Perception lecture slides...............

Perception: Applied.
• In organizational life and decision-making

Explain the Factors That Influence
Perception (1 of 2)
• Perception is a process by which individuals organize
and interpret their sensory impressions to give meaning
to their environment.
• It is important to the study of OB because people’s
behaviors are based on their perception of what reality
is, not on reality itself.

Copyright © 2023, 2019, 2017 Pearson Education, Inc.
Humans tend to group sensory
information
Which organizes their experiences

Gestalt
Principles of Perception
Jennifer Brooks

Gestalt Psychology
• Gestalt theory views human beings as open systems,
actively and constantly interacting with the environment
around them. Unlike the elementistic way of
understanding psychological events, such as behaviorism,
associationism, and psychoanalysis, Gestalt theory is
suited to understanding the order and structure of
psychological events.
• Gestalt theorists' basic belief was that any psychological
phenomenon, from perceptual processes to human
personality, should be studied holistically; that is, they
should not be broken down into components, but rather
studied as a whole.
• As a contrast to structural approaches, the Gestalt
psychologists studied perceptions as complete, indivisible
phenomena.

When we look at an image with repeated
elements, like the circles and squares in this
example, our brain will try to organize the
information. We create a visual pattern, of four
groups of circles and a plus sign of squares
instead of just a mass of shapes.

This example is similar to the last frame in that we
are still visually organizing the information into a
more simple pattern. The interesting thing to me is
that although it is a simple group of circles of the
same size, because of their black and white
values we put them into different visual
categories.

Max Wertheimer (1880-1943)
• The beginning of Gestaltism is attributed to
Wertheimer in 1910.
• While riding a train on a vacation, he comes
up with the idea that perceptions have
structures that sensory stimuli do not have.
• In other words, he started exploring the
idea that perceptions contain unique
properties which do not come from nor exist
in the environment (stimulus).

Monocular Cues
•Relative Size – smaller
image more distant

Relative Size

Monocular Cues –
• Interposition – if one object
partially blocks another, we
perceive it as closer.

Interposition

Monocular Cues
• Relative clarity – hazy objects
are seen as more distant.

Relative Clarity
Because light from distant objects passes through more
light than closer objects, we perceive hazy objects to be
farther away than those objects that appear sharp and clear

Monocular Cues
• Relative height – objects higher
in our field of vision appear
farther away; vertical longer
than horizontal.

Relative Height

Monocular Cues
•Linear Perspective – parallel
lines appear to converge
w/distance.

Linear Perspective

Monocular Cues
• Light & shadow (relative
brightness) – closer objects
appear brighter; shading
produces depth.

Light & Shadow

Motion Perception

26
Motion Perception: Objects traveling towards us grow in size and
those moving away shrink in size. The same is true when the
observer moves to or from an object.

Stroboscopic movement
The brain will interpret a rapid
series of slightly varying
images as continuous
movement.

Perceptual Constancy
• Perceiving objects as
unchanging even as
illumination & retinal images
change.

• Size – car driving away appear
smaller but doesn’t shrink

• Shape – look at a dinner plate from
various angles
• Lightness – shirt looks different in
different light

Perceptual Constancy –
Ponzo Illusion
The distant monster and top red bar
appear bigger because of distance cues.

36
Lightness Constancy
The color and brightness of square A and B are the same.

Theories about how we see
and what we see:
1. Template matching: our
brains have a template for
everything we need to know
and we match what we see
to the templates

2. Prototype matching: we
see what the best example of
something is and see if they
are close enough to match

3. Feature analysis: we
break down a feature
into parts and analyze
what it is

Phi Phenomenon
• An illusion of movement
created when two or more
adjacent lights blink on and
off in succession.
• Marquees or holiday lights

Phi Phenomenon
Two lights flashing one after the other.
One light jumping from one point to another: Illusion of motion.

Phi Phenomenon

Gestalt theory
• The phi phenomenon was not a discovery, as motion pictures had
been around for decades.
• It was Wertheimer’s explanation of the phenomenon which
constituted the scientific contribution. The explanation, though,
will take a few slides.
• To follow up his finding, Wertheimer created a set of three
blinking lights. The middle light blinked, then the two outside
lights blinked.
☼  ☼ → ☼

Gestalt theory
☼  ☼ → ☼
• With these lights (at ten blinks per second), people perceived a
single light that moved in both directions, then merged back in
the middle.
• He showed perceptions which could not be learned (perceiving
unnatural movement).
• Sensory explanations were inadequate.
• Wertheimer needed a “gestalt” theory, which came together with
the help of two assistants …

Koffka and Köhler
• Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler worked closely with Wertheimer,
and helped to construct the properties of Gestaltism.
• Koffka published the first English article in 1921, called
“Perception: An Introduction to Gestalt-Theorie.” (in Psychological
Bulletin)
• In the 1930’s Köhler started publishing articles which related
Gestalt theory to the field theory of physics (the best
explanations of gestalt).

