Greeting women.
• When greeting a female
employee, never greet her with a kiss on the cheek. If the employee extends her hand to greet you, you may shake it; otherwise greet- ing with words is appropriate. Do not com- pliment your host on the beauty of his wife, sister, or daughter. Such statements will not be taken as compliments.
Gift giving.
• When Arab businesspeople receive a gift, it is not customary to open it in front of the giver. Never give alcohol or prod- ucts made out of pigs.
Face concept.
• Saving face involves withhold- ing one’s reactions to give the other party a way to exit the situation with minimal dis- comfort. It involves compromise, patience, and sometimes looking the other way to allow things time to get back to normal.
Pressure sales tactics should be avoided because the Arab managers will associate you with an unpleasant experience.
Dress.
• The majority of men wear a long- sleeved, one-piece dress called a thoub that covers the entire body. This garment allows air
to circulate in hot summer days. Women dress conservatively in a garment called an abayah.
This is a long black garment that covers a wom- an’s body from the shoulders down to her feet.
Social duties.
• Managers perform a variety of social duties, including greeting an employee who returns from a trip, visiting an employee who is ill, bringing a gift to a newly wed cou- ple, and visiting the husband and wife after the wife has delivered a new baby.
Privacy.
• Privacy is important in Arabian societ- ies. Therefore, houses and offices are built with walls that maintain privacy from others.
People are not permitted to enter until the manager or host extends his right hand with his palm up saying “Tafaddal,” which means
“Come in.”
Social gatherings.
• Men and women may meet
in separate rooms in some Arab countries.
Men gather in rooms that are outside the main entrance of a home, away from the rest of the house. Women guests meet in a room inside the house and go through an entrance specifically assigned to female visitors.
Self competency
remainder of the interview just confirming their first impressions.16 After reading the following types of errors, what are some types of errors that you have committed in the past few days?
Similarity error.
• Interviewers tend to be positively predisposed toward job candidates who are similar to them (in terms of background, interests, hobbies, jobs, and the like) and may be negatively biased against job candidates who are unlike them.
Contrast error.
• Interviewers have a tendency to compare job candidates to other candidates interviewed at about the same time, rather than to some absolute stan- dard. For example, an average candidate might be rated too highly if preceded by several mediocre candidates. However, an average candidate might be scored too low if preceded by an outstanding applicant.
Overweighting of negative information.
• Interviewers tend to overreact to negative
information as though looking for an excuse to disqualify a job candidate.
Race, gender, and age bias.
• Interviewers may be more or less positive about a candi- date on the basis of the candidate’s race, gender, or age.
First-impression error.
• The primacy effect may play a role in the job interview, because some interviewers are quick to form impressions that are resistant to change.
There are no easy answers to the general problem of ensuring perceptual accuracy.
Some people accurately judge and assess others, and some people do so poorly. Some basic guidelines to make more accurate judgments include the following: (1) Avoid gen- eralizing from an observation of a single trait (e.g., tactful) to other traits (e.g., stable, con- fident, energetic, dependable); (2) avoid assuming that a behavior will be repeated in all situations; and (3) avoid placing too much reliance on physical appearance. Your accuracy in person perception can be improved when you understand these potential biases.
Perceptual Defense
Perceptual defense is the tendency for people to protect themselves against ideas, objects, or situ- ations that are threatening. A well-known folk song suggests that we “hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest.” Once established, an individual’s way of viewing the world may become highly resistant to change. Sometimes perceptual defense may have negative consequences. This perceptual error can result in a manager’s inability to perceive the need to be creative in solving problems. As a result, the manager simply proceeds as in the past even in the face of evidence that “business as usual” isn’t accomplishing anything.
Stereotyping
Stereotyping is the belief that all members of a specific group share similar traits and behaviors. The use of stereotypes can have powerful effects on the decisions that managers make. There are many exceptions to any stereotype. In a study of Fortune magazine’s top 500 CEOs, researchers found that CEOs are mostly white males. The study also found that on the average, male CEOs were almost six feet tall, which reflects a kind of implicit stereotype of the height of CEOs. Given that the average American male is five foot nine, it means that CEOs as a group are about three inches taller. In the United States, about 14.5 percent of all men are six feet or taller and 3.9 percent of white males are six foot two or taller. In this sample, almost a third were six foot two or taller. Furthermore, it was calculated that each inch of height is worth
$789 a year in salary.17 That means an individual who is six feet tall, but otherwise identical to someone who is five foot five, will make on average $5,525 more per year.
