cosmo, embog chapter 3

chapter 3
1. Selective Perception is a theory that stipulates that individuals respond to an identical stimulus very differently from one another. The roots of this theory can be traced back to 1954, when after a football game between Princeton and Dartmouth, a psychologist from the latter university, Albert Hastorf, and a sociologist from the former, Hadley Cantril, noticed that students from both schools had different sides to say to that one game. The fact that students from both universities found two different sides to one event baffled the two scholars— how could there possibly be two different reactions from the same and only stimulus? (source of this fact?year?)
2. Following the previous theory, the Educational Attainment Perception is not exactly an accepted theory but a common knowledge that an individual’s educational attainment determines his/her value to an employer or in the job market. Further explanation of this knowledge is that the higher the educational attainment of an individual, the higher the rate of his/her employability and job compensation; in other words, the higher the investment to education, the higher the return of investment from employment. (source of this fact?year?)
3. This is further pointed out by Ben Graham and Charles Paul’s (year) paper
4. The Range of Affect theory, formulated by Edwin A. Locke in 1976, is one, if not the most, widely used and popular models to explain job satisfaction. (source? Locke himself?)
5. The theory stipulates that an employee’s satisfaction to (with) his/her jobs

Chapter III : Study Framework
Theoretical Framework

Selective Perception is a theory that stipulates that individuals respond to an identical stimulus very differently from one another. The roots of this theory can be traced back to 1954, when after a football game between Princeton and Dartmouth, a psychologist from the latter university, Albert Hastorf, and a sociologist from the former, Hadley Cantril, noticed that students from both schools had different sides to say to that one game. The fact that students from both universities found two different sides to one event baffled the two scholars— how could there possibly be two different reactions from the same and only stimulus?

The theory of selective perception explains that people see what they want or choose to see. The individual’s reaction to that certain event or stimulus is affected by different factors: the individual’s attitude to the stimulus, the prior knowledge about it and the individual’s belief/s. These factors influence an individual’s reaction to a stimulus and thus guarantee that there could be two or more sides to an event considering that people will always have different perceptions to an event depending on the factors present in an individual.
Following the previous theory, the Educational Attainment Perception is not exactly an accepted theory but a common knowledge that an individual’s educational attainment determines his/her value to an employer or in the job market. Further explanation of this knowledge is that the higher the educational attainment of an individual, the higher the rate of his/her employability and job compensation; in other words, the higher the investment to education, the higher the return of investment from employment. This is further pointed out by Ben Graham and Charles Paul’s paper that analyzed and pointed out the correlation between education, employment and wages from the 2002 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) funded by the US Department of Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs (OIA) that showed that more people with higher educational attainment were employed, and that people with higher educational attainment received higher wages. Graham and Paul concluded from their gathered data that indeed there existed a positive correlation between the individual’s education and employability and wage rate in the labor market.

The Range of Affect theory, formulated by Edwin A. Locke in 1976, is one, if not the most, widely used and popular models to explain job satisfaction. The theory stipulates that an employee’s satisfaction to his/her jobs rests on what the employee wants in a job and what one actually has in a job. The fulfilment of an employee’s expectations from the company or employer influences the level of satisfaction the employee experiences while on the job and therefore, the two variables are positively correlated. Furthermore, an employee’s appreciation of his/her work is also positively correlated with satisfaction, with one caveat: the appreciation also rests on the presence of the employee’s expectations of his/her job. In a nutshell, job satisfaction in this theory has the following variables, all positively correlated with each other: employee’s wants/expectations, employee’s current disposition (what employee has), employee’s job appreciation and job satisfaction/dissatisfaction.
Fig.1 in the next page illustrates the basic outline of the theories and perception that are essential for this paper. There is no relevant relationship yet between the theories and the perception but the variables presented in the illustration are those relevant to the variables of the study and shall provide a relationship in the succeeding frameworks.


Conceptual Framework

Fig.2 on the next page illustrates the structural relationship of the theories and the perception based on their further broken-down variables. As explained in the theoretical framework, Selective Perception theory entails different reactions from individuals to the same stimulus. In application to the concept of this study, the theory is applied when an individual’s perception to a stimulus ultimately affects his/her decisions or choices. The different interpretations of our respondents are the reason for them making varied choices/decisions to certain dilemmas, or in our case, upon graduation or job-seeking stage. The variables in our research allow only two paths: employment or further studies. Based on the varying perception of the graduates, they may choose to immediately seek for employment, or choose to pursue further studies primarily because of his/her knowledge or belief about the Educational Attainment Perception.

If the graduate opts to pursue further studies, it is because of the knowledge of the Educational Attainment Perception. The higher a job-seeker’s/employee’s educational attainment, the higher his/her employability and job compensation is the premise of the Educational Attainment perception. Therefore, if the graduate wishes to escalate his/her employability and receive higher compensation, the graduate would opt to pursue further studies. Furthermore, the graduate’s choice for pursuing further studies for the sake of employability and wages also indicates what the graduate values or wants in a job, hence, they are factors to the job satisfaction of a graduate upon employment.

The Affect theory explains that what one has in a job compared to what one wants in a job influences the employee’s job satisfaction. Therefore if the employed graduate’s expectations of employability and job compensation is met regardless of whether or not he/she pursued further studies to attain the level he/she wishes to be in, the employee is generally satisfied with his/her disposition, or dissatisfied if the case is otherwise.


Operational Framework

Further illustration of the framework is shown in Fig. 3 on the next page, as the operational framework.

The University of the Philippines - Cebu College Bachelor of Arts in Psychology graduates of AY 2009-2010 are faced with different interpretations of the same event (graduation and/or the job-seeking stage) and the varying views influenced by their belief, knowledge and attitude lead the graduates to two choices: whether to seek employment or pursue further studies. The outcome of the decisions of he graduates will ultimately play a part in their chosen employment. If the graduate chooses to seek for employment rather than pursuing higher studies, the decisions on which job to take will determine his/her status as underemployed or job-course match employed.

There are also graduates who opt to pursue further studies for the sake of attaining better employability and compensation. Both are achieved in increasing state the higher the educational attainment of the individual, and whether they attain it or not, it will determine the employed graduate’s job satisfaction. This and the employment status as underemployed or job-course match employed are the variables for determining the level of job satisfaction in this study.