Organisational Behaviour

Personality
Sourabh Munjal
 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Explain the factors that determine an individual’s personality.
2. Describe the MBTI personality framework.
3. Identify the key traits in the Big Five personality model.

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4. Explain the impact of job typology on the personality/job performance
relationship.
5. Differentiate emotions from moods.
6. Contrast felt versus displayed emotions.
7. Explain gender-differences in emotions.
8. Describe external constraints on emotions.
9. Apply concepts on emotions to OB issues.
 Definition
• The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts and interacts
with others. Or
• Enduring characteristics that describes an individual’s Behaviour.

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• Personality refers to the relatively stable patterns of the
behaviours and consistent internal states that explain a person’s
Behaviour tendencies (Hogan, 1991).

• The dynamic organization within the individual of those

psychophysical system that determine his unique adjustments to
the environment (Gordon Allport)
 Trait
Trait
A characteristic of an individual, describing a habitual way of
behaving, thinking, and feeling

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• shy, outgoing, ambitious, lazy, easy-going, anal, high-strung, confident,
grumpy, happy, friendly, etc
 Definitions
Character: Personal characteristics that have been
judged or evaluated
Temperament: Hereditary aspects of personality,

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including sensitivity, moods, irritability, and
adaptability
Personality Trait: Stable qualities that a person shows
in most situations
Personality Type: People who have several traits in
common
 The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
A personality test that taps four characteristics and
classifies people into 1 of 16 personality types.

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Personality Types
•Extroverted vs. Introverted (E or I)
•Sensing vs. Intuitive (S or N)
•Thinking vs. Feeling (T or F)
•Judging vs. Perceiving (P or J)
The Big Five Model of Personality Dimensions
Extroversion
Sociable, gregarious, and assertive

Agreeableness

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Good-natured, cooperative, and trusting.

Conscientiousness
Responsible, dependable, persistent, and organized.
Emotional Stability (Neuroticism)
Calm, self-confident, secure (positive) versus nervous, depressed, and
insecure (negative).

Openness to Experience
Imaginativeness, artistic, sensitivity, and intellectualism.
The Big Five Model of Personality Dimensions
The Big Five. According to the five-factor
model, basic differences in personality can
be “boiled down” to the dimensions shown

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here. The five-factor model answers these
essential questions about a person: Is she or
he extroverted or introverted? Agreeable or
difficult? Conscientious or irresponsible?
Emotionally stable or unstable? Smart or
unintelligent? These questions cover a large
measure of what we might want to know
about someone’s personality.
Personality Characteristics in Organizations
• Locus of control
• Machiavellianism

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• Self-esteem
• Self-monitoring
• Risk taking
• Type A personality
Personality Characteristics in Organizations
Locus of Control
Internal External

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I control what People and
happens to me! circumstances control
my fate!
Personality Characteristics in Organizations
Machiavellianism (Mach)
Degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and
believes that ends can justify means. (term name after niccolo Machiavelli.

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Conditions Favoring High Machs
• Direct interaction
• Minimal rules and regulations
• Emotions distract for others
Personality Characteristics in Organizations
Self-Efficacy - beliefs and expectations about one’s ability to
accomplish a specific task effectively

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Sources of self-efficacy
• Prior experiences and prior success
• Behavior models (observing success)
• Persuasion
• Assessment of current physical & emotional capabilities
Personality Characteristics in Organizations
Self-Esteem
Feelings of Self Worth

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Success tends Failure tends
to increase to decrease
self-esteem self-esteem
Personality Characteristics in Organizations
Self-Monitoring
Behavior based on cues from people & situations

• High self-monitors
• flexible: adjust behavior
according to the situation
and the behavior of
others
• can appear unpredictable
& inconsistent
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• Low self-monitors
• act from internal states
rather than from
situational cues
• show consistency
• less likely to respond to
work group norms or
supervisory feedback
Personality Characteristics in Organizations
Risk-Taking
• High Risk-taking Managers
• Make quicker decisions

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• Use less information to make decisions
• Operate in smaller and more entrepreneurial organizations
• Low Risk-taking Managers
• Are slower to make decisions
• Require more information before making decisions
• Exist in larger organizations with stable environments
• Risk Propensity
• Aligning managers’ risk-taking propensity to job requirements should be beneficial
to organizations.
Personality Characteristics in Organizations
Personality Types
Type A’s
1. are always moving, walking, and eating rapidly;
2. feel impatient with the rate at which most events take place;

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3. strive to think or do two or more things at once;
4. cannot cope with leisure time;
5. are obsessed with numbers, measuring their success in terms of how many or how much
of everything they acquire.

