avoid a cold, drink milk to ease ul

avoid a cold, drink milk to ease ulcers, or suck out venom from snake bites? All
three are based on years of misinformation (American Health, 1991). Experiments
indicate that people left outdoors are no more likely to catch cold than
those who stay warm indoors. Viruses cause colds. Milk is rich in protein,
which stimulates acid production in the stomach and irritates an ulcer. Using
your mouth to suck venom out is the worst thing you can do since the bacteria
in your mouth multiply the risk of infection. But these folk medicine pearls of
advice have been passed down from generation to generation and faced with
snakebite, some of us might consider trying sucking out the venom. We have
all been advised to stay warm to avoid a cold. For example, will you disregard
past myths merely because you have received new and contradictory information?
For many, when we receive medical advice based on medical research
that deals with popular medical myths, our brains seem “to erode the memory
of the (past) claim separately from its context–who said it, when, and other
particulars, including the fact that the claim is not true” (Franklin, 2005, p.
D5). In other words, the firmly held past beliefs often override perfectly valid
current medical research.
Managers face similar perceptual challenges when they try to increase
their staff’s teamwork (Osburn, Moran, Musselwhite, & Zenger, 1990). For a
moment, imagine you are a manager. Perhaps, for you, the success of the entire
team is paramount and you focus on results. For some of the team members,
individual achievement might be the prevailing issue so they expect individual
recognition. For others, less group-oriented efforts might be desired
because they prefer to work alone. Obviously, for others, there are a combination
of factors operates. In addition, some members might have had good
or bad experiences with teams and this influences their responses. Finally,
in certain cases, individuals simply do not care about their jobs. Continuing
with our earlier example revolving around customer service, organizations
face difficult tasks because “[t]he individual [customer] perceives service in
his or her own unique, idiosyncratic, human, emotional, end-of-the-day, irrational,
erratic terms” (Peters & Austin, 1985, p. 71). Consider the last time you
experienced poor customer service. Would most of your friends agree that the
service was poor? Would the customer service provider agree with you? Often,
the answers depend on our paradigm considering “good” service.
The increasing diversity in organizations requires us to become aware of
our past beliefs as they pertain to other cultures and groups. Our backgrounds
lead us to expect others to act in certain ways. In fact, many of us may not
be prepared for living in an increasingly multinational world where, in the
United States, “cultural diversification is a nationwide phenomenon” (Lustig
& Koester, 2003, p. 7).
We do not need to look far to demonstrate that our understandings regarding
other cultures remain limited. For example, a recent Harris poll reported
that the average American believes 52% of the world speaks English, when
Perception and Paradigms • 43
the actual number is roughly 20% (Carey & Laird, 1999). Does this perception
have consequences? Consider that “less than 1% of today’s (USA) high
school students are studying the languages likely to be the most important to
the USA’s future: Chinese, Arabic, Farsi, Korean, Japanese, Russia, and Urdu,
according to the Education Department” (Lynch, 2006, p. 6B). Traditionally,
the United States could focus on a traditional isolationism that has made some
suspicious of foreign tongues and peoples. In addition, in the past, the United
States’s location as a continent surrounded by oceans and national prosperity
has made some complacent. However, many feel the need to “address the
USA’s globalization Achilles’ heel: Americans’ lack of foreign language skills
and general global awareness” (Lynch, 2006, p. 6B).
Even how we address someone has rules based on our cultural upbringing.
North Americans value first names or nicknames, whereas other cultures
believe in more formal forms of addressing people. In North America, there
are important power codes in student–teacher, customer–waiter, or boss–subordinate
situations. In Belgium, it is considered impolite to address someone
in a jovial way that you do not know. Religious heritage determines how we
observe holidays or recognize events. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, do
not observe Father’s Day. In these cases, our perceptions are based on our own
past experiences.
