Organizational Behavior, 17e (Robbins)
Chapter 6 Perception and Individual Decision Making
1) ________ is the process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions
in order to give meaning to their environment.
A) Sensation
B) Impression
C) Apprehension
D) Attribution
E) Perception
2) Which of the following statements is true regarding perception?
A) Perception of reality is independent of one’s personality.
B) Our perception of a target is not affected by the context of the situation in which the
perception is made.
C) Our perception of reality can be different from the objective reality.
D) Our perception of reality is independent of our past experiences.
E) We form a perception of a target by looking at it in isolation.
3) When two people witness something at the same time and in the same situation yet interpret it
differently, factors that operate to shape their perceptions reside in the ________.
A) perceivers
B) target
C) timing
D) context
E) situation
4) David Myers is of the opinion that people who drive SUVs are rash drivers. He feels that
people driving SUVs do not respect road rules and always violate traffic regulations. What
personal factor is most likely to be affecting Myers’ perception of SUV drivers?
A) his financial background
B) his expectations
C) his interest
D) his motive
E) his personality
5) Extremely attractive or unattractive individuals are most likely to be noticed in a group.
Which of the following statements best describes the reason behind this?
A) Our perception of reality depends on our past experiences.
B) Our perception of reality depends on our personality.
C) We don’t look at targets in isolation.
D) The time at which we see an object can influence our perception of the object.
E) Our motives and expectations affect our perception of a target.
6) During team meetings Amber Downing always notices that Rhona Law tends to ask
innumerable questions and suggest ideas at each discussion. However, Law stands out in the
meetings only because she is the only one making suggestions. If both of them were part of team
meetings where almost all members made suggestions and asked questions, Law would not have
drawn as much attention from Downing. Which of the following factors has most likely
influenced Downing’s perception of Law?
A) expectation
B) interest
C) past experience
D) context
E) motive
7) Monica Walden feels that people who use plastic bags are insensitive toward the environment.
She believes that people have a certain obligation toward their environment and should take it
upon themselves to protect and preserve it. Which of the following factors has most likely
influenced Walden’s perception of plastic bag users?
A) location
B) time
C) characteristic of the target
D) expectation
E) context
8) Which of the following is a factor present in a target which may affect a person’s perception?
A) attitude
B) motive
C) interest
D) novelty
E) experience
9) Which of the following is a factor present in a situation which may affect a person’s
perception?
A) similarity
B) size
C) expectation
D) time
E) experience
10) Which of the following is a factor present in a perceiver which may affect perception?
A) interest
B) similarity
C) sound
D) proximity
E) background
11) Alicia Akers works as a marketing executive. She always talks in a high pitch and often
draws a lot of attention wherever she is. Which of the following statements best explains the
reason behind people noticing Akers?
A) Perception of reality depends on the perceiver’s past experiences.
B) Perception of reality depends on the perceiver’s personality.
C) Characteristics of the target affect people’s perception.
D) The time at which we observe behavior affects perception.
E) Motives and interests of the perceiver affects perception of behavior.
12) A manager doing performance appraisals gives more weight to recent employee behaviors
than to behaviors of six or nine months earlier. This shows that the manager’s perception is
affected by a(n) ________ bias.
A) self-serving bias
B) availability
C) impact
D) distinction
E) hindsight
13) ________ refers to staying with a decision even when there is clear evidence it’s wrong.
A) Escalation of commitment
B) Fundamental attribution error
C) Randomness error
D) Risk aversion
E) Availability bias
14) The tendency to believe falsely, after an outcome of an event is actually known, that one
would have accurately predicted that outcome is known as a(n) ________ bias.
A) self-serving
B) confirmation
C) impact
D) hindsight
E) anchoring
15) People are usually not aware of the factors that influence their view of reality.
16) People’s behavior is based on their perception of what reality is, not on reality itself.
17) The perception of a target is unaffected by the perceiver’s personality or past experiences.
18) The tendency to draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single
characteristic is known as the contrast effect.
19) A person’s tendency to believe he or she can predict the outcome of random events is known
as the self-serving bias.
20) Escalation of commitment refers to staying with a decision even when there is clear evidence
it’s wrong.
21) To stop lie-detection for written communications we can look in e-mail messages as liars
omit personal pronouns, use noncommittal expressions, change tenses, skip topics, provide too
much detail, or add qualifying statements.
22) What is perception? Discuss the factors that influence perception.
23) What is selective perception?
24) Explain with an example the contrast effect.
