In this video i'd like to talk to you
about
your individual perceptions and how that
affects the negotiation process.
So, to start with what is perception? Well
generally
perception can be thought of as how you
connect with or confront
the environment or whatever it is you
experience right
it's perception allows you to ascribe
meaning by processing things that you
come in contact with
in a negotiation that means any messages
any communications any
happenings or events that take place
right so
your perception of things is strongly
influenced by
things that you've already experienced
your prior knowledge your
context or understanding currently of
what's going on
so all of that will affect once again
how you cognitively process the things
you come in contact with.
Now with that being said we are all
prone
all individuals have a tendency towards
perceptual distortions that is we
process things a certain way
based upon our prior experiences our
prior knowledge
things like that that
causes us to see something in a way that
may not be true
it causes us to not to be able to
accurately assess the situation for
itself that is we infer
too much from prior experiences so what
we are perceiving we see
in a particular light given those prior
perceptions
that may or not be true okay. Now
that being said i'd like to identify
some of the more common
perceptual distortions that you'll see
in the negotiation process.
To start with, stereotyping, okay
so stereotyping is when you attribute
some
tendency or meaning to something
based upon your prior experience or
prior understanding of it
without going through the full process
of processing the information or the
scenario
as it exists right you ascribe meaning
before
you've done that mental work okay and
that oftentimes can create errors right
you have a perception about something
that may not be true because you're
relying on that past stereotype
right. And the next one is the halo
effect
now the halo effect and the synonym for
the opposite
direction would be maybe the fork tail
effect where basically
you attribute your overall perception of
an individual or situation or event
based upon one characteristic. In the
halo effect
a positive characteristic in the uh
fortel effect a negative characteristic
right
but basically you say that
characteristic is dominant of that
person or that situation
but primarily the person and you
attribute all things good because of
that one characteristic right
it's a common perceptual distortion when
we see the effects of someone's actions
right
they have one success and all of a
sudden or
the characteristics of their timing
position for example a leader
is that the position of a company that's
doing well we assume that the reason
the company is doing well might be the
leadership of
the executive or the person at the top
the same effect if the company is doing
poorly
we also could assume that the leader is
doing poorly right. Where that may not be
true there may be
many other factors at play but it's a
shortcut in our perceptual process that
distorts reality okay. Selective
perception or
what we often call confirmation bias
right that is our tendency to look for
information or to only process
information that coincides with or
supports
our already existing opinion or point of
view
okay so we only focus on the information
that supports
the things that we always already
believe already see
that type of thing right. So once again
in doing so you're excluding or ignoring
other information that could be
perceived and again would have an effect
on the situation so that's selective
perception or confirmation bias.
And then lastly projection we all have a
tendency to
project our beliefs on others whether
rightly or wrongly
in that the other person may not see
things the exact same way that we do
right not that their view or our view is
right is simply that we
believe wrongfully right or suppose
I would say that others see things the
way we do
and that informs our belief in our
understanding where it may be the case
that the other person does not have the
same
belief right or understanding of the
situation so us projecting that on them
will cause a distortion primarily about
the context of the situation or
negotiation.
So all of these are individual
perceptions
that that run into issues that are
subject to distortion
but the important thing to understand
here is that individual perception
is paramount it is extremely important
in the negotiation process because that
once again is how we cognitively
process all that we come into contact
with whether communication
information or context or scenario in
which
a negotiation takes place.