Chapter 3: Perceiving Ourselves in Organizations Flashcards
Self concept
- definition
- current vs. desired
- 3 levels of self-concept
hint: not only how we view ourselves, but how we assess ourselves!
an individual’s self-beliefs and self-evaluations. The questions to ask is “Who am i? How do I feel about myself?”.
The self-concept guides our DECISIONS and ACTIONS. Self-concept is divided into current (perceived) and desired (ideal).
3 levels of self-concept:
- Individual = personality traits
- Relational = connections to friends and coworkers
- Collective = membership in teams, organization, social groups, and other entities
Self Concept characteristics - 3 C’s
- example pietro boselli
- COMPLEXITY = the number of distinct roles or identities that people perceive about themselves (= we have multiple selves). For example, a student, a son, a football fan. Complexity increases with the number of selves and when there is high separation among selves (e.g., not all about work). Self-expansion = motivation to increase one’s complexity. People are generally motivated to increase their complexity.
- CONSISTENCY = the degree to which identities require similar personal attributes. It is higher when multiple selves require similar attributes (= personality traits, values, etc.) and a person’s attributes are compatible with self-concept.
- CLARITY = the degree to which a person’s self-concept is clear, confidently defined, and stable. Clarity is higher with age, if an individual has consistent multiple selves, with self-reflection.
An example, Pietro Boselli who is both a model, a PhD student, and a mathematics lecturer. He successfully manages both roles!
Outcomes of self-concept characteristics (How the 3’C affect us)
- mental health
- individual performance (complexity and clarity)
- People have better well-being with
a. High complexity (multiple selves)
b. High consistency selves (all agree with each other)
c. High clarity (well-established selves) - Effects on individual behavior and performance
a. Complexity
i. High = more adaptive, diverse networks, more stressful
ii. Low = more resources to develop identities
b. Clarity
i. High = better performance, leadership, career development, less threatened in conflict
ii. Very high = role inflexibility!
The four processes (four “selves” –> deriving from 3 C’s) - OVERVIEW
(how we “check” ourselves)
These four processes shape self-concept and motivate a person’s decisions and behavior.
- Self-enhancement
- Self-verification
- Self-evaluation
- Social Self
- Self-enhancement (The four selves - how we check ourselves)
- definition
- advantages and disadvantages
= a person’s inherent motivation to have a positive self-concept (and to have others perceive him or her favorably). For example, being competent, attractive, lucky, ethical, and important. The general trend is that successful companies strive to help employees feel values.
+ Better mental health
+ Overconfidence –> can do beliefs –> higher motivation (= persistence in difficult/risky tasks)
- Unsafe behaviors, riskier decisions
- Slow recognition of mistakes (repeating bad decisions)
- Inflated perceived personal credit (“we succeeded because of me”)
- Self-verification (The four selves)
- definition
- applications
- self-enhancement vs. self- verification
= motivation to confirm and maintain self-concept. The purpose is to stabilize our self-concept. For example, employees actively communicating their self-concepts, so coworkers understand it and provide verifying feedback (not necessarily flattering in the case of self-enhancement).
Self-verification may be an employee who is more likely to remember info if it is consistent with his/her self-concept, or it is more likely to dismiss the feedback if it contradicts with it. You are also more likely to interact with those who affirm yourself.
SELF ENHANCEMENT VS. SELF VERIFICATION
- You joined the BSC in Math because you have high grades in math in high school, you joined the group with Marco and Tim because they think you are smart, you don’t play football because you are a bad runner.
- Vs. You asked Marco and Tim what they think about your part of the group project, you did GMAT 1 year in advance to understand how hard you should study to obtain 700.
- Self-evaluation (The four selves)
- 3 elements (3 things we “check” of ourselves)
= is defined by the three elements
a. SELF-ESTEEM = global self-evaluation = the extent to which people like, respect, and are satisfied with themselves. This can differ across multiple identities (= bad driver, good husband). Global self-esteem is the overall evaluation coming from different identities. An individual with high self-esteem is less influences by others, more persistent and more logical thinking.
b. SLEF-EFFICACY = a person’s belief that he/she has the ability motivation, correct role perceptions, and favorable situation to complete a task successfully. General self-efficacy is the “can do” belief across situations. Self-efficacy is an individual’s perception regarding the MASR model in a specific situation.
c. LOCUS OF CONTROL = a person’s general belief about the amount of control he/she has over personal life elements. Locus of control is the generalized belief but varies across different situations. Self-esteem is more self-centered, while self-efficacy is task specific.