Over a career, the difference is hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In another study, it was found that attractive people earn about 5 percent more than do average-looking employees, who in turn earn 9 percent more than plain- looking employees. Thus, if an average-looking college graduate starts at $47,000,
their good-looking friends start at $49,350, while their least attractive friends start at $42,770. Plain-looking employees may also receive fewer promotions than those awarded to their better looking colleagues.18
An interesting challenge for organizations is to determine in what ways female managers essentially are like their male counterparts. To the extent they are alike, gen- der differences should be only a marginal concern. Unfortunately, stereotyping exists in many retailing organizations. A federal judge has granted a class-action lawsuit against Costco on behalf of more than 700 female department managers. The suit claims the company has discriminated against women seeking promotion to store manager. A debate is raging in scientific and management circles around the world with regard to gender differences in thought, emotions, and information processing styles. Some research suggests that women are, on average, superior to men in many organizational roles. Such roles include communicating with customers or clients, facilitating discus- sions, and smoothing conflicts. With regard to the latter two roles, one study indicated that female project team leaders were more effective, on average, than males in leading cross-functional teams designed to foster high rates of innovation.19
Halo Effect
The halo effect occurs when one positive or negative characteristic dominates the way that person is viewed by others. As we pointed out earlier, the evidence is clear that physical attractiveness and height are often such characteristics. It is hardly any wonder that Nordstrom’s, Dillard’s, Kohl’s, and other retail stores like to hire attractive salespeople.
Their sales training programs include grooming hints to make their salespeople more attractive.
The halo effect is based on general assessments of the overall person. That is, if the manager regards the person as “good,” that manager will tend to review that person’s performance in a positive way. In other words, a halo blinds the perceiver to other attributes that also should be evaluated to obtain a complete, accurate impression of the other person. Managers have to guard against the halo effect when rating employee per- formance. A manager may single out one trait and use it as the basis for judging all other performance measures. Students have been known to evaluate the overall effectiveness of a faculty member in just the first two seconds of the first class. The rankings they gave after these two seconds were almost identical to rankings made after sitting through the instructor’s course the entire semester. That’s the power of the halo effect.
An important aspect of the halo effect is the self-fulfilling prophecy. The self- fulfilling prophecy is the tendency for someone’s expectations about another to cause that individual to behave in a manner consistent with those expectations.20 Expecting certain things to happen shapes the behavior of the perceiver in such a way that the expected is more likely to happen. Self-fulfilling prophecies can take both positive and negative forms. In the positive case, holding high expectations of another tends to improve the individual’s per- formance, which is known as the Pygmalion effect. The Pygmalion effect has its roots in Greek mythology. According to mythology, Pygmalion was a sculptor who hated women yet fell in love with a statue he carved of a beautiful woman. He became so infatuated with the statue that he prayed to a goddess to bring her to life. The goddess granted him his wish. The essence of the Pygmalion effect is that people’s expectations determine their behavior or performance, thus serving to make their expectations come true. In other words, we strive to validate our perceptions of reality no matter how faulty they may be. Subordinates whose managers expect them to perform well do perform well. Subordinates whose managers expect them to perform poorly do in fact perform poorly. Obviously, this effect can be quite devastating.21 Some top executives believe that a manager who puts in long hours and works on Saturday is a better performer than those who do not put in these hours. Long hour expectations help create and foster a reward system that uses long hours as one criterion for a manager’s success.
The Golem effect refers to the loss in performance that results from low expectations by the manager.22 If a manager notices that a subordinate’s sales reports are always late, this
leads the manager to doubt whether the employee is committed to being a high achiever.
This results in the manager watching the employee more closely, and the employee becoming afraid to make suggestions that could improve the sales report for fear of turning the report in late. The manager then interprets this as a lack of initiative.