The Law of Pragnanz
• As with physical forces, a gestalt brain would organize in the simplest way possible.
• The resulting mental essence will be “as good as conditions will allow.” (will be
“Pragnanz”)
• The brain works from top to bottom (top-down). It starts with the whole, then proceeds
to address the parts as desired.

Gestalt Learning
• The real world is a “geographical
environment” (G.E.) – it is what it is.
• The “behavioral environment” (B.E.) is in
our mind (brain) – a subjective pragnanz
of the G.E..
• “Problems” occur when the G.E. does not
match our B.E., which disrupts the brain’s
equilibrium (disrupts the pragnanz).
• The disruption motivates us to solve the
problem by making a greater effort to
“see” the solution in the geographical
environment.

Explain the Factors That Influence
Perception (2 of 2)
Exhibit 6-1 Factors That Influence Perception

Explain Attribution Theory (1 of 11)
• Attribution theory tries to explain the ways we judge
people differently depending on the meaning we attribute
to a behavior
• Attribution theory suggests that when we observe an
individual’s behavior, we attempt to determine whether it
was internally or externally caused.
• Determination depends on three factors:
– Distinctiveness
– Consensus
– Consistency

• Clarification of the differences between internal and
external causation
– Internally caused – those that are believed to be
under the personal control of the individual.
– Externally caused – resulting from outside causes.

• Distinctiveness: refers to whether an individual displays different behaviors in different
situations.
– Is the employee who arrives late today also one who regularly “blows off” other
kinds of commitments?
– What we want to know is whether this behavior is unusual. If it is, we are likely to
give it an external attribution. If it is not, we will probably judge the behavior to be
internal.
• Consensus: The behavior of our tardy employee meets this criterion if all employees
who took the same route were also late.
– if consensus is high, you would probably give an external attribution to the
employee’s tardiness,
– whereas if other employees who took the same route made it to work on time, you
would attribute his lateness to an internal cause.
• Consistency.
– Does the person respond the same way over time? Coming in 10 minutes late for
work is not perceived the same for an employee who hasn’t been late for several
months as for an employee who is late three times a week.
– The more consistent the behavior, the more we are inclined to attribute it to internal
causes

Exhibit 6.2 Attribution Theory

• Fundamental attribution error
– We have a tendency to underestimate the influence
of external factors and overestimate the influence of
internal or personal factors.
• Self-serving bias
– Individuals attribute their own successes to internal
factors.

• Common Shortcuts in Judging Others
– Selective perception
▪ Any characteristic that makes a person, object, or
event stand out will increase the probability that it
will be perceived.
▪ Since we can’t observe everything going on around
us, we engage in selective perception.

• Halo effect
– The halo effect occurs when we draw a general
impression based on a single characteristic.
• Horns effect
– The tendency to draw a negative general impression
about an individual based on a single characteristic.
• Contrast effects
– We do not evaluate a person in isolation.
– Our reaction to one person is influenced by other
persons we have recently encountered.

• Stereotyping
– Judging someone based on one’s perception of the
group to which that person belongs.
▪ We have to monitor ourselves to make sure we’re
not unfairly applying a stereotype in our evaluations
and decisions.

• Applications of Shortcuts in Organizations
– Employment Interview
▪ Evidence indicates that interviewers make
perceptual judgments that are often inaccurate.
– Interviewers generally draw early impressions that become
very quickly entrenched.
– Studies indicate that most interviewers’ decisions change
very little after the first four or five minutes of the interview.
– information elicited early in the interview carries greater
weight than does information elicited later, and a “good
applicant” is probably characterized more by the absence
of unfavorable characteristics than by the presence of
favorable ones

• Performance Expectations
– Evidence demonstrates that people will attempt to
validate their perceptions of reality, even when those
perceptions are faulty.
▪ Self-fulfilling prophecy, or the Pygmalion effect,
characterizes the fact that people’s expectations
determine their behavior.
– Expectations become reality.

• Performance Evaluation
– An employee’s performance appraisal is very much
dependent upon the perceptual process.
▪ Many jobs are evaluated in subjective terms.
▪ Subjective measures are problematic because of
selective perception, contrast effects, halo effects,
and so on.

• Social Media
– About four in ten organizations use social media or
online searches to screen applicants for jobs.
– Research supports the social media decision-making
bias link.
• Potential Remedies
– AI-assisted performance assessments
– Other decision-support systems

Explain the Link Between Perception
and Decision Making
• Individuals make decisions – choosing from two or more
alternatives.
• Decision making occurs as a reaction to a problem.
– There is a discrepancy between some current state of
affairs and some desired state, requiring consideration
of alternative courses of action.
▪ One person’s problem is another’s satisfactory state
of affairs.
One manager may view her division’s 2 percent decline in quarterly sales to be
a serious problem requiring immediate action on her part. Her counterpart in
another division, who also had a 2 percent sales decrease, might consider it
quite acceptable.

