CHAPTER TWO:

FOUNDATION OF INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR

AND LEARNING IN AN ORGANIZATION
• 2.1. Perception
• 2.1.1. What Is Perception Mean
• Perception is the process through which people receive,
organize, and interpret information from their environment.
• Perception is a way of forming impressions about oneself,
other people, and daily life experiences.
Components of perception
three components are involved in perception as listed
below:
Perceiver : is who receive the stimuli
Target: refers to the thing to be perceived
Situation: refers to context (e.g. timing) the
perceiver and the target meet
2.1.2. Perceptual Process
• The perceptual process is composed of the
process of:
 receiving,
 organizing,
selecting,
interpreting,
Responding.
• 2.1.3. Factors Influence Perception
• A number of factors operate to shape and sometimes
distort perception. These factors can reside :
perceiver
target
situation
2.1.4 Attribution Theory
• It tries to explain the ways in which we judge people differently,
depending on the meaning we attribute to a given behavior.
• It suggests that when we observe an individual’s behavior, we
attempt to determine whether it was internally or externally
caused.
• That determination, however, depends largely on three factors:
 distinctiveness,
 consensus,
 consistency.
• Internally caused behaviors are those we believe to be under the
personal control of the individual.
• Externally caused behavior is what we imagine the situation
forced the individual to do.
Attribution errors
• Two errors have an impact on internal versus external
determination—the fundamental attribution error and
the self-serving bias.
• Fundamental attribution error: is the tendency to
underestimate the influence of situational factors and to
overestimate the influence of personal factors in
evaluating
someone else’s behavior.
• Self-serving bias: refers to the tendency to attribute
own success to internal causation like ability, hard work
and self-worth and the failure, to external factors like
chance or Luck.
Common Errors While Judging Others
• There are errors in perceiving others. Some common kinds of
distortions that can make the perceptual process inaccurate and
affect the response are
stereotypes,
halo effects,
selective perception,
projection, and
contrast effects.
• Selective perception The tendency to selectively interpret what
one sees on the basis of one’s interests, background, experience,
and attitudes.
• Halo Effect: refers to judging an individual based on single
characteristics, such as intellectual ability, sociability and
appearance.
• Projection: You assume a person based on your
own traits and not what he actually possesses.
• Contrast effect: Evaluation of a person’s
characteristics that is affected by comparisons
with other people recently encountered who rank
higher or lower on the same characteristics.
• Stereotyping: Judging someone on the basis of
one’s perception of the group to which that person
belongs.
• Prejudice: is an unfounded dislike of a person or
group based on their belonging to a
particular stereotyped group.
2.2. Attitude
2.2.1. Definition of Attitude
• Attitude is a mental and neutral state of readiness
organized through experience, exerting a directive or
dynamic influence upon individuals response to all
objects and situations with which it is related.
• Attitudes are evaluative statements either favorable
or unfavorable about objects, people, or events.
• Attitudes are positive or negative feelings about
objects, people, or events.
• The attitude is the evaluative statements or
judgments concerning objects, people, or events.
2.2.2. Characteristics of Attitudes
Attitude can be characterized in the following ways:
• An attitude is the predisposition of the individual
psychological structure of beliefs which are to be evaluated
a favorable or an unfavorable manner- Valance .
• They tend to persist unless something is done to change
them.
• Attitudes can fall anywhere along a continuum from very
favorable to very unfavorable.
• Attitudes are directed toward some object about which a
person has feelings (sometimes called “affect”) and beliefs.
• Attitudes are evaluating statements either favorable or
unfavorable which concerned
about the objects and people or events.
2.2.3. Component of attitude
• There are three components of attitude.
• Cognitive component: the thoughts, opinions, knowledge, or
information held by the individual about a specific person,
idea, event, or object;
• E.g. “My pay is low”
• Affective component: the feelings, sentiments, moods, and
emotions about some specific person, idea, event, or object;
which may be positive, negative or neutral.
• E.g. “I am angry over how little I’m paid.
• Behavioral/overt component: the predisposition to act on a
favorable or unfavorable evaluation to a specific person, idea,
event, or object.
• E.g. “I’m going to look for another job that pays better.”
2.2.4. Functions of attitude
• Adjustment function- hedonistic principle
• Ego-defensive
• The value-expressive function
• Knowledge function
2.2.5. Source of attitude
• Attitudes have many sources:
family,
peer groups,
coaches,
society,
 previous job experiences.
• .
2.2.5. Types of attitude
• Most of the research in OB has looked at three job related
attitudes:
job satisfaction,
job involvement, and
Organizational commitment.
• Job satisfaction: refers to the feelings people have toward their
job.
• Job Involvement: refers to the degree to which a person
identifies himself (psychologically) with his job, actively
participates and considers his perceived performance level
important to self-worth.
• Organizational Commitment: Organizational commitment is
the emotional attachment people have toward the company they
work for.
2.3. Personality
• 2.3.1. Definition of Personality
• Personality is defined as the sum total of ways in
which an individual reacts to and interacts with others.
• Personality encompasses the relatively stable
feelings, thoughts, and behavioral patterns a person
has.
• Personality is a stable set of characteristics and
tendencies that determine commonalities and
differences in people’s behavior.
• Personality is an individual’s consistent patterns of
feeling, thinking, and behaving.
• 2.3.2. Personality determinants
• Determinant of personality refers to factors directly
and indirectly influenced to individual behavior.
• Personality is determined by :
heredity,
culture
Family background
environment
situation
• 2.3.3. Major personality attributes influencing OB
• These are:
 locus of control,
self-esteem,
self-monitoring,
risk-taking,
Type A personalities
proactive personalities.
• Locus of Control
• Locus of control is the degree to which
individuals believe that they can control events
affecting them.
• Two types
internal locus of control:- Those who believe that
they control their destinies
external locus of control:- who see their lives as
being controlled by outside forces
• Self-Esteem (SE)
• Self-Esteem refers to the degree to which individuals
like or dislike themselves.
• Self-esteem is the extent to which an individual
believes that he or she is a worthwhile and deserving
individual.
• High SEs
ability to succeed at work.
 take more risks in job selection
more likely to choose unconventional jobs than are
people with low self-esteem.
 emphasize the positive when confronted with failure.
• Self-Monitoring
self-monitoring is a personality trait that measures an
individual’s ability to adjust behavior to external,
situational factors.
• Narcissism
• narcissism describes a person who has a very high
sense of self-importance, requires excessive
admiration, has a sense of entitlement, and is arrogant.
• E.g.: Hans likes to be the center of attention. He looks
at himself in the mirror a lot, has extravagant dreams,
and considers himself a person of many talents. Hans
is a narcissist.
• Risk-Taking
• It is a person’s willingness to take chances or
risks.
• High risk-taking managers made :
rapid decisions
used less information in making their choices
• Type A and Type B Personalities
• An individual with a Type A personality is “aggressively
involved in a chronic, never-ending struggle to achieve more
and more in less and less time.
• Type As
Are always moving, walking, and eating rapidly
Feel eager with the rate at which most events take place
Strive to think or do two or more things at once
Cannot cope with leisure time
Are obsessed with Quantity
• Type Bs
Never suffer from a sense of time urgency with its
accompanying eagerness
 Feel no need to display or discuss either their
achievements or accomplishments unless such exposure is
demanded by the situation
Play for fun and relaxation, rather than to exhibit their
superiority at any cost
Can relax without guilt
• Proactive Personality
• Proactive personality refers to People who identify
opportunities, show initiative, take action, and
persevere until meaningful change occurs.
• People with a proactive personality create positive
change in their environment, regardless or even in
spite of constraints or obstacles.
2.3.4. Matching personality and job

