem
have favourable self-images.
People with low self-esteem
have unfavourable self-images.
Question
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People with high self-esteem have lower job
satisfaction and job performance.
 True?
False?
 Why? What do you think?
Positive and Negative Affectivity
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People who are high on positive affectivity (PA)
experience positive emotions and moods and view
the world in a positive light.
People who are high on negative affectivity (NA)
experience negative emotions and moods and view
the world in a negative light.
PA and NA are emotional dispositions that predict
people’s general emotional tendencies.
Quiz Question
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An individual's personality encompasses:
A) all aspects of the individual's physical and emotional
response to their environment.
B) a relatively stable set of psychological characteristics.
C) behaviours which are mostly learned through
childhood experience.
D) all aspects of the individual's consciousness.
E) a constantly shifting set of personal characteristics.
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QUESTIONS?
What is Learning?
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A relatively permanent change in behaviour
potential as a result of practice or experience.
Question: What types of skills do employees learn?
What do Employees Learn?
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Practical skills:
 Job-specific
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skills, knowledge, technical competence.
Intrapersonal skills:
 Self:
Problem solving, critical thinking, alternative work
processes, risk taking.
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Interpersonal skills:
 Others:
Interactive skills such as communicating,
teamwork, conflict resolution.
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Cultural awareness:
 The
social norms of organizations, company goals,
business operations, expectations, and priorities.
Experiment
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We need two volunteers
Increasing Probability of
Behaviour
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One of the most important consequences that
influences behaviour is reinforcement.
Reinforcement is the process by which stimuli
strengthen behaviours.
A reinforcer is a stimulus that follows some
behaviour and increases or maintains the
probability of that behaviour.
Positive Reinforcement
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The application or addition of a stimulus that
increases or maintains the probability of some
behaviour.
The reinforcer is dependent or contingent on the
occurrence of some desired behaviour.
E.g., If you participate in class (increase or maintain
behaviour), then you will earn high participation
marks (application of stimulus)
Video Clip
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Big Bang Theory video clip
Negative Reinforcement
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The removal of a stimulus from a situation that
increases or maintains the probability of some
behaviour.
Negative reinforcement occurs when a response
prevents some event or stimulus from occurring.
E.g., If you participate in class (increase or maintain
behaviour), then I will stop calling on you (removal
of stimulus)
Experiment Debrief
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Which technique is more effective?
How did it feel to be subjected to the different
feedback styles?
How did you feel while you were giving the
different types of feedback?
Reducing Probability of
Behaviour
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Sometimes learned behaviours are detrimental to
the operation of an organization and they need to
be reduced or eliminated.
There are two strategies that can reduce the
probability of learned behaviour:
 Extinction
 Punishment
Extinction
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The gradual dissipation of behaviour following the
termination of reinforcement.
If the behaviour is not reinforced, it will gradually
dissipate or be extinguished.
E.g., If you talk to your peers while others are
speaking (unwanted behaviour), then I will stop
smiling.
Punishment
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The application of an aversive stimulus following
unwanted behaviour to decrease the probability of
that behaviour.
A nasty stimulus is applied after some undesirable
behaviour in order to decrease the probability of
that behaviour.
E.g., If you talk to your peers while others are
speaking (unwanted behaviour), then I will ask you
if you would like to share your conversation with the
class (aversive stimulus).
Problems using Punishment
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It does not demonstrate which behaviours should
replace the punished response.
Punishment indicates only what is not appropriate.
Punishment only temporarily suppresses the
unwanted behaviour.
Punishment can provoke a strong emotional reaction
from the punished individual.
Question
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Should we avoid using punishment in the workplace
altogether? What do you think?
Social Cognitive Theory
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People learn by observing the behaviour of others
and can regulate their own behaviour by thinking
about the consequences of their actions, setting
goals, monitoring performance, and rewarding
themselves.
Components of social cognitive theory:
 Modelling
 Self-efficacy
 Self-regulation
Modelling
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The process of imitating the behaviour of others.
