Need report for chapter 2

Weekly summary 2

 Prabhjot kaur ( 2011727)

 University Canada West

 ORGB 601: Human interfaces

 Dr. Sydney Scott.

 CHAPTER-2 : PERCEPTION, PERSONALITY, EMOTIONS

 PERCEPTION

 This week I have learned a few fundamental concepts of organizational behaviour such as PERCEPTION, PERSONALITY AND EMOTIONS, which revolve around the nature of people and organisations. Perception varies from one person to another. “One man’s food is another man’s poison” is a famous quotation. The way a person sees, understand and interprets things is what is called perception. while one employee may welcome a particular policy of the organization, another may oppose it on the ground that it is detrimental to the interest of the employees. Additionally, with the help of perception the needs of various people can be determined, because people’s perception is influenced by their needs. Basically, perception is very interesting facet of life and business. How we perceive our world and how we think our world, perceives us can dictate how we act and how we respond in certain situations. By definition perception is “a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to the environment “[1]. Further perception is divided into four stages (receiving, selecting, organizing and interpreting information). Our perception of the environment is not entirely rational. For example, have you ever noticed that while glancing at a newspaper or a news website, information that is interesting and important to you jumps out of the page and catches your eye? If you are a sports fan, while scrolling down the pages you may immediatly see a news describing the latest success of you team. So what we see in the environment is a function of what we value, our needs, our fears and our emotions[2].In-fact what we see in our environment may be objectively, flat-out wrong because of our personality, values or emotions. For example, one experiment showed that when people who were afraid of spiders were shown spiders, they inaccurately thought that spider was moving toward them.Rishkind , J. H. Moore, R., & Bowley, L.(1995). The looming of spiders: The fearful perceptual distortion of movement and menance. Thus, Perception is very powerful and influential aspect of our lives. It can direct our actions and our thoughts, which in many ways guide who we are.

 

 PERSONALITY

 PERSONALITY in organizational behaviour of an individual plays an extremely important role in assessing the behaviour of a person at an organization. In the field of organizational behaviour, personality is the aggregate of person’s feelings, thinking, behaviours and responses to different situations and people. Our personality differentiate us from other people, and understanding someone’s personality give us clues about how that person is likely to act and feel in variety of situations. In order to effectively manage OB, an understanding of different employees’ personality is helpful. “Personality is a stable set of characteristics and tendencies that determine those commonalities and differences in the psychological behaviour (thoughts, feelings, and actions) of people that have continuity in time and that may not be easily understood as the sole result of the social and biological pressures of the moment” [3]. Personality does change over a long period of time. For example, we tend to become more socially dominant, more conscientious (organized and dependable)and more emotionally stable between the ages of 20 and 40, whereas openness to new experiences tend to decline as we age.Roberts, B. W., Walton, K. E., & Viechtbauer, W., (2006) .Furthermore, personality modal includes: Openness (creative, open to new ideas), Conscientiousness (punctual, dependable) Extraversion (talkative, enjoy being with people) Agreeableness ( sensitive, kind ,warm) Neuroticism ( moody ,anxious). Also, The myers  Briggs type indicator( MBTI ) is a personality test which determines  how people act and feel in a particular situation. 

MBTI is classified as:

People and things ( Extraversion or “E”), or Ideas and information (Introversion or “I”)

Facts and reality ( Sensing or “S”), or possibilities and potential ( Intuition or “N”)

Logic and truth ( thinking or “T”), or values and relationships ( feeling or “F”)

A lifestyle that is well structured ( Judgement or “J”), or one that goes with flow ( Perception or “p”)

 In the workplace, personality affects such things as motivation, leadership, performance, and conflict. The more that management understands how personality in organizational behaviour works, the better equipped they are to be effective and accomplish their goals. There are some additional personality attributes  relevant to organizational behaviour such as Core self-evaluation , Self-monitoring, Proactive personality. Thus, personality reflects how a person responds to his environment.

 

EMOTIONS & MOODS 

 EMOTIONS are defined as a short intense feeling resulting from some event. Emotions are divided into two categories Positive Emotions and Negative Emotions. Positive emotions such as joy, love, surprise, hope, inspiration, pride, satisfaction result from our reaction to desired events. In the workplace, these events may include praise from the boss for achieving desired results. Theory “broaden-and-build” (expansion & construction), developed by Fredrickson (2001) argues that the positive emotions experienced by employees  extend the relationship between thought and action (currently tend to broaden the repertoire of thinking), gives plasticity and cognitive flexibility scheme, allow flexible operation with the data and lead to a creative exploration of ideas. Whereas, negative emotions such as anger, fear, disappointment, regret,  sadness result from undesired events.These events include unpleasant interactions with custmores, boss, colleagues. Negative emotions are generally difficult to manage. MOODS are the feelings that tend to less intense than emotions and lack a contextual stimulus. All moods can affect judgment, perception,  physical and emotional wellbeing. Like emotions, people have positive and negative moods. For example, taking a decision with bad mood can lead to poor decisions that affect the company.In contrast , a positive mood can enhance creativity and problem solving. Furthermore, with emotions and moods, it is very important to understand emotional labor and emotional intelligence. Emotional labour occurs, when workers are paid, in part, to manage and control their emotions. For example, showing genuine concern for customers’ needs, smiling and making eye contact with customers' perception of service quality. Whereas, emotional intelligence means how well we understand our emotions in a positive way to relieve stress, overcome challenges and conflicts. It can be developed by learning and practising new skills. Also, the cascading modal of emotional intelligence is based on its concepts.(Mayer& Salovey 1997). The first modal is Conscientiousness ( emotion perception and job performance) , cognitive ability (emotion understanding and job performance) and the last modal is Emotional stability (emotion regulation and job performance ). Consequently, emotions shape an individual’s belief about the value of the company.

 

 CONCLUSION

 All three concepts ( Perception, personality, emotions) plays a vital role in organizational behaviour  as people act on the basis of their perception, Personality helps in predicting behaviour, and understanding emotions and moods .

 

 REFERENCES

 1.  Robbins, Stephen P. 2010. Organizational behaviour New Delhi, Prentice-Hall.

 2.   Higgins, E. T., & Bargh J. A. (1987 ). Social cognition and social perception. Annual review of psychology, 38, 369-425; Keltner, D., Ellsworth, P. C.,& Edwards, K.,(1993). Beyond simple pessimism. Effects of sadness and anger on social perception. Journal of personality and social psychology, 64,740-752.

 3.   S. R., Maddi, personality theories: A Comparative Analysis ( Homewood,III .: Dorsey, 1980) p. 10.