Chapter 6 Vocab Flashcards
Perception
A process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment.
Attribution Theory
An attempt to determine whether an individual’s behavior is internally or externally caused.
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 and put the blame for failures on external factors.
Selective Perception
The tendency to selectively interpret what one sees on the basis of one’s interests, background, experience, and attitudes.
Halo Effect
The tendency to draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single characteristic.
Contrast Effect
Evaluation of a person’s characteristics that is affected by comparisons with other people recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics.
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 a person inaccurately perceives a second person, and the resulting expectations cause the second person to behave in ways consistent with the original perception.
Decisions
Choices made from among two or more alternatives.
Problem
A discrepancy between the current state of affairs and some desired state.
Rational
Characterized by 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.
Bounded Rationality
A process of making decisions by constructing simplified models that extract the essential features from problems without capturing all their complexity.
Intuitive Decision Making
An unconscious process created out of distilled experience.
Anchoring Bias
A tendency to fixate on initial information, from which one then fails to adequately adjust for subsequent information.
Confirmation Bias
The tendency to seek out information that reaffirms past choices and discount information that contradicts past judgments.
Availability Bias
The tendency for people to base their judgments on information that is readily available to them.
Escalation of Commitment
An increased commitment to a previous decision in spite of negative information.
Randomness Error
The tendency of individuals to believe that they can predict the outcome of random events.
Risk Aversion
The tendency to prefer a sure gain of a moderate amount over a riskier outcome, even if the riskier outcome might have a higher expected payoff.
Hindsight Bias
The tendency to believe falsely, after an outcome of an event is actually known, that one would have accurately predicted that outcome.
Utilitarianism
A system in which decisions are made to provide the greatest good for the greatest number.
Whistle-Blowers
Individuals who report unethical practices by their employer to outsiders.
Behavioral Ethics
Analyzing how people actually behave when confronted with ethical dilemmas.
Creativity
The ability to produce novel and useful ideas.
Three-stage Model of Creativity
The proposition that creativity involves three stages: causes (creative potential and creative environment), creative behavior, and creative outcomes (innovation).
Problem Formulation
The stage of creative behavior which involved identifying problem or opportunity that requires a solution that is as yet unknown.
Information Gathering
The stage of creative behavior when possible solutions to a problem incubate in individual’s mind.
Idea Generation
The process of creative behavior that involves developing possible solutions to a problem from relevant information and knowledge.
Idea Evaluation
The process of creative behavior involving the evaluation of potential solutions to problems to identify the best one.
What is perception, and what factors influence our perception?
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What is attribution theory? What are the three determinants of attribution? What are the implications of attribution theory for explaining organizational behavior?
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What shortcuts do people frequently use in making judgments about others?
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What is the link between perception and decision making? How does one affect the other?
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What is the rational model of decision making? How is it different from bounded rationality and intuition?
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What are some common decision biases or errors people make?
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How do individual differences and organizational constraints influence decision making?
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What are the three ethical decision criteria, and how do they differ?
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What is creativity, and what is the three-stage model of creativity?
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