Self-concept is an individual’s self-belief and self-evaluations. Our self-concept is defined at an individual, relational and collective level. An individual’s self-concept can be described by three characteristics: complexity (number of distinct and important roles), consistency (amount of self-views that require similar personality traits) and clarity (clear, defined and stable). Clarity increases with age because personality and values become relatively stable by adulthood and people develop better self-awareness through life experiences. Clarity is higher when the consistency is high.

The higher the complexity, consistency and clarity, the better well-being people tend to have. Too much variation causes internal tension and conflict, but consistency can help with this. Employees with complex self-concept tend to be better at adaptive performance. Self-concept clarity improves performance. There are four processes that shape self-concept and motivate a person’s decisions and behaviour:

1. Self-enhancement
   This is a person’s inherent motivation to have a positive self-concept. People tend to believe they’re above average at things they care about.
2. Self-verification
   This is a person’s inherent motivation to confirm and maintain his or her existing self-concept. People are more likely to remember information that is consistent with their self-concept. Employees are motivated to interact with others who affirm their self-views.
3. Self-evaluation
   This is defined by three elements. Self-esteem is the extent to which people like, respect and are satisfied with themselves. Self-efficacy refers to a person’s belief that he has the ability, motivation, correct role perceptions and favourable situation to complete a task successfully. Locus of control is a person’s general belief about the amount of control he has over personal life events.
4. Social-self
   The social identity theory states that people define themselves by the groups to which they belong to have an emotional attachment. Social identity is a complex combination of many memberships arranged in a hierarchy of importance. People want to belong to the group and be unique at the same time.

Perception begins when environmental stimuli are received through our senses. Through selective attention and emotional marker response, we make a perceptual organization and interpretation and this leads to attitudes and behaviour. One selective attention bias is the effect of our assumptions and expectations about future events. Our assumptions and expectations determine what we see (or what is more salient). Another selective attention bias is confirmation bias.

Categorical thinking refers to organizing perceptions into preconceived categories that are stored in our long-term memory. Another form of perceptual grouping involves filling in the missing information. The tendency to look for patterns is also a form of perceptual grouping, the grouping of perceptions in trends. Mental models are knowledge structures that we develop to describe, explain and predict the world around us. Mental models partly rely on the process of perceptual grouping. Questioning ourselves about our assumptions and working with people from diverse backgrounds is a good way to change mental models.

Stereotyping is the process of assigning traits to people based on their membership in a social category. Stereotypes are formed through personal experience, media and cultural prototypes. Stereotyping is a way of categorical thinking, which simplifies our understanding of the world. It also makes it easier to predict how others will behave. Stereotyping is motivated by the observer’s need for social identity and self-enhancement. There are three processes that follow self-enhancement:

1. Categorization
   This includes categorization methods, such as selective attention and stereotyping.
2. Homogenization
   People tend to believe that people within each group are very similar to each other.
3. Differentiation
   People tend to assign more favourable characteristics to people in our groups than to people in other groups.

Stereotype threat is an individual’s concern about confirming a negative stereotype about his group (e.g: scoring lower on an IQ test because you are reminded that your group usually scores lower on IQ tests). Stereotype threat occurs because people try to avoid confirming the stereotype and try to push the negative image from their mind. These are two activities that use cognitive energy. Stereotypes also cause us to generalize without evidence and lay the foundation for discrimination. Stereotypes can lead to systematic discrimination or intentional discrimination. It is possible to consciously minimize the extent to which we rely on stereotypic information.

The attribution process is the perceptual process of deciding whether an observed behaviour or event is caused largely by internal or external factors. People tend to rely on three attribution rules: consistency (1), distinctiveness (2) and consensus (3).

The attribution process is prone to errors. One error is the self-serving bias, the tendency to attribute our favourable outcomes to internal factors and our failures to external factors. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to see the person rather than the situation as the main cause of that person’s behaviour. Self-fulfilling prophecy is the perceptual process in which our expectations about another person cause that person to act more consistently with those expectations. The self-fulfilling prophecy has a stronger effect at the beginning of a relationship. It also holds when more people have the same expectations. It is also stronger with people with low self-esteem. The halo effect occurs when our general impression, usually based on one prominent characteristic, colours our perception of other characteristics of that person (e.g: a friendly person is more likely to be seen as smart). The false-consensus effect occurs when people overestimate the extent to which others have beliefs and characteristics the same as to our own. The false-consensus effect can occur because we choose people that are similar, because of selective attention, because it is comforting and because of stereotyping. The primacy effect is our tendency to rely on the first information we receive about people to form an opinion of them. The recency effect occurs when the most recent information dominates our perceptions.

Positive organizational behaviour is a perspective that states that organizations should focus on building positive qualities and traits within individuals as opposed to focussing on what’s wrong with them.

There are three, potentially effective ways to improve perceptions:

1. Awareness of perceptual biases
   Knowing biases exist can help reduce bias. A problem with this is that it reinforces stereotypes and that it is ineffective for people with deeply held prejudices against those groups.
2. Improving self-awareness
   If people are more self-aware about the biases they use they can actively try to decrease this use. The implicit association test is a way of making people more self-aware of the biases. Applying the Johari Window, a model of mutual understanding that encourages disclosure and feedback to increase our own open area and reduce the blind, hidden and unknown areas, can help decrease the use of biases.
3. Meaningful interaction
   This is any activity in which people engage in valued activities. People who interact with each other will be less perceptually biased.

In the Johari Window, the open area includes information that is known both to you and to others. The blind area refers to information that is known to others but not to you. The hidden area refers to information known to you but hidden to others. The unknown area refers to information that out and others don’t know. Increasing open areas can decrease the use of implicit biases.

A global mindset refers to an individual’s ability to perceive, appreciate and empathize with people from other cultures and to process complex cross-cultural information. Companies develop a global mindset by giving employees opportunities to compare their own mental models with those of co-workers or partners from other regions of the world.