Organizational Behavior - Exam 4

• Physical Attractiveness: Better looking treated better.
• Clothing: Dress for Success, not self-expression
• Grooming: Overall attractiveness enhanced w/ grooming changes.
• Height: Slightly correlated w/ earnings.
• Weight: Overweight people earn less & less likely to be hired.

• Eye Contact: Varies by Region/culture/Gender
• Spatial Relationship: Social Space, Touch, Spatial Arrangements.
• Body Language:  Gestures, postures, movements by which a person or animal communicated w/ others.
• Facial Expressions: Some emotions are more easily distinguished from each other.
• Verbal Expressions: Accent, grammar
• Conventions in Speaking: Terminology and expressions, Use of first names, physical aspects of voice.
• People's Names: Names evoke images and stereotypes.

• Age
• Gender
• Race
• Religion
• Occupation
• Physical handicaps
• Hair
• Smell

We seek to understand, give meaning to, the world around us.

It's as much dependent on the perceiver as the person or object being perceived. We alter the information we take in.

Simplified conception or image of a person or group.

• Everyone Uses them:
• Natural: Mental categorizing is the natural process of organizing our perceptions.
• Ignoring the process is unproductive: Negative views of stereotyping cloud our ability to understand people's actual behavior and impair awareness of our own stereotypes.

• Consciously Held: Unconscious stereotypes are difficult to evaluate and modify/discard.
• Descriptive rather than evaluative: Should describe differences rather than judge them.
• Accurate: Must be representative of the norm for a particular group.
• Best first guess: An initial guide, prior to obtaining more info.
• Refer to individuals not groups: Most effective social perception relates to the actual people involved.
• Modifiable: Based on further observation and experience, must be willing to modify inaccurate stereotypes.

We form an overall or global impression and do not form a separate impression of each part.

• A manifestation of the Gestalt Principle
• "A perceiver uses a general impression of favorableness or unfavorableness as the basis for judgments about more specific traits"
• ie. an employee who is disliked will have difficulty obtaining a favorable review.

• Tendency to link certain traits.
• ex. Person who is judged to be aggressive is likely also to be seen as being energetic.

• "A tendency to ascribe our own feelings or attributes to others."
• Defense Mechanism: Helps us to protect ourselves from unpleasant or unacceptable truths.
• Assumed Similarity: We may assume that other people are more like us than they really are.

• Different views of the same person.
• Since perception is an active process, the same person may be perceived differently by different individuals.

Artist, different circumstances and narrator interviews viewers of him in different situations, often making wrong assumptions.

• "Tendency to attend only to specific information b/c of strong prior expectations."
• Ex. Managers tend to interpret problem situations in light of their own backgrounds.
• Ex. Buying a new car and suddenly seeing that car on the road.

• "The act of altering perceptions to avoid an unpleasant reality."
• Ex. Interviews w/ witness after a fight, they saw different things.
• Ex. Impressions of a person's intelligence may be higher or lower b/c of his/her job classification.

• Perceptual Set: A group of things that go together based on our system of categorization.
• Hard to Break: They program us to think in certain ways.
• Example: Riddles, hard to crack b/c we're programmed to think in certain ways.

Understanding how things are caused.

People perceive behavior as being caused either by the individual in question (internal causality) or by the environment (external causality).

• People w/ higher status are thought to have more internal causality.
• Effort, those who put forth more effort is attributed more internal causality.

• Fundamental Attribution Error: We often attribute internal causality to other's behavior, especially when there is misfortune.
• Self-Serving bias: attributions regarding ourselves. When outcomes are positive we take credit (internal causality) When outcomes are negative we tend to blame our failures on environmental factors (external causality)

• Sources of Information:
• Agreement: degree to which other's behaviors are similar to the observed person.
• Consistency: Degree to which the observed person behaves in a similar manner on similar occasions.
• Distinctiveness: Degree to which the observed person behaves similarly in comparatively different settings.

• Example: complaints about a supervisor.
• -Coworker complains, but no one else does= Low agreement.
• -Coworker always complains about the supervisor = high consistency.
• -Coworker complains about all his past supervisors = Low distinctiveness.

Low agreement + high consistency + low distinctiveness = Internal attribution: coworker is generally antagonistic towards supervisors.

A person perceives or anticipates threat, to feelings or self worth.

• Decreased communication: Focus shifts from listening to defending and restoring feelings or self worth.
• Defensive behaviors engender defensiveness in others:  The ensuing viscous cycle becomes increasingly destructive. (argument)
• Defensive individuals distort what they receive: Become less able to perceive the sender's motives and emotions.
• Defensive behavior is easily noticed in others: When we are defensively aroused we blame the other person.

• Evaluative Communication: The person seems to be evaluating or judging the individual.
• Descriptive Communication: A genuine seeking and giving of information.
• *Since people often expect defensive communication we must reassure them that we have no hidden motives.

• Control: Legalistic insistence on detail, overt persuasion, nonverbal behaviors. Noncontrollers must earn the perception that they have no hidden motives.
• Problem Orientation: Sender communicates the desire to collaborate on a mutual problem.

• Strategy Communication: Sender is perceived as engaged in a stratagem (scheme or trick) involving hidden motivation in order to manipulate others.
• Irritation occurs when the sender tries to make the stratagem appear spontaneous. 
• Another tactic is "one-upmanship" used to provide information to others.
• Spontaneous Communication: Straightforward, honest, free of deceptions.

