Meta-Perception at Work: Empirical and Theoretical Evidence for the Inclusion of Meta-Perception and its Accuracy in Organizational Behavior

• Main Author: Renier, Laetitia
• Other Authors: Toma, Claudia
• Format: Doctoral Thesis
• Language: en
• Published: Universite Libre de Bruxelles 2019
• Subjects: Management; Psychologie sociale; social cognition; meta-perception; meta-accuracy; organizational behavior; hireability; performance; leadership; narcissism
• Online Access: https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/286758/3/PhDthesis_RenierL_FinalVersion_DiFusion.pdf; https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/286758/4/PhDthesis_RenierL_TableOfContents.pdf; https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/286758/5/19contratdiffRENIER.pdf; http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/286758

Whether you are trying to impress others, communicate efficiently, develop trust with your teammates or followers, or choose key partners to work with, you need to accurately anticipate what others think of you. This process, which is called meta-perception (Laing, Phillipson, & Lee, 1966), is thus crucial for your day-to-day life, and also at work. Still, meta-perception fails to be considered as a key individual process in the field of Organizational Behavior – OB. Therefore, this dissertation aims to gather empirical and theoretical evidence showing that meta-perception is an important process for organizational life. Thus, this dissertation focuses on the process itself (i.e. meta-perception and meta-accuracy), its antecedents and its outcomes, applied to social evaluation situations that are common at work. First, I aim to provide the bases of a consensual and context-specific approach of meta-perception enabling its study in the field of OB by differentiating the manifestations of meta-accuracy and by using statistical methods that consider both components of meta-accuracy, namely meta-perception and other-perception (Edwards, 1995, 2002; Shanock, Baran, Gentry, Pattison, & Heggestad, 2010). Second, I aim to examine whether meta-perception, its bias and its accuracy are affected by specific antecedents (i.e. narcissism and leadership style) that have received growing attention in OB. Third, I aim to study the effect of meta-perception and its accuracy on outcomes usually influenced by person perception, such as performance and hireability, and characterized by social evaluation. To achieve these aims, four research projects were performed (i.e. three empirical projects, gathering eight studies, and one theoretical project). The first project examines the link between narcissistic tendencies and a specific form of meta-perception. The second project tests the effect of leadership style on the accuracy of meta-perception and whether this accuracy has a positive impact on task performance. The third project provides a theoretical framework on the advantages of including meta-perception of performance in Multi-Source Feedback. The fourth project tests whether meta-perception and its accuracy play a role in hireability. These research projects led to key contributions to the literature on meta-perception and its accuracy, narcissism, leadership and the field of OB. First, this research contributes to the literature on meta-perception by proposing a context-specific approach of meta-perception. This dissertation specifically justifies the need to (a) differentiate the aspects on which meta-perception focuses (e.g. emotions, behaviors, skills, traits), (b) study meta-perception as related to self-perception and other-perception to gain knowledge about the bias and accuracy of meta-perception, and (c) examine the role of meta-accuracy in predicting organizational behaviors according to its three dimensions (i.e. size, direction, and favorability). Second, it contributes to the literature on leadership by studying the effect of narcissism and leadership style on meta-perception through the assessment individuals’ egocentrism and flexibility. Third, it contributes to the OB field and meta-accuracy literature by showing that the three dimensions of meta-accuracy (i.e. size, direction and favorability) have specific effects on task performance, professional development and hireability. In fine, this dissertation constitutes a well-documented plea for the integration and recognition of meta-perception as a key process in Organizational Behavior studies. === Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion === info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished