Personality

• Unique, relatively consistent pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving

– Preferences – for how you handle situations, your sense of humor, or

your expectations of others

“You have a strong need for other people to like & admire you. You have a
tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity, which
you have not turned to your advantage…disciplined & controlled on the outside, you
tend to be worrisome & insecure inside…at times, you’re extraverted, affable, &
sociable; at other times, you’re introverted, wary, & reserved”

• What is Personality?

People differ from

each other in

meaningful ways

People seem to show some consistency in behavior

• What Is Personality?

• HEREDITY

• ENVIRONMENT

ENVIRONMENT Factors that exert pressures on our personality formation:

(The culture in which we are raised, Norms among our family,friends and social
groups)

• The arguments for heredity or environment as the primary determinant of

personality are both important.

• Heredity sets the parameters or outer limits, but an individual’s full potential
will be determined by how well he or she adjusts to the demands and
requirements of the environment.

• Personality Traits

• Enduring characteristics that describe an individual’s behavior

 – Popular characteristics include shy, aggressive, submissive, lazy,
ambitious, loyal, and timid. These are personality traits.

– The more consistent the characteristic, the more frequently it occurs,

the more important it is.

• Researchers believe that personality traits can help in employee selection,

job fit, and career development.

• Personality Theories

Trait Theory - understand individuals by breaking down behavior patterns into

observable traits

Psychodynamic Theory - emphasizes the unconscious determinants of behavior

Humanistic Theory - emphasizes individual growth and improvement

Integrative Approach - describes personality as a composite of an individual’s

psychological processes

• Personality Traits

• Traits are relatively stable and consistent personal characteristics

• Trait personality theories suggest that a person can be described on the basis
of some number of personality traits

– Allport identified some 4,500 traits

– Cattel used factor analysis to identify 30-35 basic traits

– Eysenck argued there are 3 distinct traits in personality

• Extraversion/introversion

• Neuroticism

• Psychotocism

• An OB Model for Studying Individual Differences

• Eysenck’s Three Factor Theory

• The First Trait Theory

The first two factors create 4 combinations, related to the four basic
temperaments recognized by ancient Greeks:
 • Melancholic (introverted + unstable): sad, gloomyOne of four ancient
personality types; is slow to move, self-preoccupied, unhappy and depressed

• Choleric (extroverted + unstable): hot-tempered, irritable One of the four

ancient personality types; is quick to action, has a short temper, and is lean

• Phlegmatic (introverted + stable): sluggish, calm One of four ancient

personality types; has little energy, is prone to eating too much, and is
somewhat indifferent in disposition.

• Sanguine (extroverted + stable): cheerful, hopeful One of four ancient

personality types; is cheerful, lively, and easy-going

The four humors, their corresponding elements, seasons, sites of formation, and
resulting temperaments alongside their modern equivalents are

• Cattell: Source & Surface Traits

• The Sixteen Personality Factors

• Big Five Personality Traits

• The Big Five Model of Personality Dimensions

• Extraversion. Comfort level with relationships. Extroverts tend

to be gregarious, assertive, Outgoing, talkative, sociable.
Introverts tend to be reserved, timid, and quiet.

• Agreeableness. Individual’s propensity to defer to others. High

agreeableness people—cooperative, warm, and trusting. good
natured, cooperative, soft hearted Low agreeableness people—
cold, disagreeable, and antagonistic.

• Conscientiousness. A measure of reliability. A high

conscientious person is responsible, organized, dependable, and
persistent. achievement oriented, persistent Those who score
low on this dimension are easily distracted, disorganized, and
unreliable.

• Emotional stability. A person’s ability to withstand stress.

People with positive emotional stability tend to be calm, self-
confident, and secure Relaxed,unworried. Those with high
negative scores tend to be nervous, anxious, depressed, and
insecure.

• Openness to experience. The range of interests and

fascination with novelty. Extremely open people are creative,
curious, and artistically sensitive, Intellectual, imaginative,
 curious, broad minded Those at the other end of the openness
category are conventional and find comfort in the familiar.

• Research found important relationships between these

personality dimensions and job performance.

• The results showed that conscientiousness predicted job

performance for all occupational groups.

• Individuals who are dependable, reliable, careful, thorough, able

to plan, organized, hardworking, persistent, and achievement-
oriented tend to have higher job performance.

