The only familiar signs at the McDonald’s in the Asian community in Los Angeles are the golden arches, the drive-through, and the menu. Gone are the plastic furniture, Ronald McDonald, and the red and yellow palette that has symbolized the world’s largest hamburger chain. Leather seats, earth tones, bamboo plants, a wood ceil- ing, and water trickling down glass panels have taken their place. Red accents are used through- out the restaurant to symbolize fire and “good luck, laughter and prosperity.” The restaurant is designed using the principles of feng shui, which is meant to help diners achieve happiness and fortune. McDonald’s uses the basic princi- ples of placing the five elements—earth, water, fire, metal, and wood—around the restaurant to McDonald’s restaurants in the L.A. Asian community
use red accents to symbolize fire, good luck, laughter, and prosperity.
RENE MACURA/AP PHOTO
Perceptual Selection
The phone is ringing, your TV is blaring, a dog is barking outside, your PC is making a strange noise, and you smell coffee brewing. Which of these events will you ignore?
Which will you pay attention to? Can you predict or explain why one of these events grabs your attention at a particular time?
Selective screening is the process by which people filter out most information so that they can deal with the most important matters. Perceptual selection depends on several factors, some of which are in the external environment and some of which are internal to the perceiver.
External Factors
As we noted in Chapter 3, a common external force affecting behavior is culture.
Different cultures train people to respond to different cues. Do the French and Chinese see the world in the same way? No. In fact, no two national groups see the world in exactly the same way. When Mexican children simultaneously see a picture of a bullfight and a baseball game, they generally remember only seeing the bullfight. American children, on the other hand, remember seeing only the baseball game. Why do the children not remember both pictures? This is the nature of perception. Perceptual patterns are not absolute. Misperceptions cause some managers to fail in their international assignments. Many U.S. firms, such as Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, and PepsiCo, are competing in global markets where English is not the first language either read or spoken. Therefore, language is becoming an increasingly important consideration when choosing product names and slogans.
Frito-Lay, a division of PepsiCo, is trying to become a dominant supplier of salty nuts and chips to China’s $450 million market. Frito-Lay’s senior management believes that China has tremendous growth potential. However, its managers realize that Chinese consumers have different perceptions of their product depending on where they live. People in Hong Kong like salty chips, in Beijing they like meaty ones, and in Xian, they like spicy flavors. Frito-Lay introduced “cool lemon” potato chips. These yellow, strongly lemon-scented chips are dotted with greenish lime specks of mint and are sold in a package featuring images of breezy blue skies and rolling green grass. Why “cool lemon”? Chinese people consider fried foods hot and therefore do not eat them in the summer months. Cool is better in the summer months.5
What are some other external factors that influence our perceptual process?
What does Jim Sinegal want customers to notice when they arrive at Costco? Factors present in the warehouse can affect whether customers sense important information
Learning Goal
2. Identify the main factors that influence what the individual perceives.
increase the flow of chi or energy. The number 4, considered bad luck in some Asian cultures, is absent in the street address and the phone number. The walls are curved. The ceiling and floor tiles are placed at distinctive angles, and the doors swing open and shut in opposite directions. There is also a wall displaying three pieces of brushed aluminum graphic art, one
featuring a crane, because it represents fertility;
another featuring a koi fish, representing pros- perity; and the third an iguana, a symbol for the community.
According to Bryan Carmack, the manager,
“We wanted to make the restaurant a little bit more of a destination. The goal is to bring har- mony and a peaceful place to be.”
To learn more about Feng Shui, go to www.fengshuisociety.org.uk.
and these factors can influence whether this information is used in perceptions. Let’s review some external factors that may affect perception. In each case we present an example to illustrate the principle.
Size.
• The larger the object, the more likely it is to be perceived. The size of the new buildings to be built where the Twin Towers in New York City were destroyed by terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, will get noticed more than an alleyway on 42nd street. The new 421-meter (1,368-feet) Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai’s Pudong District is more likely to be seen than the eight-story Howard Johnson Hotel in Shanghai.
Intensity.
• The more intense an external factor (bright lights, loud noises, and the like), the more likely it is to be perceived. The language in an e-mail message from a manager to an employee can reflect the intensity principle. For example, an e-mail message that reads “Please stop by my office at your convenience”
wouldn’t fill you with the same sense of urgency as an e-mail message that reads
“Report to my office immediately!”
Contrast.
• External factors that stand out against the background or that aren’t what individuals expect are the most likely to be noticed. In addition, the con- trast of objects with others or with their backgrounds may influence how they are perceived. Salespeople at JCPenney, Macy’s, Saks, and other department stores are instructed to show men the most expensive suit first. After being exposed to the most expensive suit, a man sees the price of the less expensive suit as appearing smaller by comparison. Presenting a least costly suit first and following with an expensive one makes the expensive one seem even more costly.
