Lecture 3: Chapter 3: Perceiving Ourselves and Others in Organizations Flashcards
What is the self-concept?
An individual’s self-beliefs and self-evaluations
What 3 characteristics belong with the self-concept? What happens when all three are present?
- Complexity: number of separate roles that a person sees in himself
- Consistency: degree to which personality/values differ per role
- Clarity: degree to which a person has clearly defined his self-concept
If all three present, better psychological well-being
What is a positive and a negative aspect of high self-concept complexity?
+: helps to adapt
-: too much variation causes internal tension and conflict
What is a benefit of having a low self-concept complexity?
Less stressful and less resources necessary –> Better work performance, lower absenteeism and turnover
Which of the 3 characteristics of self-concept is most important for leadership? What is a benefit and a negative thing about this?
Clarity:
+: feel less threatened by interpersonal conflict so they’re better at solving conflicts
-: role inflexibility –> poor adaptation
What are the 4 processes that shape self-concept and motivate a person’s decisions and behavior?
- Self-enhancement
- Self-verification
- Self-evaluation
- Social self/social identity
What is self-enhancement?
A person’s inherent motivation to have a positive self-concept and to have others perceive him favorably
E.g. being competent, pretty, ethical, important
What is self-verification? Why would a person do that?
A person’s inherent motivation to confirm and maintain his or her existing self-concept
Why: reassurance of stabilized self-view which influences actions/thoughts
What is the advantage and disadvantage of high self-enhancement?
+: Better mental/physical health
-: overestimate future outcomes and make wrong decisions
What is the difference between self-enhancement and self-verification?
Both attempt to improve the self-concept, but with self-verification the feedback you receive can also be negative
How does self-verification affect organizational behavior? Name 3 ways
- Perceptually: employees remember info consistent with self-concept
- Individuals with higher clarity often dismiss feedback that contradicts their self-concept
- Teamwork: employees more motivated to interact with others who agree with their self-views, which leads to better relationships
What are the 3 factors of self-evaluation?
- Self-esteem
- Self-efficacy
- Locus of control
What is self-esteem and how is it related to self-evaluation? What is global self-esteem?
Extent to which people are satisfied with themselves
The higher the self-esteem, the more positive the self-evaluation
Global self-esteem = overall evaluation of oneself from all the different roles/contexts
What is self-efficacy? What is general self-efficacy?
Individual’s beliefs about completing a task successfully
General self-efficacy = people believe they can be successful across different situations
What is a locus of control and what is the difference between internal and external?
General beliefs about how much control they have over personal life events
Internal: personal events are caused by personal characteristics
External: personal events are caused by external environmental characteristics (fate, luck)
When can you best observe the locus of control?
In new situations where individual’s ability to control the situation is tested
What is a characteristic of a person with an internal locus of control?
More positive self-evaluation
At what three levels does an individual’s self-concept exist?
Individual - relational - collective
What two opposing human motives influence how people view themselves? Which type of self-concept and identity belongs with each?
- Motivation to be distinctive from others
- Personal identity and internal self-concept - Motivation for inclusion and assimilation with others
- Social identity and external self-concept
What is the social identity theory?
People define themselves by the groups to which they belong to or have an emotional attachment with
Social identity is a combination of different factors arranged in a hierarchy of importance.
How is the importance of factors in the social identity theory determined?
- One’s minority status in a group
- Group’s status in society because associations with the group bring on self-enhancement
What characteristics concerning selfconcept does an individual have to be more likely to be a team-player and be more susceptible to peer pressure?
They have a selfconcept defined on social identities
What characteristics concerning self-concept does an individual have to be more likely to speak against majorities and are not big team players?
They have a selfconcept defined on personal identity
What are contrasting groups of:
1. Shell company employees
2. American citizens
3. Harvard graduates
- Employees at other companies
- Citizens from other countries
- Graduates from other schools
How does self-concept influence organizational behavior?
Self-concept influences perceptions, decision making, motivation, stress, leadership and several other topics concerning organizational behavior
What is selective attention? Where does this depend on?
Attending to some information received by our senses and ignoring other information
Depends on the person observing, the observed object and the environment
What is the confirmation bias?
Only paying attention to info that confirms our existing beliefs and information that is in line with our norms and values
What is categorical thinking? Name 3 aspects
- Ordening the world in categories helps it to make sense of the world
-Happens unconsciously, what can be a problem
- Helps us store info in our long-term memory
What are mental models?
Knowledge constructs that we develop to describe, explain and predict the world around us
What is stereotyping?