How can managers create positive performance expectations? We believe that managers need to consider three things:
1. Individuals behave toward others consistent with others’ expectations of them. Managers who have high expectations of their employ- ees are supportive and generally give employees more training and challenging jobs. By contrast, managers who have low expectations of their employees aren’t supportive and generally won’t give employees training and challenging jobs.
2. A person’s behavior affects others. Not only will those treated positively benefit from special opportunities, but these opportunities will also bolster their self-esteem.
3. People behave in response to how they are treated. People who have benefited from special treatment and who have confi- dence in their abilities are likely to be high performers.
Projection
Projection is the tendency for individuals to see their own traits in other people. That is, the individual projects his or her own feelings, personality characteristics, attitudes, or motives onto others. For example, during the recession of 2008 and 2009 when the automobile and financial industries were in turmoil, people in other industries, such as education and entertainment, also assessed their jobs to be in more jeopardy than they actually were. Advertisers love to inform people when a product is the “fastest growing” or “largest selling” because they don’t have to convince consumers directly that the product or service is good. They need only to say that many others think so.
Falsely believing that others share one’s beliefs can lead to poor performance.
Projection may be especially strong for undesirable traits that perceivers possess but fail to recognize in themselves. The individual whose personality traits include stingi- ness, obstinacy, and disorderliness tends to rate others higher on these traits than does the individual who doesn’t have these personality traits.
Impression Management
Impression management is an attempt by an individual to manipulate or control the impressions that others form about them. This includes everything from how people talk to how they dress, and the hand gestures they use to how they walk.23 In Ecuador, you can hire a person or groups of people (called lloronas) to come to the funeral of a fam- ily member. The job of these people is to cry while the dead person is being buried, making sure that more people start to cry. Bartenders often put their own money in their tip jars at the beginning of the evening to give the impression to customers that others have tipped them. Evangelical preachers are known to seed their audience with ringers, who are rehearsed to come forward at a specified time to give witness and donations.
Employees in organizations use several impression management tactics to affect how others perceive them. They are especially likely to use these tactics when talking with managers who have power over them and on whom they are dependent for raises, promotions, and good job assignments. Impression management is used by individu- als at all organizational levels as they talk with suppliers, coworkers, managers, and others—and vice versa. To determine how much you rely on impression management tactics, take a moment to complete the self-assessment questionnaire in Table 4.2.24
Diversity Insight
We must treasure openness in every single thing we do, from ideas to beliefs in people. We need to be posi- tive Pygmalions for all of our diversity programs.
George David, CEO, United Technologies
TABLE 4 .2 Impression Management Assessment
To assess the impression tactics you use, please answer the following 22 questions using the following scale:
How often do you behave this way?
Never Occasionally Often
1 2 3 4 5 _____ 1.
_____ 2.
_____ 3.
_____ 4.
_____ 5.
_____ 6.
_____ 7.
_____ 8.
_____ 9.
_____ 10.
_____ 11.
_____ 12.
_____ 13.
_____ 14.
_____ 15.
_____ 16.
_____ 17.
_____ 18.
_____ 19.
_____ 20.
_____ 21.
_____ 22.
Talk proudly about your experience or education.
Make people aware of your talents.
Let others know how valuable you are to the organization.
Make people aware of your accomplishments.
Compliment your colleagues so they will see you as likable.
Take an interest in your colleagues’ personal lives to show them that you are friendly.
Praise your colleagues for their accomplishments so they will consider you a nice person.
Do personal favors for others to show them that you are friendly.
Be pushy with coworkers when it will help you get your job done.
Let others know you can make things difficult for them if they push you too far.
Deal forcefully with others when they hamper your ability to get the job done.
Deal aggressively with others who interfere in your business.
Use intimidation to get others to behave appropriately.
Act like you know less than you do so people will help you out.
Try to gain sympathy from people by appearing needy in some areas.
Pretend not to understand something to gain someone’s help.
Act like you need assistance so people will help you out.
Pretend to know less than you do so you can avoid an unpleasant assignment.