Rational Model of Decision Making vs.
Bounded Rationality and Intuition (1 of 12)
Exhibit 6-3 Steps in the Rational Decision-Making Model
1. Define the problem.
2. Identify the decision criteria.
3. Allocate weights to the criteria.
4. Develop the alternatives.
5. Evaluate the alternatives.
6. Select the best alternative.

• Assumptions of the Rational Model
– The decision maker…
▪ Has complete information.
▪ Is able to identify all the relevant options in an
unbiased manner.
▪ Chooses the option with the highest utility.
• Most decisions in the real world don’t follow the rational
model.

• Bounded Rationality
– Most people respond to a complex problem by
reducing it to a level at which it can be readily
understood.
▪ People satisfice – they seek solutions that are
satisfactory and sufficient.
– Individuals operate within the confines of bounded
rationality.
▪ They construct simplified models that extract the
essential features.

Rational Model of Decision Making
Versus Bounded Rationality and
Intuition (4 of 12)
• Intractable problem—a problem that may change entirely
or become irrelevant before we finish the process of
organizing our thoughts, gathering information, analyzing
the information, and making judgments or decisions.

• Intuition
– Intuitive decision making occurs outside conscious
thought; it relies on holistic associations, or links
between disparate pieces of information, is fast, and
is affectively charged, meaning it usually engages the
emotions.
– The key is neither to abandon nor rely solely on
intuition, but to supplement it with evidence and good
judgment.

Common Decision-making biases and
Errors
Reducing Biases and Errors
Focus on Goals. Without goals, you can’t be rational, you don’t know
what information you need, you don’t know which information is relevant
and which is irrelevant, you’ll find it difficult to choose between
alternatives, and you’re far more likely to experience regret over the
choices you make. Clear goals make decision making easier and help
you eliminate options that are inconsistent with your interests.
Look for Information That Disconfirms Your Beliefs. One of the most effective
means for counteracting overconfidence and the confirmation and hindsight biases
is to actively look for information that contradicts your beliefs and assumptions.
When we overtly consider various ways we could be wrong, we challenge our
tendencies to think we’re smarter than we actually are.

Don’t Try to Create Meaning out of Random Events. The educated
mind has been trained to look for cause-and-effect relationships. When
something happens, we ask why. And when we can’t find reasons, we
often invent them. You have to accept that there are events in life that are
outside your control. Ask yourself if patterns can be meaningfully
explained or whether they are merely coincidence. Don’t attempt to
create meaning out of coincidence.
Errors

[Exhibit 6-4 Continued]
Increase Your Options. No matter how many options you’ve identified,
your final choice can be no better than the best of the option set you’ve
selected. This argues for increasing your decision alternatives and for
using creativity in developing a wide range of diverse choices. The more
alternatives you can generate, and the more diverse those alternatives,
the greater your chance of finding an outstanding one.
Source: Based on S. P. Robbins, Decide & Conquer: Making Winning Decisions and Taking Control of Your Life (Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 2004), 164–68.
Errors

• Common Biases and Errors in Decision Making
– Overconfidence Bias: individuals whose intellectual
and interpersonal abilities are weakest are most likely
to overestimate their performance and ability.
– Anchoring Bias: fixating on initial information as a
starting point and failing to adequately adjust for
subsequent information.
Errors

• Confirmation Bias: type of selective perception.
– Seek out information that reaffirms past choices, and
discount information that contradicts past judgments.
• Availability Bias: tendency for people to base judgments
on information that is readily available.
Errors

• Escalation of Commitment: staying with a decision
even when there is clear evidence that it’s wrong.
– Likely to occur when individuals view themselves as
responsible for the outcome.
• Randomness Error: our tendency to believe we can
predict the outcome of random events.
– Decision making becomes impaired when we try to
create meaning out of random events.
Errors

• Risk Aversion: the tendency to prefer a sure thing instead
of a risky outcome.
– Ambitious people with power that can be taken away
appear to be especially risk averse.
– People will more likely engage in risk-seeking
behavior for negative outcomes, and risk-averse
behavior for positive outcomes, when under stress.
Errors

• Hindsight Bias: the tendency to believe falsely that one
has accurately predicted the outcome of an event, after
that outcome is actually known.
Errors

Individual Differences, Organizational
Constraints, and Decision Making (1 of 2)
• Individual Differences
– Personality
▪ Intuition
▪ Self-esteem
▪ Narcissism
– Gender
– Mental Ability
– Cultural Differences

– Personality
▪ Conscientiousness
– Commitment to a past decision?
▪ High self-esteem
– Trust towards one’s own decision?
▪ Agreeableness
– Decisiveness?