Assigning traits to people based on the groups they belong to
Why do we stereotype? Name 3 aspects
- Categorical thinking: Simplify the world around us. This is essential to survive and predict the environment/behavior of others
- Predict other’s behavior and fulfills drive to comprehend
- Support self-enhancement and social identity
Name 3 ways we can compare different groups to each other
- Categorization: placing people into groups
- Homogenization: people within each group are similar
- Differentiation: more favorable characteristics for own group than other group, motivated by self-enhancement
What are 2 problems with stereotypes?
- Doesn’t do justice to the variation between people in the same and different groups
- Stereotype threat –> self-fulfilling prophecy
What is the attribution process in the attribution theory? What is the difference between external and internal factors?
Perceptual process of forming beliefs about whether an observed behavior or event is caused largely by internal or external factors
Internal = personality, IQ
External = environment
What are the three attribution rules for deciding which of the two options, internal or external, we assign to behavior?
- Consistency: in the same situation, the same person acts the same way (high consis.)
- Distinctiveness: in different situations, the same person acts this way(low dist)
- Consensus: different people act this way in the same situation (high consensus)
What is the difference between internal and external attribution applying the 3 attribution rules?
Internal: person
-> high consistency, low differentiation, low consensus
External: environment
-> low consistency, high differentiation, high consensus
What is the self-serving bias in the process of attribution?
Tendency to assign positive outcomes to internal factors and negative outcomes (failures) to external factors
What is the fundamental attribution bias?
Tendency to attribute a person’s behavior mostly to his/her actions
What is the correspondence bias/fundamental attribution error? Why does this happen?
Tendency to emphasize internal causes of another person’s behavior and neglect external causes of person’s behavior
Why: we can’t see the external factors that influence someone’s behavior + we like to think people as sources of own behavior
–> Attribution problem behavior to internal causes resolves ambiguous situation easily
What is the attribution rule that influences our confidence in the attribution belief?
What attribution rules influence whether we believe actions are caused by internal/external factors?
Consistency
Distinctiveness/consensus
What is a halo effect?
Perceptual error whereby our general impression of a person colors our perception of other characteristics of that person
What is the false-consensus effect?
Perceptual error in which we overestimate the extent to which others have beliefs and characteristics similar to our own
What is the recency effect?
A perceptual error in which most recent info dominates our perception of others
What is the primacy effect?
Perceptual error in which we quickly form an opinion of people based on the first info we receive about them
How can we improve perceptions? Name 3 ways
- Inprove awareness of perceptual biases
- Improvement of self-awareness
- Meaningful interaction
What are the effects of awareness training and for which aspects of perception distortion is this not effective?
Effects:
- less impact of bias on perception
- improve cultural sensitivity
No effects:
- Selffulfilling prophecy, halo, primacy effects
How can awareness training backfire? In what organizations is the risk the largest?
Teaching people to reject incorrect stereotypes can have the effect of reinforcing reliance on those stereotypes
Risk in organizations that lack inclusive culture
What is the Johari Window? What is disclosure and what is feedback?
Model that aims to decrease blind and hidden spots in our perception by identifying what information is and isn’t known to a person and others –> increase open window
Disclosure = reduce hidden area: informing others of your beliefs
Feedback = reduce blind area: feedback from others about your behavior
–> Improvement of self-awareness
What are the 4 windows in the Johari window model?
Open: known for everyone
Blind: known to others
Hidden: known to you
Unknown: known to nobody
What do disclosure and feedback lead to in the Johari Window theory?
Larger open area and occasionally revelations in the unknown area
What do the Johari Window and Implicit Association test improve? What are 2 problems that arise with it?
Self-awareness, which can minimize biases by being more open minded
Problems:
1. Implicit biases are difficult to prevent, because they activate automatically
2. People become more sensitized/self-conscious
What is the contact hypothesis?
People who interact with different others will be less likely to be biased because they have acquired personal understanding of the other people
–> Improve self-awareness through meaningful interaction
What is a global mindset?
Individual’s ability to perceive, appreciate and empathize with people from other cultures and to process complex cross-cultural information
What are the 5 elements of a global mindset?
- Adopting a global perspective, understand intercultural problems and solve them
- Empathizing and acting effectively across cultures
- Processing complex info about new environments
- Developing new multilevel mental models
- Consciousness, openness and respect
What is the self-concept model?
Three C’s: complexity, consistency, clarity
4 selves: self-enhancement, self-verification, self-evaluation, social self
What is perception?
The process of receiving information about and making sense of the world around us
What is a downside of mental models?
Make it difficult to see the world in different ways
What is the importance of the attribution process?
Improves our mental model of causation, modulates our responses
What are two ways to improve self-awareness?
- Implicit association test (IAT)
- Johari Window
Under which 4 conditions does contact between people from different groups reduce perceptual errors?
- Equal status
- Personal interaction
- Cooperative activities
- Social norms