Stay late so people will know you are working hard.
Try to appear busy, even at times when things are slow.
Arrive early to work to look dedicated.
Come to the office at night or on weekends to show that you are dedicated.
Scoring:
To determine your impression management tactics, please add your answers to decide your score.
Questions:
1–4 _________ This is your self-promotion score. The higher your score, the more likely you are to use this tactic.
5–8 _________ This is your ingratiation score. The higher your score, the more likely you are to use this tactic.
9–13 _________ This is your intimidation score.The higher your score, the more likely you are to use this tactic.
14–18 _________ This is your supplication score.The higher your score, the more likely you are to use this tactic.
19–22 _________ This is your exemplification score. The higher your score, the more likely you are to use this tactic.
Source: Adapted from Bolino, M. C., and Turnley, W. H. Measuring impression management in organizations:
A scale development based on Jones & Pittman taxonomy. Organizational Research Methods, 1999, 2, 187–206.
Impression management involves the systematic manipulation of the perceptual process. The CEOs of Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors went to Congress in 2008 and 2009 to ask for financial support of their companies. The first time before Congress they arrived in separate private jets and were earning millions in salary and other benefits. These behaviors did not create the impression that their companies were in dire financial straits.
Table 4.3 describes five common impression management tactics: self-promotion, ingratiation, intimidation, supplication, and exemplification. These five tactics can lead to either positive or negative perceptions depending on how the individual uses them. Individuals who are high in political skills have the ability to create better managerial impressions when they use these tactics frequently. On the other hand,
individuals who use these impression management tactics but have low political skills are less likely to be viewed favorably and should instead avoid using them. Also, if superior performance evaluations are used to make key organizational decisions (e.g., pay raises, promotions, job assignments), there is a potential for employees to receive these outcomes because of their ability to use impression management tactics rather than more job-related criteria.
Attribution Process
A question often asked about others is “Why?” “Why did this engineer use these data in his report?” or “Why did Jim Sinegal, CEO and founder of Costco, start Costco?”
Such questions are an attempt to get at why a person behaved in a particular way. The attribution process refers to the ways in which people come to understand the causes of their own and others’ behaviors.25 In essence, the attribution process reflects the person’s need to explain events through the deliberate actions of others rather than viewing them as random events. To maintain the illusion of control, the individual needs to create causal attributions for events. Attributions also play an important role in perceptions.
Attributions made about the reasons for someone’s behavior may affect judgments about that individual’s basic characteristics (that is, what that person is really like).
The attributions that employees and managers make concerning the causes of behavior are important for understanding behavior. For example, a leader who attri- butes poor performance directly to his subordinates tends to behave more punitively than does a leader who attributes poor performance to circumstances beyond his subor- dinates’ control. A manager who believes that an employee failed to perform a task cor- rectly because he lacked proper training might be understanding and give the employee better instructions or more training. The same manager might be quite angry if she believed that the subordinate made mistakes simply because he didn’t try very hard.
Responses to the same outcome can be dramatically different, depending on the attributions made about the reasons for that outcome. Table 4.4 lists some of the possible differences in managerial behavior when employees are perceived positively versus when they are perceived negatively. The relationships between attributions and behavior will become clearer as we examine the attribution process.
Learning Goal
5. Explain how attributions influence behavior.
TABLE 4 . 3 Impression Management Tactics
TACTIC DESCRIPTION EXAMPLE
Self-promotion The person tries to present himself in a positive light
Employee reminds boss about accomplishments
Ingratiation The person flatters others so they will see the person as likable
Employee compliments manager on good customer service after the manager handled a complaint from an irate customer
Intimidation The person lets others know that she can make life difficult for them if they push her
Employee tries to push others to get things done on schedule or else Supplication The person acts like he needs help
so others will help him
Employee asks for help on a task that he could perform himself Exemplification The person stays late so others
know she is working hard
Employee is the last one to leave the parking lot and the first one to arrive Source: Harris, K. J., Zivnuska, S., Kacmar, K. M., and Shaw, J. D. The impact of political skill on impression management effectiveness. Journal of Applied Psychology, 2007, 92, 278–285.