Locus may be internal or external (there is a higher self-evaluation with internal locus of control).
- INTERNAL = I succeeded because I’m smart and beautiful, I succeeded because I worked hard, I succeeded because I’m a good manager
- EXTERNAL = I succeeded because others helped me, I succeeded because it was an easy task, I succeeded because of the circumstances.
- Social Self (The four selves) - SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY
- definition
- personal vs. social identity
= A theory that people define themselves by groups to which they belong or have an emotional attachment to. Originally founded by Henri Tajfel and John Turner.
This theory is characterized by two opposing motives:
a. Personal identity = define self as unique and distinctive
b. Social identity = define self as socially connected to groups (collective identity).
Groups form a social identity when they are easily identified, have a high status and your minority status in a situation highlights the group.
- Social identity = a complex combination of any membership to a group arranged in a hierarchy of importance (gender, age, Bocconi student) you first identify yourself with a minority and then with an organization.
- Importance is determined by easily identifiable/visible traits, numerical minority status, high status.
Perception (def)
Perception = the process of RECEIVING information about and MAKINGSENSE of the world around us.
Selective attention (def)
Selective attention = selecting vs. ignoring sensory information.
This is affected by CHARACTERISTICS of the perceiver, the object perceived, and the CONTEXT. EMOTIONS markets (emotions we experience when we perceive something; are later reproduced when we are recalling the perceived info (it helps us store the info in memory).
Look at the example of the racoon or the gorilla playing basketball!!
Take away!! We take things from our environment and interpret them in our brain, but we only choose to pay attention to certain details over others.
Perceptual organization and interpretation (3 main process) –> HOW WE “ORGANIZE”
We need it because perceptual grouping processes reduce information volume and complexity.
- Categorical thinking = organizing people and objects into preconceived categories that are stored in our long-term memory. Perceptual grouping principles include similarity and proximity, closure (filling in missing pieces) and perceiving trends.
- Interpreting incoming information = EMOTIONAL markets automatically evaluate information (very quickly)
- Mental models = knowledge structures that we develop to describe, explain, and predict the world around us. It is important for sensemaking (filling in the missing pieces and predicting events) but it may block recognition of new opportunities and perspectives.
Specific PERCEPTUAL processes (4) - OVERVIEW (how we view others)
- Stereotyping
- Attribution process
- Self-fulfilling prophecy
- Other perceptual effects
- Stereotyping
(Specific perceptual processes)
- definition
- problems with stereotyping
- how to overcome stereotyping
= assigning traits to people in social categories. People stereotype BECAUSE OF SOCIAL CATEGORIES (categorical thinking!!!), drive to comprehend and predict other’s behavior, supports self-enhancement and social identity (through categorization, homogenization – assigning similar traits to certain groups, differentiation)
PROBLEMS WITH STEREOTYPING:
- overgeneralizing (do not represent everyone in category). homogenize
- stereotype threat, foundation of unintentional and intentional discrimination.
We can overcome stereotypes by ACTIVATION and APPLICATION.
Stereotypes may influence you to perform in a certain way (women are bad drivers, so you prophesize that stereotype – see point 3)
- Attribution process
(Specific perceptual processes)
HINT: INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL CAUSES
- definition
- internal attribution (definition)
- 3 factors of internal attribution (CDC) (not so relevant)
- 2 biases (one about us, one about the other)
= the perceptual process of deciding whether an observed behavior or event is caused largely by internal or external factors (= forming beliefs about the cause of behavior/event. Why did it happen?).
Internal attribution is attributing your behavior to your motivation or ability. We look at three factors of internal attribution (consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus).
Two biases:
a. Self-serving bias = tendency to attribute our successes to internal factors and our failures to external factors.
b. Fundamental attribution error = tendency to overemphasize internal causes of another person’s behavior compared to our own behavior (we fail to recognize our own flaws but put the blame on others!!).
- Self-fulfilling prophecy
(Specific perceptual processes)
- definition
- philosophy of the positive
= the perceptual process in which our expectations about another person can cause that person to act more consistently with our expectations.
For example, if your boss believes in you, you may work harder not to disappoint them (opposite – if they don’t believe in you, you may work less hard).
The self-fulfilling prophecy has the strongest effect at the beginning of the relationship, when several people have the same expectations of us, and when the employee has low rather than high past achievement.
The main lesson is the philosophy of the positive (the leaders need to develop and maintain a positive, yet realistic, expectation towards all employees in order to improve organizational success and individual well-being).
