Perception is defined as the process by which persons interprets and organize their sensory impressions in order to provide signification to their surroundings.
Because the behavior of people depend on their perception of what realness is, not the realness itself. The world that is behaviorally important is the world that is perceived.
Factors Influencing Perception
Following are the factors that influence perception.
- Target
- Perceiver
- Situation
The interpretation is heavily influenced by the personal features of the individual perceiver, when an individual looks at a target and attempts to interpret what he or she views.
See Also: Factors Influencing Organizational Process
The motives, attitudes, past experiences, interests and expectations are the more relevant personal characteristics affecting perception of the perceiver.
What is being perceived can also be affected by the characteristics of the target. This would contain gregariousness, attractiveness and tendency to group same things together.
Nature of Perception
The process of perception contains target of perception, which means what perceiver construe, the perceiver, the person making the interpretation and the situation in which perception takes place.
The target can be a situation, an event, an idea, a group of people, a noise or another person. In organizational behavior, the process of perceiving another person or person perception plays an important role.
Internal & External Attributions
Causal explanations for behaviors can be either external attributions, behavior assigned to factors outside the individual, or internal attributions, behavior caused by some characteristics of the target.
Effort, ability and personality are common internal attributions. Poor relations with the coworkers may be attributed to personality and poor performance may be attributed to the lack of ability & effort.
Chance, luck and easy tasks are common external attributions. The accomplishment of employee may be considered as stroke of luck.
How people respond to behavior is determined by whether attributions are external or internal. Subsequent actions are influenced by the attributions people create for their own behavior.
A successful employee who attributes success to ability enhances confidence whereas who attributes outcome to luck remains unaffected.
The Link between Perception and Individual Decision Making
Decisions are made in organizations by individuals. Choices are made among two or more alternatives by the persons.
- The organization’s objectives are determined by the top managers, how best to finance operations, what products or services to offer or where to locate a new manufacturing plant.
- Production schedules are determined by the middle and lower-level managers along with decision about how pay raises are to be allocated and selection of new employees.
- Decisions can also be made by non-managerial workers like how much effort to put forward once at work, whether or not to come to work at a given day and whether or not to comply with a request made by the boss.
- Non-managerial employees have been empowering with job-related decision-making authority by a number of organizations in a recent year that historically was reserved for managers.
- Discrepancy exists between some desired state and some current state of affairs, needing consideration of alternative courses of action.
- It is perceptual problem that the awareness that an issue exists and that a decision requires to be made.
- The interpretation and evaluation of information is required in every decision. These two problems will be address by the perceptions of the decision maker.
- From multiple resources, data are typically received.
- Which information is not relevant to the decision and which are?
- Alternatives will be built, and the weaknesses & strengths of each will require to be evaluated.
Social Perception & Barriers to Social Perception
Social perception is defined as the processes, through which persons struggle to integrate, unite and interpret information about others.
See Also: Importance of Organizational Behavior
Perception is also affected by social status, a target’s perceived or real position in an organization or society.
As compared to low-status targets, high-status targets are perceived as more knowledgeable, credible and responsible.
Because the audience perceives high-status target as credible, organizations use them to make presentations and public announcements.
Barriers to Social Perception
Selective Perception
- The probability that an object, person or event will be perceived will increase by the characteristic that make them stand out.
- It is not possible for a person to absorb everything that he views. He can take in only particular stimuli.
Halo Effect
- When someone draws general impression on the basis of a single feature, halo effect happens.
- When students appraise their classroom instructor, this phenomenon occurs.
- A single trait may be given prominence by the students like enthusiasm and who permit their whole evaluation to be tainted by how they evaluate the instructor on that one trait.
Stereotyping
- On the basis of the perception of the group someone belongs, judging someone on that basis is said to be stereotyping.
- Generalization is not without benefits. It permits someone to maintain consistency and it is a means of simplifying complex world. When someone inaccurately stereotype, problem occur.
- Someone frequently hears comments that show stereotypes in organizations on the basis of age, gender, ethnicity, race and even weight.
