ambiguous situation. Suppose there is a rumour going around the office that your com-
pany’s sales are down and that large layoffs may be coming soon. If a senior executive
from head office makes a routine visit around this time, it might be interpreted as man-
agement’s first step in identifying which people to lay off. In reality, such an action
might be the furthest thing from the senior executive’s mind. Selective perception can
also make us draw wrong conclusions about co-workers who have suffered serious ill-
nesses, as Focus on Diversityshows.
Chapter 2Perception, Personality, and Emotions 37FOCUS ON DIVERSITYUnderestimating Employees Who Have Been Seriously Ill
Does having had a serious illness mean that you cannot do your job? Lynda
Davidson learned the hard way that suffering a mental illness and then getting treat-
ment for it does not necessarily give one a clean bill of health at work.^15 When she
returned to work after treatment, though she made her targets and earned her bonuses,
her contract was not renewed. She later took a job as program manager at the
Canadian Mental Health Association in Toronto.
Another Toronto woman suffered a similar fate when she was diagnosed with
acute leukemia. After treatment, she returned to work at a large financial services
organization only to find that she could not get any promotions. “I had the sense that
people no longer took me seriously. I think people looked at me and thought, ‘She’s
going to die,’” the woman said. It took moving to a different department where no one
knew her before she could get ahead in her job.
It is not uncommon for employees with critical, chronic illnesses to feel that their
jobs have been harmed by their illnesses. Employers and co-workers apparently perceive
that those employees cannot function at the same level that they had prior to the ill-
nesses. Describing a recent study done in the United States by the National Coalition
for Cancer Survivorship, Dr. Ross Gray, a research psychologist at the Toronto-
Sunnybrook Regional Cancer Centre, noted: “The study found that employers and co-
workers overestimate the impact of cancer on people’s lives. Decisions get made about
advancement or capability that are out of line with the realities,” Dr. Gray says.halo effect Drawing a general
impression of an individual on the
basis of a single characteristic.Halo Effect
When we draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single char-
acteristic, such as intelligence, likeability, or appearance, a halo effectis operating. This
often happens when students evaluate their instructor. Students may give more weight
to a single trait, such as enthusiasm, and allow their entire evaluation to be affected by
how they judge the instructor on that one trait. Thus, an instructor may be quiet, assured,
knowledgeable, and highly qualified, but if his or her presentation style lacks enthusi-
asm, those students would probably give the instructor a low rating.
The reality of the halo effect was confirmed in a classic study. Subjects were given a
list of traits and asked to evaluate the person to whom those traits applied.^16 When
traits such as intelligent, skillful, practical, industrious, determined, and warm were
used, the person was judged to be wise, humorous, popular, and imaginative. When
cold was substituted for warm, a completely different set of perceptions was obtained,
though otherwise the list was identical. Clearly, the subjects were allowing a single trait
to influence their overall impression of the person being judged.
The halo effect does not operate at random. Research suggests that it is likely to be
most extreme when the traits to be perceived are ambiguous in behavioural terms, when
the traits have moral overtones, and when the perceiver is judging traits with which he
or she has had limited experience.^17