Social Perceptions And Attributions

Chapter 07

How important is the Perception Process???

Perception can be the source of communication distortion and conflict between people from different cultures. The perception process influences much more than the impressions people make about each other.

Perception –

 A Cognitive Process  Process of interpreting one’s environment  Major function – To recognize objects

Social Cognition –

 A study of how people make sense of others and themselves  How they think about people  Depends heavily on cognitive psychology

Stage 1 – Selective Attention/Comprehension Stage 2 – Encoding and Simplification Stage 3 – Storage and Retention Stage 4 – Retrieval and Response

Attention  is the process of becoming consciously aware of something or someone.  it can be focused on information either from the environment or from memory. Salient Stimuli  something is salient when it stands out from its context  one’s needs and goals often dictate which stimuli are salient.

Encoding is required because observed information

is not stored in its original form. In encoding, raw information is interpreted and or interpreted into mental representations. Schema – represents a persons mental picture or summary of particular event or type of stimulus. Encoding Outcomes or the interpretations usually vary.

This phase involves storage of information in

long term memory. Long Term memory is made up of the following wings: Event Memory  Semantic Memory  People Memory

People retrieve information from memory

when they make judgments and decisions. Ultimate judgments are either based on the  process of drawing on, interpreting, and integrating categorical information stored in long term memory.  or on retrieving a summary judgment already made in the past.

2 – MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS  Social cognition is the window through which we all observe,

interpret, and prepare our responses to people & events. A wide variety of managerial activities, organizational processes, & quality-of-life issues are thus affected by Perception. Consider, for example, the following Implications.  HIRING  PERFORMANSCE APPRAISAL  LEADERSHIP  COMMUNICATION  PHYSICAL & PSYCOLOGICAL WELL-BEING  WEB PAGES

3- STEREOTYPES: PERCEPTIONS ABOUT GROUP OF PEOPLE

Is an individual's set of beliefs about the

characteristics or attributes of a group. Stereotypes are not always negative. For ex , the belief that engineers are good at math is certainly part of a stereotype. Stereotypic characteristics are used to differentiate a particular group of people from other groups.

STEREOTYPING IS A FOUR-STEP PROCESS  Begins with categorizing people into groups  Infer that all people within a particular category possess

the same traits or characteristics  Then form expectations of others & interpret their behavior according to stereotypes  Finally, stereotypes are maintained by * Overestimating the frequency of stereotypic behaviors exhibited by others * Incorrectly explaining expected & unexpected behaviors * Differentiating minority individuals from oneself.

4- SEX-ROLE STEREOTYPES Is the belief that differing traits & abilities make

men and women particularly well suited to different roles.

AGE STEREOTYPES Age stereotypes reinforce age discrimination

because of their negative orientation RACIAL & ETNIC STEREOTYPES