Personality, Perception and Attribution + Attitudes and Values

The understanding of the personality, perceptions, attributions, attitudes and values appears as variables that shape dynamics and synergies, is one of the most important skills required nowadays for managers.

Managers can use the interactional psychology to understand the behavior. This type of studies will understand behavior as a result from the interaction, the active individual and personal differences. In particular these differences can be put together in the concept of personality, making reference to the individual’s characteristics determined by heredity and the individual’s environment.

About personality it is possible to find different types of theories (here is a video about different approaches of personality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvE0uHX3guk&feature=related), that help us to understand more the individual’s characteristics and its implications within the organization. For this reason, theories are like tools for managers to create a more comprehensive image about its subordinates and its colleagues and to create more appropriate organizational strategies.

In this way managers have tools to evaluate and to estimate individuals’ characteristics: locus of control, self-esteem, self-efficacy, self-monitoring and positive/negative affect. As for instance, locus of control makes reference to the ability to control events that affect them; this location of control can be internal or external, being the first one that the persons believes that they can control their life and the second type of person thinks that there is a superior force, as environment or higher power, that control life.

This gives to the employer the possibility to identify profiles for his/her employee according to these characteristics, plus other elements as self-esteem, self-efficacy and self-monitoring. This happens because within the organization there are a lot of activities and duties that not necessarily are for all type of persons.

Personality gives to each one a way to distinguish to others creating perceptions as a way in which others perceive you and yourself. In this relation it is possible to identify the perceiver and the target in the research, which is influenced by the mental prospects from each one, with some barriers as stereotypes, errors and judgments.

In this way in the organization it is possible to suffer some type of selective perception, first-impression error, projection, self-fulfilling prophecy and impression management, which affects organizational results.

The members from an organization can have a dispositional attribution or situational attribution to explain certain behavior. In the organizational environment this variable is important to explain successes or failures.

Attitudes are related completely with a psychological tendency of individuals and their behaviors that can be understood as representations of degree of like or dislike for an item. Attitudes are composed by three components (the ABC Model), the Affective, Behavioral and Cognition. They can be result from direct experiences or social learning. The direct experience makes reference of acquiring attitudes for yourself and the social learning is about how the interaction with family, groups and organizations teach you how should be your psychological tendency.

Finally, in individual behavior there is the issue of the beliefs of which are the preferable conducts, represented in values. At the organizational level, the achievement, concern for others, honesty and fairness are one of the most share values, but troubles can arise when we talk about the cultural differences between the members.

Pygmalion Effect

When we talk about the expectations within the organization, the relationship between the perceiver’s expectation and target’s expectation it is necessary to talk about the Pygmalion effect. This effect refers to the phenomenon in which a greater expectation placed on a person, in employees especially, will produce a better perform. Here is possible to find a video related to the Pygmalion Effect which explains in a properly way, explaining a case in which teachers made the experiment with students to prove the theory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YIwlajUpfY.

Many research of this phenomenon have been conducted in teachers and students, in different types of educational levels. In social studies is possible to find studies where this effect is called as “Self-fulfilling prophecy” by Merton (1948) and the studies from Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968). These last ones were one of the most representatives of this theory making a lot of studies with children and teachers at school, making tests in real schools and psychological laboratories.

Some say that the Pygmalion Effect is one type of self-fulfilling prophecy, considered as a phenomenon that involves a person or group of people acting in accordance with the expectations of another. The denomination of this effect was done by Rosenthal (1968) using the word “Pygmalion” to make reference to the Greek story in which Pygmalion fell in love with a sculpture named Galatea, and he’s expectations were realized when Galatea came to live (Kierein & Gold, 2000).

He showed principally that if teachers were conducted to enhance performance over some children, in a period of time children will show that improvement. One of the principally intentions was to prove the idea that reality could be influenced by the expectations of others. In some cases were unexpected findings about the Pygmalion Effect, in which teachers’ expectations might affect pupils’ intellectual development, because teachers described those children in whom intellectual growth was expected were described as more interesting, curious and happy, that could be seen as more adjusted and friendly, as with less need for social approval, considered more autonomous.

