Faulty Perceptions

This activity is important because as a manager, you should be aware of how dependent we are on our perceptions. Flawed perceptions can be dangerous in decision making because we tend to make assumptions or evaluations based on them.

The goal of this activity is to demonstrate your understanding of common decision-making biases by matching decision situation examples to their corresponding bias.

Read the examples and match to the appropriate decision bias.

Recency

representativeness

anchoring

availability

projection

framing

contrast

A company offers you a salary of $50,000 and so you make a counteroffer based on that. The average starting salary for that position is $70,000; however, since you didnt look it up, you start negotiating at $50,000.

Your boss tells you how bitterly cold and boring it is in the northern U.S. office and then offers you a promotion to move there. You really wanted the promotion, but after that description, you felt like it wasnt that great of an offer.

The last graduate of the University of Texas with whom you worked had a great sense of humor. You hire another person from the same university and expect her to be funny also.

Your old office had a beautiful view. Your new office has no window, and you cannot help but feel depressed that you have nothing to look at. The benefits of having a view have become much more obvious to you now that you dont have one.

Your last months performance has the most influence on your performance evaluation, even though it should cover the entire year. Your boss isnt carefully considering the whole period.

You start listening to the traffic news on the way to work. Because you hear about so many accidents that occur each morning, you become too scared to drive and you start taking the bus. The number of accidents hasnt changedyou just started listening to the reports.

You always are hungry after a sales call and want a big meal. So, after you and your coworker finish a sales call, you assume you will both go out to eat; because you are hungry, he must be hungry, too.