Question

What is Perception? What are different types of perceptual errors that disrupt the efficiency of any organization? (Organizations today take enormous measures to ensure that employees frame the right perception, lest it could be detrimental to the organization. Organizational success can follow only if the perceptions of the employees are well understood and addressed). Support your answer with suitable examples.

Answer 1

Sol

Perception: Perception is the cognitive process people use to make sense out of the environment by selecting, organizing, and interpreting information form the environment. Attitudes affect perceptions, and vice versa. For example, a person might have developed the attitude that mangers are insensitive and arrogant, based on a pattern of perceiving arrogant and insensitive behaviour from managers over a period of time. If the person moves to new job, this attitude will continue to affect the way S/he perceives superiors in the new environment, even though managers in the new workplace might take great pains to understand and respond to employee's needs.

Perception is a step by step process, First, we observe information (sensory data) from the environment through our senses: taste, smell, hearing, sight, and touch. Next, our mind screens the data and will select only the items we will process further. Third, we organize the selected data into meaningful patterns for interpretation and response. Most differences in perception among people at work are related to how they select and organize sensory data.

Types of perceptual error/perceptual distortions that disrupt the efficiency of an organization discussed next:

1. Stereotyping: Stereotyping is the tendency to assign an individual to a group or board category (e,g., female, black, elderly, or male, white, disabled) and then to attribute widely held generalizations about the group to the individual. For example, someone meets a new colleague, sees he is in a wheelchair, assigns him to the category ''physical disabled,'' and attributes to this colleague generalization she believes about people with disabilities, which may include a belief that he is less able than other coworkers. However, the person's inability to walk should not be seen as indicative of lesser abilities in the other areas. Indeed, the assumptions of limitations may not only offend him,  it also prevents the person from making the stereotypical judgement from benefiting from the many ways in which this can contribute.

2. Halo Effect: The halo effect occurs when the perceiver develops an overall impression of a person or situation based on one characteristic, either favourable or unfavourable. In other words, a halo blinds the perceiver to other characteristics that should be used in generating a more complete assessment. For example, a person with an outstanding attendance record may be assessed as responsible, industrious, and highly productive; another person with less than average attendance may be assessed as a poor performer.

3. Projection: Projection is the tendency of perceivers to see their own personal traits in other people, this is, they project their own needs, feelings values, and attitudes into their judgment of others. A manager who is achievement-oriented might assume that subordinates are as well. This assumption might cause the manager to restructure jobs to be less routine and more challenging, without regard for employees actual satisfaction. The best guards against errors based on projection are self-awareness and empathy.

4. Contrast Effect: We do not evaluate a person in isolation. Our reaction to one person is relative to the other. During selection process, the interviewer selects a particular person for a particular job not because he fulfills all requirements but he is generally selected in relation to the other candidates. Individually selected may be academic, skill-wise, experience-wise better than those not selected. So it is a comparative or contrast phenomenon of perception. For example, we generally hear, people say that Mr.X's presentation was good thereby meaning it was better in relation to other people who would have made presentations in a particular session.

5. Perceptual Defense: Perceptual defense is the tendency of perceivers to protect themselves against ideas, objects, or people that are threatening. People perceive things that are satisfying and pleasant but tend to disregard things that are disturbing and unpleasant. In essence, people develop blind spots in the perceptual process so that negative sensory data do not hurt them, For example, the director of a nonprofit educational organization hated dealing with conflict because he had grown up with parents who constantly argued and often put him in the middle of their arguments. The director consistently overlooked discord among staff members until things would reach a boiling point. When the blowup occurred, the director would be shocked and dismayed, because he had truly perceived that everything was smoothly among the staff. Recognizing perceptual bind spots can help people develop a clearer picture of reality.