Week 3| Perception, attribution and decision making Flashcards
What is perception?
Perception is a process of organising and interpreting sensory data to make sense of our understanding vis-a-vis the environment
What form the basis of behaviour in most of our lives?
The perception of reality form the basis of behaviour in most aspects of our lives (Especially when making unconscious decisions where we weigh up the consequences of our actions)
What 2 other responses of our own does perception impact?
Cognitive and emotional
What limits are there apart from physiological limits to perception? What do humans find from data?
There are also psychological and social limits
Humans are very good at recognising patterns from very limited data. But these patterns become fixed and we have difficulty seeing anything else.
Thus, we are not very good at dealing with complexity and ambiguity
Our background education n social upbringing also impact our perception or ourselves and others.
What is an attribution error in organisations?
A common attribution error is we often associate our own successes with internal factors and failures with external factors
Vice versa with other people such as associating their successes with external factors and failures with internal factors
What do decisions determine and what laws do they follow?
Decisions determine behaviours and it follows three sets of laws:
- decision makers have all the information they need to make decisions
- decision makers are smart
- decision makers agree upon what needs to be done
What steps are involved in the rational decision making theory?
- identify the problem
- Choose the best decision process
- Discover or develop possible choices
- Select the choice with the highest value
- Implemented the selected choice
- Evaluate the selected choice
What are the unrealistic assumptions made on managers? What is the reality
Information and uncertainty: assumption that managers are aware of all alternative courses and their consequences
Limited managerial abilities: assumption that managers possess the expertise and intellectual capability not only to evaluate all the possible alternative choices but to select the best solution
Reality is: Managers possess limited capacity to gather and process all information to make decisions
What are the criticisms on the rational decision making model?
Managers may have disagreement on alternatives.
Decision making: Bounded rationality ? What process is decision making?
Individuals can never make decision son a truly rational basis as they always have limited information processing capabilities
Decision making is always a social process
We are thus acting on the basis of incomplete information that exists in a social context and our biases then further shape the conclusions we draw
What is satisficing?
Simon states that satisficing is the basis where we make decisions that satisfy certain minimum standards
What are the 7 decision making biases?
- Confirmation biases: We sees what confirms our assumption and suits our desired course of sction
- The Halo Effect: We assume that if someone is good (bad) at something, then they will be good (bad) at everything
- Anchoring: The tendency to use the first piece of infromation we come across as the compsrison for subsequent experiences
- Availability: The tendency of people to base judgments from the information readily available to them
- Escalation of commitment: An increased commitment to a previous decision in spite of negative information
- Cultural biases: We rely on taken for granted conventions to make the decision for us
- Social conformity biases: We often change our opinions to fit in
What are some organisational impact of biases?
Interviews are a poor predictor of performance but we still rely heavily on them
Performance management: We tend to overestimate the performance of above average performers and underestimate the performances of below average performers
What is heuristics and what are some heuristics?
Heuristics: rule of thumb or institutionalised decision rules
Formal decision making rules: first look then look right
Experiential decision making rules: how fast traffic travels
Culturally based decision making rules: do other road users obey the rules, “jay-walking”
What do we remember when trusting our gut instinct?
Combining formal, experiential and cultural rules