Attractive, credible, competent, high-status people
are most likely to be imitated
 Job
shadow
Self-Efficacy
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A person’s belief that he or she has the ability,
motivation, and resources to complete a task
successfully (Bandura, 1986)
Different than self-esteem
Can change over time
Question
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What advice would you give to someone who was
faced with a new and difficult task; how would you
convince them that he or she could do it successfully?
Self-Efficacy Theory
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Enacted Mastery
 You have done the task before
Verbal Persuasion
 You have been told “you can do it”
Vicarious experience
 You have watched someone else complete the task
successfully
Physiological State
 You are not unduly frightened by the task
Self-Regulation
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The use of learning principles to regulate one’s own
behaviour
A key part of the process is people’s pursuit of selfset goals that guide behaviour
E.g., you find a gap between how well you want to
do and your performance on a test
 Set
specific short-term goals
 Study harder (rehearse)
 Ask others what they do (observe models)
Quiz Question
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Ron is a sensitive person, and he works very hard so
that his boss doesn't criticize him. Criticism is a(n)
__________ of Ron's work.
A) punisher
B) positive reinforcer
C) extinguisher
D) negative reinforcer
E) continuous reinforcer
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QUESTIONS?
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CH. 3: PERCEPTION, ATTRIBUTION,
AND JUDGMENT
What do you see?
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What is Perception?
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The process of interpreting the messages of our
senses to provide order and meaning to the
environment
Depends on

Target
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Situation
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Attributes of a target, relationship of target to others, etc.
Social or work setting, actions of others, etc.
Perceiver
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Attitudes, experiences, personalities, etc.
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Bruner’s Model of the Perceptual
Process
Attribution Theory
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When individuals observe behaviour, they try to
guess if it is “internally” or “externally” caused
 e.g.,
if a colleague does not do his share of the work,
do you assume
 It’s
because he is lazy, selfish, incompetent (internal
attribution)
 It’s because his boss asked him to do some other work
(external attribution)
Attribution Theory
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Distinctiveness
 IF
he acts the same way in other situations
 THEN we assume the behavior is internally caused
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Consistency
 IF
he has acted like this for a long period of time
 THEN we assume the behavior is internally caused
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Consensus
 IF
other people in the same situation behave the same
way… does everyone else do this?
 THEN we assume the behavior is externally caused
Biases in Attribution
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Fundamental attribution error
 When judging other people’s SUCCESS we:
 Inflate the role of external factors
 Underestimate the role of internal factors
 When judging other people’s FAILURES we:
 Inflate the role of internal factors
 Underestimate the role of external factors
Self-serving bias
 Opposite of fundamental attribution error
Perceptual Errors
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Primacy effect: First impressions
 e.g.,
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Recency: Most recent info dominates perceptions
 e.g.,
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start of the interview, first meet someone
big error a week before performance review
Halo Effect
 Possession
of one excellent characteristic makes others
think that other excellent characteristics are possessed
 e.g., you know a person is a McMaster alumni, so you
think that they must also be friendly and smart, etc.
Perceptual Errors
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Contrast Effect
When an evaluation is affected by a comparison to the
evaluation that preceded it
 e.g., Give a presentation after an excellent or poor one
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Projection
When you assume that other people are similar to you
 e.g., You assume that your housemates will clean their dishes
right away because that’s what you always do

Perceptual Errors
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Stereotyping
Tendency to generalize about people in a social
category and ignore variations among them
 e.g., older workers don’t work hard
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Self-fulfilling Prophecy
 Occurs
when our expectations about another person
cause that person to act in a way that is consistent with
those expectations
 e.g., a person who expects people to be friendly, may
smile more and thus receive more smiles
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QUESTIONS?
Case: Nupath Foods
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Form groups of 5 to 6 people
How does perception play a role in this case?
(ie. What perceptual problems or errors have
occurred?)
Be prepared to report back to the class
Summary
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Intelligence is very, very important, but it is not the
only factor that will affect performance
There are different tools available to influence
other people’s behaviour
Being aware of perceptual errors is important for
recruitment and retention efforts
For Next Class
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Read chapter 4 on values, attitudes, and work
behaviours
*** Remember your namecard ***