Common Biases in Self-perception Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Common Biases in Self-perception - Essay Example 387). People reactions in situations originate in the very perceptions. In order to change people’s reactions and responses to the challenges of everyday life, it is imperative that biases in self-perception, factors governing the self-perceptions, people’s tendency and willingness to change their self-perceptions for the better, and possible ways to achieve this are explored. A very common misconception about the perceptions is that they are passive and are created as a result of an individual’s recorded information about the subject from the past experience. In reality, perceptions are active and create reality rather than recording it depending upon an individual’s response to the stimuli (Curry, Meyer, and McKinney, 2006, p. 28). Self-perceptions play a big role in the quality of performance of an individual. Yammarino and Atwater (1993) proposed a model according to which accurate self-perception leads to better individual and organizational outcomes whereas inflated or deflated self-perception leads to diminished or mixed results respectively. The behavior and psychology of an individual is different when he/she is working as part of a group from when he/she is working alone. Generally, people tend to have self-serving biases when they are being part of a team. They tend to take credit for the team’s successes while indulge in a blame-game to avoid the responsibility of failure (Taylor and Doria, 1981, p. 210). Factors that help an individual carry accurate self-perceptions include but are not limited to high self-esteem, knowledge, and good critical analysis skills. Reifenberg (2001, p. 627) found that people who make good judgments about their performance have higher internal attributions than others whose judgments are not quite as good. Lack of the skill to respond accurately to particular situations at hand arises from lack of people’s awareness of their lack of ability to differentiate between the accurate a nd inaccurate response to the very situations. This essentially means that rather than being ignorant of their lack of skill to respond accurately, such people are ignorant about their ignorance. Instead of realizing their deficiencies, these people tend to overestimate their skill of responding in the right way thinking there is no problem all which is how their ignorance works. People with low talent are more optimistic about their performance as compared to the people with high talent. Indeed, the latter are slightly pessimistic about their performance not because they underestimate their own skills, but because they tend to overestimate the skills of others, whereas actually others are not as good at responding in the right way as they are. On the other hand, the optimism of the people with low talent originates in their lack of knowledge, thus causing them more trouble with their metacognitive judgments. Failure of these people to realize their incompetence is because of the fa ct that they are doubly cursed in that they are not only unable to make the right response but are also unable to differentiate between the right and wrong response. â€Å"[I]ncompetence means that people cannot successfully complete the task of metacognition, which, among its many meanings, refers to the ability to evaluate responses as correct or incorrect† (Dunning et al., 2003, p. 85). Others’