241 Posts Found

There’s a fascinating literature called person perception: the study of how people evaluate others. You tend to do this very, very quickly—within minutes of meeting a person, you’ve already sized him or her up. More than 90 percent of the evaluations you make are based on just two dimensions. The first is your perception of people’s competence. Do they seem to know what they’re talking … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Loran Nordgren | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

The same body of psychological research that underpins behavioral economics also suggests that we are very poor natural statisticians. We are naturally prone to find spurious information in data where none exists, latch on to causal narratives that are unsupported by sketchy statistical evidence, ignore population base rates when estimating probabilities for individual cases, be overconfident in our judgments, and generally be “fooled by randomness.” … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: David Steier, Harvey Lewis, Jim Guszcza, John Lucker, Vivekanand Gopalkrishnan | Source: Deloitte Review | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior, Statistics, Thought

Our intuitions can lead us badly astray in a way that is as surprising as it is straightforward. Kahneman identifies two types of mental processes. “Type 1” mental processes are fairly automatic, effortless and place a premium on “associative coherence.” In contrast, “Type 2” mental processes are controlled, effortful and place a premium on logical coherence. Although we fancy ourselves primarily Type 2 creatures, many … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Jim Guszcza, John Lucker | Source: Deloitte Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior, Thought, Trends / Analysis

One thing that my colleagues and I are thinking about now is how the different channels that we use for sharing affect what we say. Face to face, we don’t want to sit in silence, so we say anything to pass the time. But online is a written medium, which allows us more time to construct and refine what we want to pass on. We … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jonah Berger | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Communication, Marketing / Sales, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Identification is a powerful driver of contributions. People act like givers rather than takers when they’ve internalized a group as part of their self-concepts or identities. To catalyze this shift in mindsets, we need to understand what causes people to identify with a group.

A fascinating insight comes from research by the psychologist Marilynn Brewer, who observes that when we interact with other people, we face … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Adam Grant | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Instant assessments, when we attribute a person’s behavior to innate characteristics rather than external circumstances, happen so frequently that psychologists have a name for them: “fundamental attribution errors.” Unable to know every aspect of a stranger’s backstory, yet still needing to make a primal designation between friend and foe, we watch for surface cues

Content: Quotation | Author: Anna Secino | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

A lot of the power of positive thinking was not built on any evidence. It was built on beliefs, some of which turned out to be right. But it wasn’t guidance from an empirical perspective. [University of North Carolina professor] Barbara Fredrickson has shown that positivity enhances well-being when it’s in the right balance. She has a three-to-one ratio: Your positive emotions should outnumber your … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Pink | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Attitude, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Personality / Behavior, Thought

[The hubris] hypothesis was proposed by a famous professor of finance to explain why so many mergers and acquisitions among large firms fail. The idea is that you look at the other firm, and it seems to be floundering. So you think, “Oh, those managers are inept — I could do better.” That motivates you to buy their company, usually at an inflated price, because … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Kahneman | Source: Gallup Management Journal | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

When loyalty conflicts with honesty, when fairness conflicts with pragmatism, or when social responsibility conflicts with obligation to shareholders, people become conflicted. And when their actions are inconsistent with their values, they either experience guilt, anger and embarrassment. People try to minimize such cognitive dissonance by rationalizing or even denying their behavior, discounting the consequences of it or simply blaming others.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Gerard H. Seijts, Jeffrey Gandz, Mary Crossan | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior, Values

Really smart people have the hardest time learning. They are so very smart that they are also very “brittle.” When something goes wrong, rather than reflect on what they might have done to contribute to the error, they look entirely outside themselves for the causes and blame outside forces — irrational clients, impossible time pressure, lack of adequate resources, shifts beyond their control. Rather than … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Chris Argyris, Roger L. Martin | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Learning, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Personality / Behavior

That to me answers the question of why people embrace bad ideas or ideas that don’t work. It’s because we’re human beings, and we find narratives that are very powerful and appeal to our emotions.

Content: Quotation | Author: Sylvia Nasar | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior, Thought

It’s a commonplace that there are some things money can’t buy. [Georg] Simmel had a more striking insight: Having money can actually be more satisfying than having the things money can buy. That’s because…money has a “surplus value.” A person with money enjoys the added satisfaction of having a choice of things to buy: “The value of a given amount of money is equal to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: The Wilson Quarterly | Subjects: Economics, Money, Personality / Behavior

People are terrible at abstracting from the general to the specific, but great at abstracting from the specific to the general.

Content: Quotation | Author: John Jainschigg | Subjects: Personality / Behavior, Thought

What is the question we always ask about the successful? We want to know what they’re like – what kind of personalities they have, or how intelligent they are, or what kind of lifestyles they have, or what special talents they might have been born with. And we assume that it is those personal qualities that explain how that individual reached the top … I … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Malcolm Gladwell | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Achievement, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior, Success / Failure

Despite the variety of personalities and attitudes out there, you can still roughly categorize people into two groups: the problem-bringers and problem-solvers. When you ask a problem-bringer about a problem, you’ll hear about the problem and nothing more. We’ve all worked with these folks, and you know that they can spend all day telling you about a problem without ever coming close to offering a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Mark Murphy | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

The nature of people is always the same; it is their habits that separate them.

Content: Quotation | Author: Confucius | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Humans are conclusion-drawing animals, and we will never leave dots unconnected.

Content: Quotation | Author: Doug Riddle | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

People are eternally divided into two classes, the believer, builder and praiser, and the unbeliever, destroyer and critic.

Content: Quotation | Author: John Ruskin | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

People may have only limited free will, but they have powerful “free won’t.” In organizations, when a strong impulse reflects “the way we do things around here,” there is always the option to veto the action, especially if people have practiced this ability.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Doug Lennick, Jeffrey Schwartz, Pablo Gaito | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Psychological studies have consistently shown that it’s very difficult to compare and contrast the attributes of more than about seven different things. When faced with the cognitive demands of choosing, people often become overwhelmed and frustrated. As a result, they may forgo the choice altogether, reach for the most familiar option, or make a decision that ultimately leaves them far less satisfied than they had … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Kanika Agrawal, Sheena Iyengar | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales, Personality / Behavior