In conclusion of these tests was that in any way the positive expectations can beneficiate the performance and improvement of people. This theory can be considered as an important matter to consider by managers. Traditional management styles, based on bureaucracy, that see the organization as a machine that do not include social studies and consideration may ignore the potential to create value for the organization.

Implications, uses and challenges in Organizations

The Pygmalion Effect has been applied to different type of organizations, not only for students in classrooms as in the beginning, but more in particular groups as adults, women, military forces, non-work environments, in the experimental laboratory, for aid-projects, and others (Kierein & Gold, 2000). At the organizational level, the Pygmalion Effect has just been proved by some scholars as Eden & Ravid (1982), Eden & Shani (1982) and King (1971) according to Kierein & Gold (2002), increasing gradually.

In these studies at organizational level was possible to identify that is more impacting the leadership than the supervisor’s expectancy by itself. At the same time communication is one of the main elements for leadership behavior. The confidence in subordinates by managers leads to have high expectations as to their performance. This confidence makes reference to not be disappointed by the subordinate, expecting much and not little. For that reason the manager should link the leadership behavior with a better communication, making emphasis in the performance expectations generating the space for the Pygmalion Effect (Eden, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy as a Management Tool: Harnessing Pygmalion, 1984).

According to Eden (1984) the special treatment given by managers to employees, caused for the higher expectations, would create a feeling of overpayment. For that reason employees would be motivated to justify the “high reward” and to reduce the “dissonance” improving performance. The combination of expectancy and equity process will increase motivation, later increasing performance. This is possible understand better in the next image above.

Font: (Eden, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy as a Management Tool: Harnessing Pygmalion, 1984)

Other uses or strategies proposed by Eden, involving leadership is awareness of the effects of employees’ self-efficacy, the reduction of the occurrence of low expectations, setting challenging goals to communicate to subordinates that they are considered as capable of achieving those goals and the capitalization of the organizational changes to induce positive expectancies (Kierein & Gold, 2000).

However, it is important to understand in the matter of setting goals the role of manager and the characteristics of these goals. Goals should be hard but that are tangible goals to create high expectations but in a realistic way (Eden, Pygmalion, Goal Setting, and Expectancy: Compatible Ways to Boost Productivity, 1988).

In this way is possible to understand that there is much evidence that people learn from the structure of their environment, reacting from the way the environment suggests that they should (Kierein & Gold, 2000). Managers also should understand also that the expectations from external environment could affect the internal expectations in other ways as the diverse cultural contexts.

Organizations operating at the international level should understand the importance of expectations in productivity, as the differences between each culture. Expectation is based on beliefs, and each individual would shape its beliefs based on their own culture. The leadership and communication for each culture should be different in the cultural differences but similar in the organizational strategies.

As for instance people at work they can be very individualistic and collectivistic according to the situation and it is not fixed for everyone, influencing the culture of each one. And the issue about the relationship between national and organizational culture, the Pygmalion Effect could explain as for instance in how cultural profiles from national culture affect the expectations of managers within the organizational culture. When you are dealing with cultural and other type of diversity, there would be in anyway disagreements. However, the different identities can be positioned and re-positioned in a finite number of social structures, as for instance individualistic to collectivistic, power distance to egalitarian, and global to local. When you as manager extents those points of reference to be socially shared within the organization, people at work can navigate others cultural landscape (Car, 2004) and could practice them allowing the increase of performance.

Bibliography

Car, S. C. (2004). Culture. In S. C. Car, Globalization and culture at work, Exploring their combined Glocality (pp. 21 - 47 ). Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Eden, D. (1988). Pygmalion, Goal Setting, and Expectancy: Compatible Ways to Boost Productivity. The Academy of Management Review , 13 (4), 639-652.

Eden, D. (1984). Self-Fulfilling Prophecy as a Management Tool: Harnessing Pygmalion. The Academy of Management Review , 9 (1), 64-73.

Kierein, N. M., & Gold, M. A. (2000). Pygmalion in Work Organizations: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 21 (8), 913-928.

Rosenthal, R. (2002). The Pygmalion Effect and Its Mediating Mechanisms. In J. M. Aronson, Improving academic achievement: impact of psychological factors on education (pp. 25 - 35). Riverside: Emerald Group Publishing.