Perception, Attribution, and Diversity

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering person perception, perceptual biases, attribution theory, diversity and inclusion, and performance appraisal rater errors.

Perception

The cognitive process of organizing and interpreting sensory information to give order and meaning to the environment.

Three Components of Perception

The interactive framework determining how stimuli are understood, consisting of the perceiver (experience, needs/motives, emotions), the target (ambiguity), and the situation (context).

Perceptual Defence

The tendency of the human perceptual system to protect the perceiver from unpleasant or threatening information by seeing or hearing what they want to see or hear.

Social Identity Theory

A psychological theory stating that individuals form impressions of themselves and others based on personal identity (unique traits and abilities) and social identity (memberships in social categories).

Prototype

A mental construct representing the typical characteristics or exemplars associated with a particular social category.

Bruner's Model of the Perceptual Process

A perceptual model showing that encountering an unfamiliar target leads to openness to cues, followed by crude categorization upon finding familiar cues, which progressively increases cue selectivity and reinforces the original categorization.

Perceptual Constancy

The tendency for a perceiver to evaluate and perceive a target in the exact same manner over time and across different situations.

Perceptual Consistency

The tendency to select, ignore, and distort contradictory cues so that incoming information conforms to a unified, consistent mental picture of the target.

Primacy Effect

The perceptual tendency to rely disproportionately on early cues or first impressions, which create a lasting and difficult-to-reverse impact on future judgments.

Recency Effect

The perceptual tendency to weigh recent cues or final impressions more heavily than earlier observations when evaluating an individual.

Halo Effect

A cognitive bias in which an observer's overall evaluation of an individual, or a single prominent desirable or undesirable trait, distorts their judgment of that person's other unrelated characteristics.

Central Traits

Core personal characteristics of a target—most commonly warmth and competence—that are particularly salient to an observer and around which overall impressions are structured.

Beauty Premium

The documented workplace advantages—such as higher hiring preferences, faster promotions, higher status evaluations, and superior pay—experienced by physically attractive individuals.

Implicit Personality Theories

Personal assumptions and beliefs held by perceivers regarding which personality traits naturally go together or co-occur in people.

Projection

The perceptual tendency for perceivers to attribute their own thoughts, feelings, motives, values, or behaviors to other individuals.

Stereotyping

The practice of generalizing about individuals based solely on their membership in a social category while ignoring unique individual qualities and differences.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

A process where a perceiver's initial expectations about an individual cause that individual to act in ways that confirm those expectations.

Pygmalion Effect

A positive self-fulfilling prophecy in which high managerial expectations and resource provision lead an employee to exhibit higher performance.

Golem Effect

A negative self-fulfilling prophecy in which low managerial expectations lead to fewer opportunities and poorer employee performance.

Stereotype Application

The behavioral act of applying and relying on a known stereotype when making actual evaluations, hiring decisions, or resource allocations.

Stereotype Threat

The apprehension or fear experienced by members of a group that their performance will confirm a negative stereotype about their social category, which can directly impair actual performance.

Résumé Whitening

The practice where racialized job applicants remove racial cues or Anglicize their names on résumés to circumvent discrimination, increasing interview callback rates by $2$ to $2.5\times$.

Attribution

The cognitive process of assigning causes or motives to explain why individuals behave in certain ways.

Dispositional Attribution

An explanation that attributes a person's behavior to internal factors such as personality traits, intelligence, personal effort, or attitudes.

Situational Attribution

An explanation that attributes an individual's behavior to external environmental causes such as luck, weather, equipment constraints, or task difficulty.

Kelley's Attribution Model

A framework stating that people determine whether behavior stems from internal disposition or external situations by examining three cues: consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness.

Consensus (Attribution Cue)

An attribution cue evaluating how an individual's behavior compares to the behavior of peers or others in the exact same situation.

Consistency (Attribution Cue)

An attribution cue assessing whether an individual exhibits the same behavior regularly over time across repeated encounters.

Distinctiveness (Attribution Cue)

An attribution cue examining whether an individual displays a specific behavior across diverse tasks and situations or only in one unique situation.

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

The tendency to overemphasize dispositional explanations and underemphasize situational factors when interpreting the actions of other people.

Actor-Observer Effect

The cognitive discrepancy where actors explain their own behavior through situational causes, while observers explain the actor's behavior through dispositional traits.

Self-Serving Bias

The tendency for people to attribute their own successes to internal personal abilities while attributing their failures to external environmental factors.

Diversity

Individual and group demographic differences among employees, encompassing gender, race, age, religion, culture, physical ability, and sexual orientation.

Equity

The provision of fair treatment and equal access to opportunities, resources, development, and career advancement across an organization.

Inclusion

A workplace environment where all individuals feel genuinely welcomed, valued, respected, and fully integrated into the organization.

Six Arguments for Managing Diversity

A business case outlining six organizational advantages of workforce heterogeneity: cost, resource-acquisition, marketing, creativity, problem-solving, and system-flexibility.

Diversity Climate

Employee perceptions regarding the extent to which their organization advocates fair HR policies, maintains equal opportunity, and supports inclusion.

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs)

Voluntary, employee-led affinity networks organized around shared identities or social categories to offer community, professional development, and inclusion.

Diversity Training

Structured educational programs designed to improve intergroup interactions, reduce bias and prejudice, and develop cultural knowledge and interaction skills.

Organizational Climate

Shared employee perceptions about the policies, practices, procedures, and behavioral norms that are expected, supported, and rewarded within an organization.

Trust

The willingness of an individual to be vulnerable and take risks based on positive expectations regarding management's ability, benevolence, and integrity.

Perceived Organizational Support (POS)

An employee's global belief concerning the degree to which an employer values their workplace contributions and genuinely cares about their well-being.

Organizational Support Theory (OST)

A theoretical model stating that perceived organizational support triggers the norm of reciprocity, compelling employees to care about the organization and work toward its objectives.

Signalling Theory

A recruitment concept proposing that applicants interpret recruitment procedures, interviewer conduct, and selection criteria as informational cues about the organization's broader values and culture.

Contrast Effect

An interview or evaluation distortion occurring when a candidate is assessed relative to immediately preceding applicants rather than against standardized evaluation rubrics.

Distributional Rating Errors

Appraisal distortions where a manager's performance rating distribution substantially departs from true performance, resulting in leniency, harshness, or central tendency.

Leniency Error

A performance appraisal distortion in which an evaluator perceives performance too positively, awarding inflated, high ratings to nearly all employees.

Harshness Error

A performance appraisal distortion in which an evaluator perceives performance too strictly, assigning overly severe, low ratings to nearly all employees.

Central Tendency Error

A performance appraisal error where an evaluator avoids assigning high and low extremes, incorrectly placing the majority of employees in the average category.

Similar-to-Me Effect

An evaluation bias where raters judge individuals who share their background, attitudes, or personal characteristics more favorably than dissimilar individuals.

Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS)

A performance rating tool that uses explicit behavioral examples and descriptions along a scale to anchor evaluations of poor, average, and superior job performance.

Frame-of-Reference (FOR) Training

A rater training intervention where managers review performance dimensions, examine behavioral benchmarks, practice scoring, and receive feedback to calibrate evaluation standards.