Coworker Decision

Co-worker Dilemma Introduction

Each day that we enjoy is fraught with decisions. Some we make on our own, while others are made because our situation requires us to be involved. Our presence of mind can be the style we use that sets the dynamics for our decision. In other words, how we feel, what conditions (past & present) exist, how our values are affected. Lovaglia’s law: The more important the outcome of a decision, the more people will resist using evidence to make it (http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog). It is often our “whims” that guide us and others into offensive or reduced decision making tactics.

Issues present

The choices that decide the type of heuristic that your co-worker uses to reject a viable potential employee might have different outcomes. The information provided on the prospective employee tells us that she is Hispanic, has a Masters in marketing, superb references, and good prior experience. Two items become apparent when reading the employees background. One, the individual is a female and she is Hispanic. Two, She worked for the competition for an extensive period.

We have a few options when making our decision as to what our co-worker is implying when he proclaims that the prospective employee is “not a good fit”. Questions that become evident are: Could the employees’ past work experience be of concern? Is there racial bias or profiling being practiced by your fellow employee? Another possibility to be address is the chance that your co-worker knows the prospective employee either professionally or personally. We should also note that both decision makers are in equal management positions.

Definitions

Before the particular style of heuristic is discovered it might be an opportune time to explain the three methods (decision heuristics) that are commonly used. Availability is explained as a process in which decisions are made quickly by recollecting ones’ most current experiences, “We make a judgment based on what we can remember, rather than complete data. In particular, we use this for judging frequency or likelihood of events”, (changingminds.org, 2008).

Anchoring & Adjusting is a decision process where a person chooses an established and proper value or standard, (perceived or learned); then makes a judgment, (or adjustment) based on those personal principles, “We tend to base estimates and decisions on known �anchors’ or familiar positions, with an adjustment relative to this start point…”(changingminds.org, 2008).

Representativeness is loosely defined as a presumption that if one category provides a best fit then all other classifications of that category will be similar. If something does not fit our category we will approximate its’ fit into another category, “People tend to judge the probability of an event by finding a �comparable known’ event and assuming that the probabilities will be similar”, (changingminds.org, 2008).

The type of heuristic

The heuristic that best describes the co-workers type would be Representativeness.

Why would this be the dominate trait for this situation? Representativeness was described as the heuristic type that is similar to stereotyping. Stereotyping as defined by the Oxford dictionary “the act of judging people according to our assumptions about the group to which they belong. It is based on the belief that people from a specific group share similar traits and behave in a similar manner. Rather than looking at a person's individual qualities, stereotyping leads us to jump to conclusions about what someone is like” (Heery, E. & Noon, M., Oxford University Press, 2001).

Representativeness suggests that the process of considering one category over another has as its’ foundation the assumption that we are able to interpret the probability of one category juxtaposing with another category. The thought is that this heuristic style allows us the freedom to associate one group as being the representative of all other groups. This makes sense for our co-worker, as they may be stereotyping and/or representing this eligible employee, as belonging to a distinctive class or classification. This design provides credibility for our co-worker to rationalize the prospective employee as being, “not a good fit”.

One condition that raises an issue for our scenario is the phenomenon known as the “conjunction fallacy” (Plous, 1993 p.110). This claim is that “the co-occurrence of two events cannot be more likely than the probability of either event alone” (Plous, 1993 p.110). So our co-workers’ belief that all Hispanic women