HCM 433 MANGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR.pdf

2. One’s own characteristics affect the characteristics one is likely to see in other.
3. People who accept themselves are more likely to be able see favourable aspects of other
people.
4. Accuracy in perceiving others is not a single skill.
Research has also revealed certain characteristics of the person being perceived as follows:
1. The status of the person being perceived will greatly influence others perception of the
person.
2. The person being perceived is usually placed into categories to simplify the viewer’s
perceptual activities. Two common categories are status and role.
3. The visible traits of the person perceived will greatly influence the perception of the
person.
These characteristics of the perceiver and the perceived suggest the extreme complexity of social
perception. Organizational participants must (therefore) realize that their perceptions of another
person are greatly influenced by their own characteristics and of the characteristics of the others
being perceived. For example, knowing that your boss is ambitious and self disciplined may help
you to act in ways that please him or her. Similarly, knowing that some members of your
departments have a bad temper and are easily irritated can assist you in avoiding several kinds of
trouble with such people.
Attribution:
Attribution simply refers to how a person explains the cause of another’s or of his or her own
behaviour. In our efforts to understand other persons, we actually focus on several different issues.
Two of the most important of these involve attempts on our part to identify their major traits or
characteristics and efforts to determine whether their actions stem mainly from internal or external
causes. Therefore applied to social perception, attribution – is the search for causes (attributions)
in making interpretations of other persons or of oneself behaviours.
For example, what the manager attributes the cause of a subordinate’s behaviour to will affect the
manager’s perception of and resulting behaviour towards, the subordinate. If the subordinate’s
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