25) What is an anchoring bias?
26) Describe the confirmation bias.
27) What is escalation of commitment? Explain.
28) Explain the hindsight bias.
29) ________ explains the ways in which we judge people differently, depending on the
meaning we assign to a given behavior.
A) Attribution theory
B) Equity theory
C) Object relations theory
D) Attachment theory
E) Cultural schema theory
30) Attribution theory suggests that when we observe an individual’s behavior, we attempt to
determine whether it was internally or externally caused. That determination, however, depends
largely on three factors. Which of the following is one of these three factors?
A) traceability
B) consistency
C) verifiability
D) relatedness
E) affect intensity
31) Which of the following is an example of internally caused behavior?
A) An employee was late for a team meeting because of a heavy downpour.
B) An employee was laid off because the company was attempting to cut costs by laying off
employees.
C) An employee was fired from work because he violated a company policy.
D) An employee could not attend an interview because of a delayed flight.
E) An employee could not come to work because he met with an accident.
32) Which of the following is an example of externally caused behavior?
A) An employee postpones a meeting because he overslept.
B) An employee is late to work because of a punctured tire.
C) An employee was fired because he violated a company policy.
D) An employee was promoted when he achieved more than the assigned objectives.
E) An employee closed a sale with an important corporate client because of his excellent
negotiation skills.
33) According to the attribution theory, ________ is one of the three main factors which attempt
to determine an individual’s behavior.
A) distinctiveness
B) perverseness
C) flexibleness
D) resilience
E) timorousness
34) When individuals observe another person’s behavior, they attempt to determine whether it is
internally or externally caused. Which of the following attempts to explain this phenomenon?
A) Pygmalion effect
B) emotional dissonance
C) attribution theory
D) two-factor theory
E) framing effect
35) With reference to the attribution theory, which of the following terms indicates the extent to
which an individual displays different behaviors in different situations?
A) flexibility
B) integrity
C) consensus
D) consistency
E) distinctiveness
36) If a person responds to a particular situation in the same way over a long time period, then
the attribution theory states that the behavior demonstrates ________.
A) distinctiveness
B) consensus
C) consistency
D) discontinuity
E) traceability
37) According to the attribution theory, if a behavior scores ________, we tend to attribute it to
external causes.
A) low on distinctiveness
B) low on adaptability
C) low on consistency
D) high on stability
E) low on consensus
38) Janice Yoder works in an environmental campaigning organization and often needs to
interact with a large team for project implementation activities. However, she always finds it
difficult to work as a part of a team. She always seems to have major disagreements with team
members which lead to antagonistic relations between them. Though she has moved from one
team to another, her relations with colleagues always seem to be hostile and cold. How would the
attribution theory describe this behavior?
A) low on consensus
B) high on reliability
C) high on adaptability
D) high on consistency
E) low on distinctiveness
39) According to the attribution theory, if everyone who faces a similar situation responds in the
same way, we can say the behavior shows ________.
A) distinctiveness
B) tractability
C) consensus
D) consistency
E) manageability
40) Janice is late for work each day by about ten minutes. How would attribution theory describe
this behavior?
A) It shows consensus.
B) It shows similarity.
C) It shows consistency.
D) It shows reliability.
E) It shows distinctiveness.
41) According to the attribution theory, which of the following behaviors is most likely to be
attributed to an external cause?
A) a behavior that scores high on consensus
B) a behavior that scores low on distinctiveness
C) a behavior that scores high on consistency
D) a behavior that scores low on traceability
E) a behavior that scores high on rigidity
42) Samantha is never late for work, but last Monday she arrived an hour late because of heavy
traffic. According to the attribution theory, Samantha’s behavior on that day scores ________.
A) high on reliability
B) low on distinctiveness
C) high on traceability
D) low on consistency
E) high on stability
43) Megan Cardova, who works as a sales executive at Orbit Bank, has been failing to meet her
sales targets for the last 10 months. Recently, she had a face-to-face discussion with her manager
where she said that the unrealistic targets were the reason for her underperformance. The
manager, however, noticed that all the other team members were achieving their targets and
sometimes were even achieving more than the set numbers. Which of the following is Cardova’s
behavior most likely to be characterized as according to the attribution theory?
A) low distinctiveness
B) high rigidity
C) high traceability
D) low consensus
E) low consistency
44) According to the attribution theory, if a behavior scores ________, we tend to attribute it to
internal causes.
