Exam 3: Perception and Learning in Organizations

A supervisor receives regular information about a sales employee's performance (e.g.sales volume, incomplete paperwork, etc.) and must complete a performance appraisal of the person's work.The supervisor has a complete description of the employee's job but has never worked in the field as a sales representative.Moreover, the supervisor is relatively new to this job and therefore has little experience observing or appraising the performance of salespeople.What attribution error is likely to occur under these conditions and what effect would it have on the performance appraisal results?

Consistency, consensus and distinctiveness are:

Fundamental attribution error would cause a supervisor to believe that an employee's lateness is due to factors beyond the employee's control rather than to a lack of motivation to attend work.

Behavior modification does NOT consider:

According to social learning theory, people can reinforce their own behavior.

Self-fulfilling prophecy occurs whenever supervisors accurately predict the future performance of recently hired employees.

Big Box Construction Company has received warnings from government safety inspectors that employees at some of its construction sites are not wearing the required safety helmets and noise-protection equipment.The company could lose these contracts if safety practices are not maintained.The company has warned employees that they could be fired if they don't wear the safety gear, but this has had little effect.Describe an A-B-C analysis for this situation and provide two types of behavior modification interventions that might change employee behavior in this situation.

Interacting with people from other backgrounds is more likely to minimize perceptual biases when these people have equal status with you throughout the interaction.

Which of the following is one of the most popular perspectives of organizational effectiveness?

The statement "First impressions are lasting impressions" best represents the premises of:

Self-fulfilling prophecy tends to have a stronger effect on employees who are new to the job than on employees who have worked in that job for a few years.

Behavioral modeling and self-reinforcement are components of:

The social identity process includes categorization and attribution activities.

Which of the following refers to the process of receiving information about and making sense of the world around us?

In behavior modification, extinction occurs when:

People who believe that their successful completion of a project is due to their skill and hard work are making an internal attribution.

When making an internal or external attribution about a person's behavior, we tend to look at whether the person has acted this way in the past and other situations and whether other people act similarly in this situation.

Diversity awareness programs mainly educate employees about the value of diversity and the problems with stereotyping.

What perceptual error occurs when a supervisor incorrectly rates an employee at a similar level across all performance dimensions based on an overall impression of that employee?

We can eliminate the activation of stereotyping by choosing to ignore stereotypic information.