• Employees higher in conscientiousness develop higher levels of

job knowledge.

• There is a strong and consistent relationship between

conscientiousness and organizational citizenship behavior
(OCB).

• For the other personality dimensions, predictability depended

upon both the performance criterion and the occupational
group.

• Extroversion predicts performance in managerial and sales

positions.

• Openness to experience is important in predicting training

proficiency.

• Overview of the Big “5”

• Evaluating Trait Theory

• Trait theory, especially the Big 5 model, is able to describe personality

– Cross-cultural human studies find good agreement for the Big 5 model
in many cultures

– Appear to be highly correlated not only in adulthood, but also in

childhood and even late preschoolers

– Three dimensions (extraversion, neuroticism and agreeableness) have

cross-species generality

• Problems with trait theory include:

– Lack of explanation as to WHY traits develop

 – Issue of explaining transient versus long-lasting traits

• Major Personality Attributes Influencing OB

• Core Self-Evaluation

– Self-Esteem

– Locus of Control

• Machiavellianism

• Narcissism

• Self-Monitoring

• Risk Taking

• Type A vs. Type B Personality

• Proactive Personality

• High Flyers

• Core Self-Evaluation: Two Main Components

• Machiavellianism

• Machiavellianism

• High Machs manipulate more, win more, are persuaded less, and persuade
others more.

• High Mach outcomes are moderated by situational factors and flourish when
they interact face-to-face with others, rather than indirectly, and when the
situation has a minimum number of rules and regulations, thus allowing
latitude for improvisation.

• High Machs make good employees in jobs that require bargaining skills or
that offer substantial rewards for winning.

• Narcissism

• Self-Monitoring

• Risk-Taking

• The propensity to assume or avoid risk has been shown to have an impact on
how long it takes managers to make a decision and how much information
they require before making their choice.
 • High Risk-Taking Managers

– Make quicker decisions

– 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 Types

• Type A personality compared to Type B personality

– Type A’s operate under moderate to high levels of stress. They subject
themselves to continuous time pressure, are fast workers, quantity
over quality, work long hours, and are also rarely creative.

– Type A’s behavior is easier to predict than that of Type B’s.

• Personality Types

• Self-Efficacy

Sources of Self-Efficacy Beliefs:

- Prior experience

- Behavior models

- Persuasion from others

- Assessment of physical/emotional state

• Personality and National Culture

• The five personality factors identified in the Big Five model are found in
almost all cross-cultural studies.
 • There are no common personality types for a given country.

• There are Type A’s in every country, but they tend to be more found in
capitalist countries.

• Personality Characteristics
in Organizations

• Personality Characteristics
in Organizations

Self-Efficacy - beliefs and expectations about one’s ability to accomplish a specific

task effectively

Sources of self-efficacy

– Prior experiences and prior success

– Behavior models (observing success)

– Persuasion

– Assessment of current physical & emotional capabilities

• Personality Characteristics
in Organizations

• Personality Characteristics
in Organizations

• High self-monitors

– flexible: adjust behavior according to the situation and the behavior of

others

– can appear unpredictable & inconsistent

• 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

• Who Is Most Likely to . . .

• Personality Characteristics
in Organizations
Positive Affect - an individual’s tendency to accentuate the positive aspects of
oneself, other people, and the world in general

Negative Affect - an individual’s tendency to accentuate the negative aspects of

oneself, other people, and the world in general

• Personality Assessment

• Clinical Interview

• Self-Report Questionnaire - assessment involving an individual’s

responses to questions

• Behavioral Measures - personality assessments that involve observing an

individual’s behavior in a controlled situation

• Objective Tests

– Myers-Briggs-instrument measuring Jung’s theory of individual

differences.

• Projective Tests- elicits an individual’s response to abstract stimuli

– Rorschach Ink Blots

– Thematic Apperception Test, provides ambiguous stimuli and subject

projects his or her motives into the ambiguous stimuli

– Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

• Based on Carl Jung’s work

– People are fundamentally different

– People are fundamentally alike

– People have preference combinations for extraversion/introversion,

perception, judgment

• Briggs & Myers developed the MBTI to understand individual differences

• The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

• The Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator is a 100-question personality test that asks

people to select how they usually feel or act in particular situations.