Back to Mattimore’s number puzzle presented earlier. The number is 2—the
only even number. If you picked correctly, you are in the minority. Because
we have learned in the past to ignore items that are followed by “)” as part
of the question or problem, we look right past 1), 2), and 3) and try and find
important differences between 3, 13, and 33. We miss the point that there are
five odd numbers and only one even number. Similarly, if you have connected
the nine dots in Figure 2.1 while following the instructions, then you are the
exception. The most common explanation for our inability to successfully
connect the dots, as shown in Figure 2.2, is an unwillingness to go outside
the artificial paradigm or “square” created by the dots. Hence, the expression
that to solve some problems, we need to learn to think outside the box. The
nine-dot exercise shows how quickly we approach a problem as it is presented
creating a mental box based on our past experiences.
One last observation regarding past experiences. The primacy effect argues,
essentially, that first impressions are lasting impressions. So, early experiences
can frame subsequent events in positive or negative lights.
Present Organizational Experiences
When we enter the culture labeled “gainful employment,” most of us recognize
that our behavior must be adaptive in order to fit in and maintain our job.
In most cases, we accept additional inputs into our own personal perceptual
system in the form of instructions regarding the job requirements and performance,
the rules and regulations regarding the culture, and the apparent
44 • Applied Organizational Communication
interpersonal patterns. We slowly make “sense” of this new sensory data and,
as we remain on the job, certain perceptions become permanently associated
with the organization. These all become part of our orientation toward organizational
behavior and our attitudes toward lunch hours, office location, or
weekly staff meetings are all formed in the ongoing process of being part of
the organizational system. We develop paradigms that tell us how to respond
in particular situations or to particular tasks.
In a more general sense, our present experiences provide the information
we have regarding the specific organizational culture. Every organization,
group, or department has a culture and each culture has its own attributes.
Subcultures provide unique inputs to the organization’s culture. Marketing
focuses on very different behaviors than shipping although both subsystems
are concerned with the environment outside of the immediate office. Individually,
we begin to form our own perceptual “realities” as we decide on an
occupation, experience employment, or carry out numerous other organizationally
related activities.
Earlier, we identified the primacy effect explaining how past impressions
can influence our perceptions. A countering force is the recency effect. This
explains how “the most recent information dominates our perception of others”
(McShane & Von Glinow, 2000, p. 179). One obvious example would be
1
2
3
4
Figure 2.2 An example of the most common explanation for an inability to connect the dots.
Perception and Paradigms • 45
customer service. A recent, horrible experience with a service provider can
override past experiences. A second situation revolves around performance
appraisals. Even though the superior about to provide the appraisal should
include the 6-month or 1-year period, events that occur immediately preceding
this important meeting tend to receive the most credence.
Actual Situational Limitations
We soon become aware that no one can be omnipresent in an organization.
In fact, in many cases we are hired to do very specific tasks. Even those with
extensive oversight responsibilities carry with their position physical limitations
including what type of access they have to information, which parts of
this information appear to them as being important, and how they will use
that information to interpret the meaning. Each of these three factors can
work to enhance or limit us in understanding particular issues within an
organization. Our position, including the circumstances surrounding it, combined
with all the other constraints—available information, resources, time,
and so on—is always at work to control perception (Myers, 1991).
Past and present experiences, combined with situational limitations,
influence practically all our decision-making activities. In an organization,
for example, we look to past successes and failures with particular ideas and
behaviors before making certain choices. Then we look to our present knowledge
of the organization’s structure to determine the best or most appropriate
persons to approach regarding the issue. Finally, we incorporate past and
present information to act on our choices.
In addition, our immediate surroundings can change our perception. One
popular laboratory experiment has students take turns sitting in front of three
pails of water—one hot, one at room temperature, and one cold (Cialdini,
1988). Each student is instructed to place one hand in cold water and one in
hot water. Then the student is told to place both hands in the room-temperature
water simultaneously. The student’s face shows the effect. The hand that
was in cold water now feels as if