9th, June 2014
“Use Bruner’s perceptual model and social identity theory to explain why performance appraisals and interviewers’ judgement are frequently inaccurate.”
Perception involves interpreting the messages of our senses to provide a personal understanding and meaning to the environment. One of the major perceptions that influence organizational behaviour deals with the perceptions that employers or managers have of their staff or potential staff. When dealing with perception, there are three components to take into consideration; a perceiver, a target that is being perceived and a situational factor which allows the perception process to occur.
Perception is heavily influenced by the perceivers’ personal experiences, emotions, motives and basic understanding of behaviour. In this situation, the perceiver will be the employer and his judgement on any particular employee can often be very inaccurate due to the personal influences which allow him to formulate a particular conclusion. A perceiver’s past experiences and observations of people who he frequently interact with, would have embedded certain expectations within his subconscious and cloud current perceptions about new or existing employees. The employer’s motivational and emotional state during the appraisal or interview process can place major biases on his decision as these states often influence our interpretation and perception of target or situation that involves the target, such as an interview.
The target in the perception process has a lot to do with the final judgement of a perceiver. Biases such as the primacy effect and regency effect are determined by the targets behaviour. The target which is the employee needs to ensure that the perceiver not only looks at early cues or first impressions but can also assess or appraise them on recent cues or last impressions. Inaccurate judgement can