How does perception affect behavior

This is the essence of perception. It is an intellectual process. More specifically it is a cognitive and psychological process. Perception is subjective and different people detect, process, organize, and interpret external information or stimuli differently. Interestingly, individuals may pay selective attention to different aspects or details of a given stimulus while ignoring others. Individual perception is a function of the external environment and our internal influences.

Some well-understood biases include:. Impression management is an effort to affect or shape the way that others perceive you. One is instrumental: we want to influence others and gain rewards.

Giving the right impression facilitates desired social and material outcomes. Social outcomes can include approval, friendship, assistance, or power, and conveying an impression of competency in the workforce. These can trigger positive material rewards like higher salaries or better working conditions.

The second motive of self-presentation is expressive. We construct an image of ourselves to claim personal identity, and present ourselves in a manner that is consistent with that image. If people feel that their ability to express themselves is restricted, they react negatively, often by becoming defiant. People resist those who seek to curtail self-presentation expressiveness by adopting many different impression management strategies.

One of them is ingratiation, the use of flattery or praise to highlight positive characteristics and increase social attractiveness.

Another strategy is intimidation, which is aggressively showing anger to get others to hear and obey. There are a range of factors governing impression management. Impression management occurs in all social situations because people are always aware of being observed by others. The unique characteristics of a given social situation are important: cultural norms determine the appropriateness of particular verbal and nonverbal behaviors in different situations.

These behaviors and actions have to be appropriate to the culture and the audience in order to positively influence impression management.

Depending on how they want to influence their audience regarding a certain topic, presenting themselves in different ways can shape different impressions and reactions in their audience.

Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Organizational Behavior. Search for:. Individual Perceptions and Behavior. The Perceptual Process Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information to represent and understand the environment. Learning Objectives Outline the internal and external factors that influence the perceptual selection process.

Key Takeaways Key Points The perceptual process consists of six steps: the presence of objects, observation, selection, organization, interpretation, and response. Perceptual selection is driven by internal personality, motivation and external contrast, repetition factors. Perceptual organization includes factors that influence how a person connects perceptions into wholes or patterns.

These include proximity, similarity, and constancy, among others. Key Terms factor : An integral part. Perception : That which is detected by the five senses; that which is detected within consciousness as a thought, intuition, or deduction. Cognitive Biases Perceptual distortions, such as cognitive bias, can result in poor judgement and irrational courses of action.

Learning Objectives Analyze the complex cognitive patterns that can complicate employee perception and behavior. Key Takeaways Key Points Cognitive biases are instances of evolved mental behavior that can cause deviations in judgement that produce negative consequences for an organization.

Understanding how perception can be distorted is particularly relevant for managers because they make many decisions, and deal with many people making assessments and judgments, on a daily basis.

Bias arises from various processes that are sometimes difficult to distinguish. A few examples of perceptual distortions include confirmation bias, self-serving bias, causality, framing, and belief bias. Key Terms cognitive : The area of mental function that deals with logic, as opposed to affective functions which deal with emotion. An exhaustive search is impractical, so heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution.

Impression Management Impression management is a goal-directed conscious or unconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of others.

Learning Objectives Outline the way in which impressions and impressions management affect management, organizations, and branding. Key Takeaways Key Points Influencing others and gaining rewards, along with other motives, govern impression management from a general perspective. Impression management theory states that an individual or organization must establish and maintain impressions that are congruent with the perceptions they want to convey to their stakeholder groups.

Organizations use branding and other impressions management strategies to convey a consistent and repeatable image to external and internal audiences. Management must also consider the impressions they make on others, both subordinates and business partners.

Every organization has an image to maintain—and so does its management. Key Terms impression : The overall effect of something, e.