A) low on consistency
B) high on rigidity
C) low on distinctiveness
D) high on consensus
E) low on conformity
45) Which of the following terms best describes the tendency to underestimate the influence of
external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments about
the behavior of others?
A) fundamental attribution error
B) bandwagon effect
C) contrast effect
D) emotional dissonance
E) self-fulfilling prophecy
46) Naomi Fisher, a sales manager at Pure, a water purifier company, had a new member, Leah
Marshall, join her team. Though during Leah’s interview, Naomi felt she would be a productive
sales executive, her performance has often been below the mark. Consistently in the past three
months, Leah has been unable to reach her targets and is falling substantially behind on her
annual targets. Naomi assumes that Leah is not determined and motivated enough to do what it
takes. Which of the following, if true, weakens Naomi’s assumption?
A) Leah has often arrived late for team meetings conducted in the morning.
B) Leah has been assigned a sales territory where consumers are from low income groups.
C) Leah has good interpersonal skills and gets along well with her customers.
D) Research showed that the company’s largest competitor had a lower turnover than they did.
E) Naomi recently received feedback from other team members that Leah is often uncooperative.
47) Johanna Murray, a climate campaigner at The National Footprint Foundation, is known in
her organization to be a campaigner of caliber and high performance. She recently worked on a
campaign against global warming during which she worked extremely hard to achieve project
milestones. However, the campaign failed as it could not achieve the desired objective. Due to
this, her manager, Brenda Owens, gave her a poor performance appraisal. In the appraisal,
Brenda said that Johanna was not motivated and failed to reach out to 25,000 people through
Internet media to spread awareness about climate change. Which of the following, if true,
weakens Brenda’s statement?
A) Johanna lacks experience in publicizing campaigns using Internet media.
B) Brenda was unable to make time for Johanna to brief her on the tasks involved in carrying out
the campaign’s media strategy.
C) Johanna recently moved from the agriculture campaign to the climate campaign.
D) Johanna’s previous job involved an extensive amount of researching on environmental issues.
E) Brenda is known in the organization to be a fair and unbiased manager.
48) Johanna Springer, who works as a sales executive at Pascal’s Bank, is upset at the way her
manager, Emma Womack, always calls her in for one-on-one meetings to discuss her
underperformance. Though Springer makes a higher number of sales calls and works longer
hours than last year, her sales figures are still low. She knows that the main reason behind her
underperformance is the recent economic meltdown in the country. However, her manager feels
that Springer’s underperformance is the result of her laid-back attitude and has nothing to do with
external factors. In this situation, Womack’s behavior is characterized by a(n) ________.
A) anchoring bias
B) contrast effect
C) fundamental attribution error
D) self-fulfilling prophecy
E) Pygmalion effect
49) ________ bias indicates the tendency of an individual to attribute his or her own successes to
internal factors while putting the blame for failures on external factors.
A) Status quo
B) Self-serving
C) Distinction
D) Congruence
E) Anchoring
50) Jane Allen, a campaign manager at a non-profit organization, often takes full credit for
project successes even when her team members’ contributions play a big role in achieving
milestones. However, when projects receive setbacks, she blames her team members and
sometimes states that the situation was beyond her control. Allen’s behavior is an example of
a(n) ________ bias.
A) impact
B) anchoring
C) confirmation
D) distinction
E) self-serving
51) Laura Simpson, a campaign manager at a child rights organization in Jakarta, planned a
marathon for celebrities to raise money for underprivileged children. Though all arrangements
for the event had been made, a few days before the event she realized that on the same day there
was a political rally happening in the city which would block access to the route on which the
marathon was supposed to be undertaken. In such a situation, what is Simpson, who suffers from
a self-serving bias, most likely to say?
A) I did not do sufficient research on public events in the city.
B) My colleagues did not inform me about the rally.
C) The director had warned me of this. I should have known better.
D) I should have weighed feasibility options for the event.
E) I should have established better contacts to know about this update.
52) Attribution theory tries to explain the ways in which we judge people differently, depending
on the meaning we attribute to a given behavior.
53) According to the attribution theory, if a behavior scores high on consensus and
distinctiveness, we tend to consider it as an internally caused behavior.
54) According to attribution theory, the more consistent a behavior, the more we are inclined to
attribute it to external causes.
55) The tendency for individuals to attribute their own successes to internal factors and put the
blame for failures on external factors is known as the confirmation bias.
56) The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the
influence of internal factors when making judgments about the behavior of others is known as
the randomness error.