Another advantage of this tactic is that when it comes time to buy accessories, such as ties, shirts, and belts, these things don’t seem that expensive next to the cost of the suit.
Motion.
• A moving factor is more likely to be perceived than a stationary factor.
PlayStation games use motion to attract people to play them.
Repetition.
• A repeated factor is more likely to be noticed than a single factor.
Marketing managers use this principle in trying to get the attention of prospec- tive customers. An advertisement may repeat key ideas. The ad itself may be presented many times for greater effectiveness. Marketing managers at Nike developed the Nike “swoosh” symbol that is used consistently worldwide on all of its products.
Novelty and familiarity.
• Either a familiar or a novel factor in the environment can attract attention, depending on the circumstances. A Korean businessman entered a client’s office in Stockholm and was greeted by a woman sitting behind a desk. He asked to see the president. The woman responded by saying that she (the president) would be glad to see him. The Korean was confused because he assumed that most women are secretaries and not presidents of a company. The misinterpretation of the situation was caused by a novel situation for him.6
A combination of these or similar factors may be existing at any time and, hence, affecting perception. Along with a person’s internal factors, they determine whether any particular stimulus is more or less likely to be noticed.
Nowadays the visual aspects of nonverbal communications are receiving increasing attention because of the global markets for organization. Managers may offend someone in a different culture with hand gestures without ever know- ing that these are offensive. For example, thumbs up may signal “okay” in America, but in parts of the Arab world, it means “Go to hell.” Look at some common hand gestures in the following Communication Competency feature. Did you know what you might be communicating across different cultures with your hand gestures?
Internal Factors
The perception process is also influenced by several factors that are related to the perceiver. These are internal factors that influence what the individual sees.
Effective leaders are able to develop more complete and accurate perceptions of various situations and people with whom they communicate than ineffective lead- ers. An effective manager knows when people are sincere, honest, and dependable.
These accurate perceptions are crucial to being an effective leader. The powerful role that internal factors play in perception shows itself in many ways. Let’s review how personality, learning, and motivation influence the process of perceiving other people.
Text not available due to copyright restrictions
Personality
Personality has an interesting influence on what and how individuals perceive things.
Any of the several personality dimensions that we discussed in Chapter 3, along with numerous other traits, may influence the perceptual process.7 Personality appears to affect strongly how an individual perceives other people. In Chapter 3, we intro- duced you to the Big Five personality factors. To illustrate how personality can influence perception, let’s examine one of the Big Five factors, conscientiousness.
A conscientious person tends to pay more attention to external environmental cues than does a less conscientious person. On the one hand, less conscientious people are impulsive, careless, and irresponsible. They see their environment as hectic and unstable, which affects the way in which they make perceptual selections. On the other hand, more conscientious people are likely to organize their perceptions into neat categories, allowing them to retrieve data quickly and in an organized manner.
In brief, this person is more careful, methodical, and disciplined in making percep- tual selections.
Learning
Another internal factor affecting perceptual selection is learning. Among other things, learning determines the development of perceptual sets. A perceptual set is
an expectation of a particular interpretation based on the person’s past experience with the same or a similar object. What do you see in Figure 4.2? If you see an attractive, elegantly dressed woman, your perception concurs with the majority of first- time viewers. However, you may agree with a sizable minority and see an ugly, old woman. The woman you first see depends, in large part, on your perceptual set.
Leaders’ and employees’ past experiences and learning strongly influence their perceptions. Leaders are influenced by their functional backgrounds (e.g., accounting, engineering, marketing, or production) when making decisions. Because perceptions influence how employees and managers behave toward one another, it is important to understand a leader’s perceptual set. What are the factors that influence Jim Sinegal’s perceptions of Costco?
Motivation
Motivation also plays an important role in determining what a person perceives.
A person’s most urgent needs and desires at any particular time can influence per- ception. For example, imagine that, while taking a shower, you faintly hear what sounds like the telephone ringing. Do you get out of the shower, dripping wet, to answer it? Or do you conclude that it is only your imagination? Your behavior in this situation may depend on factors other than the loudness of the ringing. If you are expecting an important call, you’re likely to leap from the shower. If you aren’t expecting a call, you’re more likely to attribute the ringing sound to shower noises.
Your decision is influenced by your expectations and motivations.
In general, the individual perceives things that promise to help satisfy their needs and that they have found rewarding in the past. The individual tends to ignore mildly disturbing events (a barking dog), but will react to dangerous events (the house being on fire). Summarizing an important aspect of the relationship between motivation and perception is the Pollyanna principle, which states that people process pleasant events more efficiently and accurately than they do unpleasant events. For example, an employee who receives both positive and negative feedback during a performance appraisal ses- sion may more easily and clearly remember the positive statements than the negative statements.8