• On the basis of their answers, they are classified as extroverted or

introverted (E or I), sensing or intuitive (S or N), thinking or feeling (T or F),
and perceiving or judging (P or J).
 • Since results provide insights into what individuals enjoy doing, using this
test in employee selection can minimize personality-job conflicts.

• Meyers-Briggs (cont’d)

• INTJs are visionaries. They usually have original minds and great
drive for their own ideas and purposes. They are characterized
as skeptical, critical, independent, determined, and often
stubborn.

• ESTJs are organizers. They are realistic, logical, analytical,

decisive, and have a natural head for business or mechanics.

• The ENTP type is a conceptualizer. He or she is innovative,

individualistic, versatile, and attracted to entrepreneurial ideas.
This person tends to be resourceful in solving challenging
problems but may neglect routine assignments.

• Meyers-Briggs (cont’d)

A Meyers-Briggs Score

– MBTI is widely used in practice. Some organizations using it include

Apple Computer, AT&T, Citigroup, GE, 3M Co.

– Can be a valuable tool for self-awareness and career guidance

BUT

– Should not be used as a selection tool because it has not been related
to job performance!

– MBTI Preferences

– Assessing the Unconscious -- Rorschach

– Rorschach Inkblot Test

– the most widely used projective test

– a set of 10 inkblots designed by Hermann Rorschach

– Best used to measure how people process information

– Creativity, coping resources, emotional processing, relationships with others,

thought disorders, psychoses

– Assessing the Unconscious--Rorschach

– Thematic Apperception Test

 – Black & white pictures of people in vague/ambiguous situations

– Asked to make up a dramatic story about the picture

– Best used to learn the motivation behind people’s behavior

– Believed that person will identify with one of the characters on each card

– In their stories, people are thought to express their own circumstances,

needs, environmental demands, emotions, and perceptions of reality

– Second popular projective instrument is the thematic apperception test – or

TAT. The theory behind is it is that personality is distinguished by the kinds
of psychological needs that motivate people – such as the need for power,
achievement, nurturance, and affiliation.

– There are 31 pictures – 10 are gender specific and 21 are gender-neutral.

– The TAT is based on the assumption that people identify with the heroes and
project their own needs into their responses. If someone tells one story after
another about the loss of a loved one, resistance to authority, the struggle to
achieve success, or fear of rejection, chances are that the particular theme is
an important one for the person.

– Assessing the Unconscious--TAT

Individual Behaviour
 Foundations of Individual Behavior

 Variables Influencing
Individual Behavior

 Individual Behavior

 Companies who are looking for employees look for individual characteristics
that will improve the chances of success

 Individual differences exist

– Biographical characteristics

– Abilities

– Personality
 – Perception

– Attitudes

– Emotions

– Moods

 Each interacts with the other and with the task to impact the way the
employee does the job

 Biographical Characteristics

 Ability, Intellect, and Intelligence

 Dimensions of
Intellectual Ability

 Physical Abilities

 Nine Physical Abilities

 The Ability-Job Fit

 Learning

 Theories of Learning

 Theories of Learning (cont’d)

 Theories of Learning (cont’d)

 Theories of Learning (cont’d)

 Types of Reinforcement

 Positive reinforcement

– Providing a reward for a desired behavior.

 Negative reinforcement

– Removing an unpleasant consequence when the desired behavior

occurs.

 Punishment

– Applying an undesirable condition to eliminate an undesirable

behavior.
 Extinction

– Withholding reinforcement of a behavior to cause its cessation.

 Schedules of Reinforcement

 Schedules of Reinforcement (cont’d)

 Schedules of Reinforcement (cont’d)

 Intermittent Schedules of Reinforcement (cont’d)

 Intermittent Schedules of Reinforcement

 Behavior Modification

 OB MOD Organizational Applications

 Using Lotteries to reduce Absenteeism

– Management can use learning theory to design programs to reduce

absenteeism

 Well Pay versus Sick Pay

– Reduces absenteeism by rewarding attendance, not absence.

 Employee Discipline

– The use of punishment can be counter-productive.

 Developing Training Programs

– OB MOD methods improve training effectiveness.

 Self-management and creating mentoring programs

– Reduces the need for external management control.