Type B’s
1. never suffer from a sense of time urgency with its accompanying impatience;
2. feel no need to display or discuss either their achievements or accomplishments;
3. play for fun and relaxation, rather than to exhibit their superiority at any cost;
4. can relax without guilt.
Personality Characteristics in Organizations
Who Is Most Likely to . . .
Low-self
High-self
monitors
monitors

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Get promoted
Accomplish tasks, meet other’s expectations, seek out central
positions in social networks

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Change employers
Self-promote 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Make a job-related geographic move
Demonstrate higher levels of managerial self-awareness; base behavior on 
other’s cues and the situation
 Trait Personality Theories
Source of information about personality:
• How many trait
obtained from observation of behavior and questionnaire responses from
dimensions are
the general population as well as from people in therapy.
there?

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Cause of behavior, thoughts, and feelings:
• stable internal characteristics; • How can we
• some emphasize genetic basis. measure these
Outlook on humans:
trait dimensions?
• neutral - neither positive nor negative.
• Where do these
Trait approaches have tried to identify the most basic and relatively
trait dimensions
enduring dimensions along which people differ from one another--
originate?
dimensions known as traits.
 Personality Theories
Trait Theory - understand individuals by breaking down behavior patterns
into observable traits & Attempt to learn what traits make up personality
and how they relate to actual behavior
Psychodynamic Theory - emphasizes the unconscious determinants of

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behavior. Focus on the inner workings of personality, especially internal conflicts and struggles

Humanistic Theory - emphasizes individual growth and improvement

Behavioristic Theories: Focus on external environment and on effects of

conditioning and learning
Social Learning Theories: Attribute differences in perspectives to socialization,
expectations, and mental processes
Integrative Approach - describes personality as a composite of an individual’s
psychological processes
 Personality Theories - Trait
Gordon Allport and Traits

Common Traits: Characteristics shared by most members of a culture

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Individual Traits: Describe a person’s unique personal qualities

Cardinal Traits: So basic that all of a person’s activities can be traced back
to the trait

Central Traits: Core qualities of a personality

Secondary Traits: Inconsistent or superficial aspects of a person

 Personality Theories - Trait
Raymond Cattell and Traits

Surface Traits: Features that make up the visible areas of personality

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Source Traits: Underlying traits of a personality; each reflected in a number
of surface traits

Cattell also created 16PF, personality test

Gives a “picture” of an individual’s personality
Personality Theories - Trait
Raymond Cattell and Traits
The 16 source traits
measured by Cattell’s 16 PF
are listed beside the graph.

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Scores can be plotted as a
profile for an individual or a
group. The profiles shown
here are group averages for
airline pilots, creative artists,
and writers. Notice the
similarity between artists
and writers and the
difference between these
two groups and pilots.
 Trait Personality Theories: Eysenck
Hans Eysenck: found two
(2) major trait dimensions:
• Introversion
versus

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• extroversion
(quiet versus sociable).
• Neuroticism
versus
• Emotional stability
(moody versus calm).
 Personality Theories
Psychoanalytic Theory
Sigmund Freud, M.D.

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University of Vienna 1873
Voracious Reader
Medical School Graduate
Specialized in Nervous
Disorders : Some patients’ disorders had no
physical cause. (1856-1939)
 Psychoanalytic Theory
• Freud was a Viennese physician who thought his patients’
problems were more emotional than physical.
• Freud began his work by using hypnosis and eventually

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switched to psychoanalysis.
• Freud had many followers: Jung and Adler, to name a few.
• Freud used cocaine and tobacco and died from oral
cancer.
• More than 100 years later, his work is still influential and
very controversial
 Psychoanalytic Theory
 Freud’s theory suggest that personality is composed of the
id, the ego, and the superego.
 id: the unorganized, inborn part of personality whose

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purpose is to immediately reduce tensions relating to
hunger, sex, aggression, and other primitive impulses.
 ego: restrains instinctual energy in order to maintain the
safety of the individual and to help the person to be a
member of society.
 superego: the rights and wrongs of society and consists of
the conscience and the ego-ideal.
 Psychoanalytic Theory
Explains behavior and
personality in terms of
unconscious dynamics within

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the individual
• Emphasizes internal
conflicts, attachments,
and motivations

• Adult personalities are

formed by experiences in
early childhood

By: Aliyn & Bacon

Psychoanalytic Theory

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Psychoanalytic Theory

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Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
The Id
• Innate biological instincts and urges; self-serving, irrational, and totally unconscious.
The id uses the most primitive of thinking process.
• Basic biological urges (e.g., hunger, self-protection).