Personality
PersonalityTypes
Types
• •Realistic
Realistic
• •Investigative
Investigative
• •Social
Social
• •Conventional
Conventional
• •Enterprising
Enterprising
• •Artistic
Artistic

© 2003 Prentice Hall Inc. All rights

4–30
reserved.
 Holland’s
Typology of
Personality
and
Congruent
Occupations

© 2003 Prentice Hall Inc. All rights

4–31
reserved.
• 2.4. Learning
• Learning is a relatively
permanent change in knowledge
or observable behavior that
results from practice or
experience.
 First, learning involves change.
 Second, the change must be relatively
permanent.
 Third, the change is concerned with
behavior.
 Finally, some form of experience is
necessary for learning acquired
directly through observation or
practice.
• 2.4.2. Theories of Learning
• How do we learn? Three theories have been offered
to explain the process by which we acquire patterns
of behavior:
Classical conditioning,
Operant conditioning,
Social learning
• Classical Conditioning: Learning by Association
• Classical conditioning is the process by which
individuals learn to link the information from a
neutral stimulus to a stimulus that causes a response.
• In the classical conditioning process, an unconditioned
stimulus (environmental event) brings out a natural
response. Then a neutral environmental event, called a
conditioned stimulus, is paired with the unconditioned
stimulus that brings out the behavior. Eventually, the
conditioned stimulus alone brings out the behavior,
which is called a conditional response.
• This theory developed by Pavlov.
• three sequential stages:
stage one; he presented meat (unconditional
stimulus) to the dog. He noticed a great deal of
salivation (unconditional response).
stage two he only rang up the bell (neutral
stimulus), the dog had no salivation.
stage three, Pavlov was to come with the
offering of meat to the dog along with ringing up
of bell.
• After doing this several times, Pavlov rang up only bell
(without offering of meat to the dog). This time the dog
salivated to the ringing up of bell alone.
• Operant Conditioning
• The concept was originated by B.F. Skinner. It is a
type of conditioning in which desired voluntary
behaviors leads to reward or prevent punishment
which deals with Response Stimulus (R-S)
connection.
• Operant conditioning argues that behavior is a
function of its consequences. People learn to behave
to get something they want or avoid something they
don't want.
• Social Learning
• This is a theory that states the learning of People
through observation and imitation of others in a
social context.
• for example, much of what we have learned comes
from:
• watching models-parents,
teachers,
peers,
motion picture
television performers,
bosses, and so forth.
• 2.4.3. strategies of shaping behavior
• There are two ways in which to shape behavior:
reinforcement,
punishment,
Extinction
Reinforcement
• Reinforcement is a behavioral shaping method that increases the
frequency of a particular behavior that it follows.
• Punishment
• Punishment is an undesirable consequence of a particular behavior.
Punishment decreases the frequency of an undesired behavior.
• E.g. A professor who takes off 10 points for each day a paper is late
is using punishment.
• Extinction- withdrawing of re-enforcement or reward so that the
happening becomes permanent.
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