– Gender
▪ Decision-making: It depends on the
situation. When the situation isn’t stressful,
decision making by men and women is about
equal in quality. In stressful situations, it
appears that men become more egocentric and
make more risky decisions, while women
become more empathetic and their decision
making improves.
▪ Rumination: Women spend more time than men analyzing the past,
present, and future. They’re more likely to overanalyze problems before
deciding and to rehash a decision once made. This can make problems
harder to solve, increase regret over past decisions, and increase
depression. Women are nearly twice as likely as men to develop
depression.

– Mental Ability
▪ Higher levels of mental ability can process information more quickly,
solve problems more accurately, and learn faster, so you might expect
them to be less susceptible to common decision errors.
▪ Smart people are just as likely to fall prey to anchoring, overconfidence,
and escalation of commitment, probably because being smart doesn’t
alert you to the possibility that you’re too confident or emotionally
defensive. It’s not that intelligence never matters. Once warned about
decision-making errors, more intelligent people learn to avoid them
more quickly

– Cultural Differences
▪ First, differences in time orientation help us understand,
▪ Second, while rationality is valued in North America, that’s not true
elsewhere. A North American manager might decide intuitively but know
it’s important to appear to proceed in a rational fashion because
rationality is highly valued in the West.
▪ Third, some cultures emphasize solving problems, while others focus on
accepting situations as they are.
▪ Fourth, decision making in Japan is much more group-oriented than in
the United States. The Japanese value conformity and cooperation, so
before Japanese CEOs make an important decision, they collect a large
amount of information to use in consensus-forming group decisions.

• Organizational Constraints
– Performance Evaluation Systems
▪ Managers are influenced by the criteria on which they are
evaluated.
– Reward Systems
▪ The organization’s reward systems influence decision makers
by suggesting which choices have better personal payoffs.
– Formal Regulations
▪ All but the smallest organizations create rules and policies to program
decisions and get individuals to act in the intended manner. In doing
so, they limit decision choices
– System-Imposed Time Constraints
– Historical Precedents

– System-Imposed Time Constraints
▪ Almost all important decisions come with explicit deadlines.
– Historical Precedents
▪ Decisions aren’t made in a vacuum; they have context.
Individual decisions are points in a stream of choices; those
made in the past are like ghosts that haunt and constrain
current choices.

– Decision-Making in Times of Crisis

Contrast the Three Ethical Decision
Criteria (1 of 3)
• Utilitarianism: decisions are made solely on the basis
of their outcomes or consequences.
• Focus on rights: calls on individuals to make decisions
consistent with fundamental liberties and privileges as
set forth in documents such as the Bill of Rights.
– Protects whistle-blowers.
• Impose and enforce rules fairly and impartially to ensure
justice or an equitable distribution of benefits and costs.

Criteria (2 of 3)
• Behavioral ethics: an area of study that analyzes how
people behave when confronted with ethical dilemmas.
1. Individuals do not always follow ethical standards
promulgated by their organizations, and we sometimes
violate our own standards.
2. Consider cultural differences.
▪ Without sensitivity to cultural differences as part of
the definition of ethical conduct, organizations may
encourage unethical conduct without even knowing
it.

Criteria (3 of 3)
• Lying
– Lying and dishonest behavior are very common.
– It undermines all efforts toward sound decision making.
• Managers—and organizations—simply cannot make good
decisions when facts are misrepresented and people give
false motives for their behaviors.
• Lying is a big ethical problem as well.

Describe the Three-Stage Model
of Creativity
• Creativity is the ability to produce novel and useful ideas.
These are ideas that are different from what has been done
before, but that are also appropriate to the problem.
Exhibit 6-5 Three-Stage Model of Creativity in Organizations

Creative Behavior
• 1. Problem formulation.
– We identify a problem or opportunity that requires a solution that is yet unknown.
• 2. Information gathering.
– Information gathering leads us to identifying innovation opportunities. Niklas
Laninge of Hoa’s Tool Shop, a Stockholm-based company that helps organizations
become more innovative, argues that creative information gathering means
thinking beyond usual routines and comfort zones.
Creative behavior occurs in four steps, each of which leads to the next:

Creative Behavior
• 3. Idea generation.
– Idea generation is the process of creative behavior in which we develop possible
solutions to a problem from relevant information and knowledge. Sometimes we do
this alone, when tricks like taking a walk and doodling can jump-start the process.
Increasingly, though, idea generation is collaborative.
• 4. Finally, it’s time to choose from the ideas we have generated.
– Thus, idea evaluation is the process of creative behavior in which we evaluate
potential solutions to identify the best one.
– Generally, you want those who evaluate ideas to be different from those who
generate them, to eliminate the obvious biases.
Creative behavior occurs in four steps, each of which leads to the next:

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