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• The id operates on the Pleasure Principle. “Seeks pleasure and avoids pain:“I want
what I want NOW!”
• The id operates completely at an unconscious level.
• No direct contact with reality.
• The id has 2 major instincts:
• Eros: life instinct = motivates people to focus on pleasureseeking
• tendencies (e.g., sexual urges).
• Thanatos: death instinct = motivates people to use aggressive
• urges to destroy.
• The energy for the id’s instincts comes from the libido, (the
• energy storehouse).
 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
The Ego
• Executive; directs id energies
• Partially conscious and partially unconscious

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• Works on Reality Principle: Delays action until it is practical and/or appropriate
• The ego consists of a conscious faculty for
• perceiving and dealing intelligently with reality.
• The ego acts as a mediator between the id and the superego.
• The ego is partly conscious.
• Deals with the demands of reality.
• Makes rational decisions.
Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
The Superego

Judge or censor for thoughts and actions of the ego

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Superego comes from our parents or caregivers; guilt comes
from the superego
Two parts
Conscience: Reflects actions for which a person has been
punished
Ego Ideal: Second part of the superego; reflects behavior one’s
parents approved of or rewarded
Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

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 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
Freud’s Psychoanalysis: Defense mechanisms
1. Repression: When a threatening idea, memory, or emotion is blocked (either
consciously or unconsciously) from consciousness

2. Projection: When repressed feelings are attributed to someone else

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3. Displacement: When a person’s emotions are directed towards people or animals
that are not the real object of the emotion

Sublimation: acting out socially unacceptable impulses in a socially acceptable way

4. Reaction formation: When a feeling or belief that causes anxiety is transformed into
the opposite feeling or belief in our consciousness

5. Regression: Returning to a previous stage of development

6. Denial: Refusal to admit something unpleasant or that something that provokes

anxiety is happening
Humanistic Approaches to Personality
Humanistic psychology
An approach that emphasizes personal growth, resilience, and the achievement
of human potential

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Humanist psychologists:
1. Abraham Maslow
2. Carl Rogers

3. Rollo May
 Humanistic Psychology: Abraham Maslow
Personality development is a gradual progression to self-actualization

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Humanistic Psychology: Abraham Maslow

You are on your way to a restaurant to meet some friends, and you
are hungry. As you are walking from your car to the restaurant, you
are looking forward to talking with your friends. Just then, you hear

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a gunshot. According to Maslow, your primary motivation would be
determined by

1. Your hunger

2. Your desire to converse with your friends

3. Your desire for safety

Roger’s Person- Centered Perspective

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Genuineness, Acceptance, Empathy
Self Concept: central feature
of personality (+ or -)
 Roger’s Person- Centered Perspective
Self-concept: our image or perception of ourselves
(Real Self versus Ideal Self)
• We have a need for positive regard/approval from others.

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• Conditions of worth or conditional positive regard.
• The conditions under which other people will approve of us.
• We change our behaviour to obtain approval.
• What we need is: Unconditional positive regard.
• Anxiety signifies that we are not being true to our ideal self.
• Well-adjusted persons: self-concept & experience.
• Poorly adjusted person: self-concept & experience.
 Roger’s Person- Centered Perspective
• Fully Functioning Person: Lives in harmony with his/her deepest feelings and
impulses
• Self: Flexible and changing perception of one’s identity

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• Self-Image: Total subjective perception of your body and personality
• Incongruence: Exists when there is a discrepancy between one’s
experiences and self-image
• Ideal Self: Idealized image of oneself (the person one would like to be)
• Positive Self-Regard: Thinking of oneself as a good, lovable, worthwhile
person
• Unconditional Positive Regard: Unshakable love and approval
Roger’s Person- Centered Perspective

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 Trait Personality Theories
Source of information about personality:
obtained from observation of behaviour and questionnaire responses from the
general population as well as from people in therapy.

Sourabh Munjal
Cause of behavior, thoughts, and feelings:
• stable internal characteristics;
• some emphasize genetic basis.
Outlook on humans:
• neutral - neither positive nor negative.
Comprehensiveness of theory:
• not very comprehensive..
 Learning Theories
• Behavioral Personality Theory: Model of personality that
emphasizes learning and observable behavior.

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• Learning Theorist: Believes that learning shapes our
behavior and explains personality.
• Situational Determinants: External conditions that
influence our behaviors.
Learning Theories : Dollard and Miller’s Theory
• Habits: Learned behaviour patterns; makes up structure of
personality. Governed by:

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• Drive: Any stimulus strong enough to goad a person into action
(like hunger)
• Cue: Signals from the environment that guide responses
• Response: Any behaviour, either internal or observable; actions
• Reward: Positive reinforcement
 Social Learning Theory (Rotter)
• Definition: An explanation that combines learning principles,
cognition, and the effects of social relationships
•

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Psychological Situation: How the person interprets or defines the
situation
• Expectancy: Anticipation that making a response will lead to
reinforcement
• Reinforcement Value: Subjective value attached to a particular
activity or reinforced
 Social Learning Theory (Rotter)
• Self-efficacy: Capacity for producing a desired result

• Self-reinforcement: Praising or rewarding oneself for having

made a particular response (getting a good grade)

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• Social Reinforcement: Praise, attention, and/or approval from
others

• Identification: Feeling emotionally connected to admired adults

• Imitation: Desire to act like an admired person

 Personality Types
Proactive Personality
Identifies opportunities, shows
initiative, takes action, and

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perseveres until meaningful
change occurs.
Creates positive change in the
environment, regardless or
even in spite of constraints or
obstacles.