Take ur time to read it.. especially to NCOs...

As you might imagine, people are far from perfect when it comes to judging others. In fact, several systematic BIASES interfere with making completely accurate judgements of others.

I'll start with the first here-Fundamental Attribution Error.

People are more likely to explain someone's actions in terms of internal rather than external causes. In other words, we are prone to assume that people's behaviour results from the way they are, from their traits and dispositions. Eg. "She's just that kind of person." For example too, we are more likely to assume that someone who shows up for meetings late does so because he or she is lazy rather than because traffic was heavy.

This bias occurs because it is far simpler to explain someone's actions in terms of his or her traits that to recognize the complex pattern of situational factors that may have influenced those actions. This can lead us to assume PREMATURELY that people are responsible for the negative things that happen to them without considering external alternatives that may be less damning.

The Halo Effect: Keeping things consistent.

Have you ever heard someone say something like "she's very smart, so she also must be hard-working"? Or " he's not too bright, so I guess he's lazy"? in a corp?? If so, then you are already aware of a common perceptual bias known as the halo effect. Once we form a positive impression of someone, we tend to view what that person does-- even things about which we have no knowledge -- in favourable terms.

Similarly, a generally negative impression of someone is likely to be associated with negative evaluations of that person's behaviour. Both tendencies (even the negative case) are referred to as the halo effects despite the word halo having positive connotations.

The Similar-to-Me effect: " If you're like me, you must be pretty good." Doesn't this sound familiar to you?

Another common perceptual bias involves the tendency for people to perceive those who are like themselves more favourably than those who are dissimilar. This tendency which is known as the similar-to-me effect, constitutes a potential source of bias when judging other people.

In fact, when superiors(NCOs) rate their subordinates(members), the more similar the parties are, the higher the ratings they tend to give. This tendency applies regarding to several different dimensions of similarity, such as in work values and habits, beliefs about how things should be at work and in demographic variables.

This effect appears to result partly from the tendency of people to be able to empathize and relate better to and to be more lenient toward others who are similar. It also appears, however, that subordinates tend to be more trusting and confident in supervisors they perceive as being similar than those they perceive as being dissimilar.

As a result, they have a more positive relationship with such individuals and this may lead superiors to judge similar subordinates more favourably. Regardless of the under lying explanation for the similar-to-me effect, it is important to recognize its implications.

How people are perceived is based in large part, on the similarities between the perceiver and the individual being perceived.

Suppose this will explain quite fully the theory of "birds of a feather flock together". It also brought to mind the point of getting a common conversation topic to get the others to open up to you.

The fourth error is the First-Impression Error.

Often the way we judge someone is not based solely on how well that person perform now BUT on our initial judgements of that individual- that is, our first impressions. To the extent that initial impressions guide our subsequent impressions, we have all been victimized by first-impression error.

As you might imagine, this error can be especially problematic in corp in which accurately judging the performance of others is a crucial task. When a cadet's performance improves, that must be recognized, but to the extent tht current evaluations are based on poor first impressions, recognizing such improvement is impossible.

Likewise, inaccurate assessments of performance result when initially good performers leave positive impressions that linger even when that person's performance has dropped.

We may thus be stepping into the trap of evaluating/ treating others more positively to confirm our positive first impressions.

Are we giving the active cadets' actions too much of a positive spin such that we overlook their mistakes, "because they are too burnt out"?

Are we giving the "reforming" cadets too much flak because, we can never "second-guess" their next moves?

focusing on some things while ignoring others.

this involves the tendency for individuals to focus on certain aspects of the environment while ignoring others. So farr as we operate in complex environments, in which many stimuli demand our attention, it makes sense that we tend to be selective, thus narrowing our perceptual fields. this consitutes a bias.

In the context of a business organization, those with backgrounds in research and development focused on their perceptions of the business environment more on product designs than on other issues; executives in marketing perceived changes in a company's products and services as being the most important.

think abt it.. for you? maybe the part about being innovative and creative is more important than hard work. Or perhaps being obedient is a better attribute than being suitably defiant.

thankz for reading... and.. afta reading it.. do u tink u are bias???


There are no Bad soldiers, only poor commanders...