HA 5362 Week 6: Attitudes and Perceptions

A set of vocabulary flashcards based on Dr. Jerry Pacheco's HA 5362 lecture on attitudes, perceptions, and attribution theory.

Attitude

A mindset or tendency to act in a particular way due to both an individual’s experience and temperament.

Cognitive Dissonance

Any inconsistency that a person perceives between two or more of one’s attitudes or between one’s behavior and attitudes.

Perception

The process by which individuals interpret and organize sensation to produce a meaningful experience of the world.

Selection for Action (Broadbent)

Filter theory that describes how individuals simplify their worlds through the perception process.

Perception Process Stages

The four stages individuals go through to interpret reality, consisting of Stimulation, Registration (selected stimuli), Organization, and Interpretation.

Attribution Theory

A manager's process of making attributions to explain an employee’s behavior based on Consensus, Consistency, and Distinctiveness.

Consensus

A factor in Attribution Theory that evaluates if all employees perform at the same level for a specific task or if only the observed employee performs at that level.

Consistency

A factor in Attribution Theory that evaluates if an employee performs at a certain level all the time or only for one specific instance.

Distinctiveness

A factor in Attribution Theory that evaluates if an employee performs poorly on one specific task or across all tasks.

Social Perception

How an individual sees others and how others perceive an individual, involving effects like Halo/Horn, Contrast, Prototypes, and Stereotyping.

Contrast Effect

A social perception subgroup involving shortlists, pairwise comparisons, and polarizing.

Projection

A defensive mechanism where an individual's own attitudes and negative traits are attributed onto someone else to protect self-esteem or counter feelings of anxiety or guilt.

Stereotyping

The process of fitting attributes to groups or populations to make generalizations.

Pygmalion effect

A social perception phenomenon described as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Galatea effect

A social perception phenomenon also known as Sweeny’s Miracle.

Employee Satisfaction Matching

The process of identifying invariant qualities such as skills, character, motivation, attitude, leadership potential, and personality to match position demands and organizational culture.