• Neutral communications: This is a clinical, detached, attitude that some managers and healthcare professionals who think they need in order to remain "Objective"
• This communicates to the listener, however, a lack of concern for their welfare.
• Empathetic Communications: Empathy = Feeling with. 
• Communicates empathy for the feelings and respect for the worth of the individual. (I care about what you're saying.)

• Superiority Communications: If one communicates superiority in wealth, intellectual ability, or physical characteristics, the message is that the other is inferior.
• Equality Communications: Though differences exist, the low defense communicator seems to attach little importance to such distinctions.

• Certainty Communications: The effects of dogmatism.
• Those who are certain communicate no desire for additional info.
• Others then feel as though their input is valueless and so are they.
• Provisional Communications: The sender communicates a desire to experiment w/ his own ideas and listen to the other's point of view.

We should seek to reduce defensiveness b/c defensiveness interferes w/ effective communication.

• "Use of words that describe static characteristics that exist 'within' individuals."
• Ex. John is stupid

• Expectations: Regarding the labeled person. (SFP)
• Defensiveness: Feeling of self-worth are threatened. Labeling seen as evaluating.
• Labels can be self-defeating: Even when positive and even when we only use them on ourselves. Ex. "I'm creative" = Have to always come up w/ own answers and own ways, thus limiting.

• Translate labels into a language of feelings and objectives.
• In order to do this we must develop skills in four areas

• Ability to note time and situation contexts in which the behavior occurs.
• Ability to make observations of behavior without labeling or interpreting it.
• Ability to report one's affective state.
• Ability to report one's desires.

• Give the following:
• Time context
• Situation Context
• Observation without labeling/interpreting
• Reporting of affective state.
• Reporting your desire.

• Usually conducted in as real-life situations as possible.
• Label detection exercises: detect and list the typical (usually hidden) labels they and others use.
• Label transformation exercises: Use the combined example to translate labels into a language of feelings and objectives.

• Job Analysis
• Job Design
• Human Resource Planning
• Recruitment
• Selection

• Training
• Individual Development
• Individual Career Planning
• Performance Appraisal
• Organizational Development

• Direct Financial Payments: wages, salaries, incentives and bonuses.
• Indirect Financial Payments: Employer paid insurance, vacations, pension plans, ect
• Best use of Compensation Systems: Legal considerations, union influences, esablishing pay rates, ect

• Unsafe Conditions: Main cause of accidents
• Unsafe Acts: Second main cause of accidents, reduce by;

• Emphasizing safety
• Establishing safety policy
• Selection and placement of employees
• Training
• Motivation

• Identifying Health Hazards
• Industrial hygiene programs (Recognition, Evaluation, Control)
• Employee created health problems (diseases, alcoholism and substance abuse.)
• Stress, burnout and depression
• Computer related health problems
• Workplace smoking

• Violence at work
• Nature of work
• Risk Management
• Terrorist threats.

• Employment laws
• Country Differences

• Criteria: are measures of job success. ie. The evaluative standard.
• Predictors: Selection devices used in your organization. Include tests, interviews, application blanks, letters of recommendations, ect

• Concurrent Validation: use present employees.
• Predictive Validation: Longitudinal method, you hire applications using current selection techniques and administer the selection device when they are hired, then again after a while on the job.

• Correlation: Magnitude of relationship indicated by the coefficient
• Regression: is a way of representing the TYPE of relationship. Predict the future.
• Test of Statistical Significance: Determine with a certain level of confidence that our correlation coefficient is representative, and not due to chance.

Goes beyond correlation and statistical significance and asks does the use of the selection device improve the quality of applicants being hired over current methods.

The degree to which the use of a selection device improves the quality of people being selected beyond what would have occurred had the device not been used.

SR= Number of job openings / Number of applicants

Absolutely no value.

• A/(A+D) - (A+C)/(A+B+C+D)
• Percent Successful using predictor - Percent presently Successful

• Multiple Correlation Approach: Using multiple correlation and regression weights.
• Multiple Cutoff Approach: predictors are utilized one at a time rather than in composite.
• Multiple Hurdle Approach: Predictors are used sequentially.

Utility of a selection program is an index of its efficiency. Calculate the monetary value of the new selection program.

• Number of employees to be hired.
• Relative costs of hiring by old an new programs
• Anticipated level of job performance by old and new programs.
• Dollar value of the job performed.

Process of teaching employees the basic skills they need to perform their jobs.

• Individuals differ in ability to learn
• Motivation
• Active practice of material
• Massed vs. Distributed practice
• Whole vs Part learning
• Transfer of training to the job.
• Knowledge of results
• Reinforcement

• OJT: Appreniceships, Internships, Job roations
• Behavior Modeling: observe others
• Simulations: representative of real-life.
• Classroom Instruction: Lectures.
• Audiovisual Training: audio tapes, cd-rom, videos
• Computer Based: Use of computers
• Business Games & Case Studies: designed to develop employees management skills. 
• Experiential Programs: Learn concepts then apply
• Team Training: work together achieving common goal.
• Action Planning: actual problem, work on solving it.
• Special Purposes: Literacy, Aids, Values trianing.. ect