Schema

We start evaluating people from the very first glance we get. Using schema we place the person in a category based on a set of beliefs or expectations about people based on past experience and is presumed to apply to everyone in that category. Schemata play a crucial role in how we interpret and remember information. It also has the unfortunate habit of luring us into remembering things about someone that we never actually observed.

Stereotypes are also another way that we evaluate people. This is one of the most bias ways we think about people. We take what we believe about the persons “group” and automatically apply it to them as well.

Using these methods of evaluating people tend to make our expectations of some lower or higher than they should be. In business as managers this can cause serious problems. Problems may arise from someone feeling they have been discriminated against or our expectations of a person may have been higher than they deserved causing customers or money to be lost. A man may feel that a woman should not be hired for a certain position no matter what her qualifications are. The same woman could apply at his competitors, get the job and do so well that the original man loses business and/or his company.

Some disadvantages to these factors are that if we do not get to know a person before we вЂ?Judge” where they should be then we will not be able to comprehend or except their behavior in the future. This cause us to do what is called the fundamental attribution error where we have a tendency to overemphasize personal causes for one’s behavior and to underemphasize personal causes for one’s own behavior. The factors I have mentioned can hurt us personally and in business. We forget with the stereotypes and false beliefs about the past that instead of being classified by certain groups we are all part of one group, the human race. We spend far too much time, energy, and money trying to keep things separate. We are all in this together and should act like it. The world is not perfect and we should all have to work to achieve what we want in life.