Session 2(a)

Personality and Attitudes

7-2

Learning Objectives
Define the overall meaning of personality Identify the Big Five personality traits and the MyersBriggs types Describe the meaning of attitudes and their emotional, informational, and behavioral components Explain the antecedents of work-related attitudes, the functions they perform, and how they are changed Examine the major sources and outcomes of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and prosocial, organizational citizenship behaviors
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What is Personality?
Personality The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts and interacts with others. Personality Traits Enduring characteristics that describe an individuals behavior.

Personality
Determinants
Heredity Environment Situation

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So Personality is

Heredity Environment Situation

Personality
Characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling and acting.
Four major perspectives on Personality Psychoanalytic - unconscious motivations Trait - specific dimensions of personality Humanistic - inner capacity for growth Social-Cognitive - influence of environment

Freud & Personality Structure

Id - energy constantly striving to satisfy basic drives
Pleasure Principle

Ego - seeks to gratify the Id in realistic ways

Reality Principle

Ego

Super Ego
Id

Super Ego
- voice of conscience that focuses on how we ought to behave

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. 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)
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Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Type of Social Interaction Preference for Gathering Data Preference for Decision Making

Extrovert (E)
Introvert (I)
Sensing (S) Intuitive (N) Feeling (F) Thinking (T) Perceptive (P) Judgmental (J)

Style of Decision Making

Extroversion

The Big Five Model of Personality Dimensions

Sociable, gregarious, and assertive

Agreeableness
Good-natured, cooperative, and trusting.

Conscientiousness
Responsible, dependable, persistent, and organized.

Emotional Stability
Calm, self-confident, secure (positive) versus nervous, depressed, and insecure (negative).

Openness to Experience
Imaginativeness, artistic, sensitivity, and intellectualism.
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Major Personality Attributes Influencing OB

Locus of control
Machiavellianism

Self-esteem
Self-monitoring

Risk taking
Type A personality
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Locus of Control
Locus of Control The degree to which people believe they are masters of their own fate. Internals
Individuals who believe that they control what happens to them.

Externals
Individuals who believe that what happens to them is controlled by outside forces such as luck or chance.
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Machiavellianism
Machiavellianism (Mach)
Degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes that ends can justify means.

Conditions Favoring High Machs Direct interaction Minimal rules and regulations Emotions distract for others
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Self-Esteem and Self-Monitoring

Self-Esteem (SE) Individuals degree of liking or disliking themselves. Self-Monitoring

A personality trait that measures an individuals ability to adjust his or her behavior to external, situational factors.

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Risk-Taking
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.
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Type As 1. are always moving, walking, and eating rapidly; 2. feel impatient with the rate at which most events take place; 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.

Personality Types

Type Bs 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.
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Personality Types
Proactive Personality
Identifies opportunities, shows initiative, takes action, and perseveres until meaningful change occurs. Creates positive change in the environment, regardless or even in spite of constraints or obstacles.
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Achieving Person-Job Fit

Personality-Job Fit Theory (Holland) Identifies six personality types and proposes that the fit between personality type and occupational environment determines satisfaction and turnover.

Personality Types
Realistic Investigative

Social
Conventional Enterprising

Artistic

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Relationships among Occupational Personality Types

Source: Reprinted by special permission of the publisher, Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc., from Making Vocational Choices, copyright 1973, 1985, 1992 by Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc. All rights reserved.

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EXHIB I T 43

Hollands Typology of Personality and Congruent Occupations

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EXHIB I T 42

Components Of Attitudes

Emotional

Informational

Behavioral

7-21

Attitudes
An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for an item. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or eventthis is often referred to as the attitude object. People can also be conflicted or ambivalent toward an object, meaning that they simultaneously possess both positive and negative attitudes toward the item in question. Attitudes are judgments. They develop on the ABC model.
The affective response is an emotional response that expresses an individual's degree of preference for an entity. The behavioral intention is a verbal indication or typical behavioral tendency of an individual. The cognitive response is a cognitive evaluation of the entity that constitutes an individual's beliefs about the object

Most attitudes are the result of either direct experience or observational learning from the environment.

What Are Attitudes?

Cognitive component Affective component Behavioral component

Attitudes
Attitudes
Evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects, people, or events.
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Cognitive Component
The opinion or belief segment of an attitude.

Affective Component
The emotional or feeling segment of an attitude.

Behavioral Component
An intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something.
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Types of Attitudes
Job Satisfaction
Job Involvement Organizational Commitment

Types of Attitudes
Job Satisfaction A collection of positive and/or negative feelings that an individual holds toward his or her job.

Job Involvement Identifying with the job, actively participating in it, and considering performance important to self-worth. Organizational Commitment Identifying with a particular organization and its goals, and wishing to maintain membership in the organization.
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The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance
Any incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes.

Desire to reduce dissonance

Importance of elements creating dissonance Degree of individual influence over elements

Rewards involved in dissonance

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Measuring the A-B Relationship

Recent research indicates that attitudes (A) significantly predict behaviors (B) when moderating variables are taken into account.
Moderating Variables
Importance of the attitude Specificity of the attitude Accessibility of the attitude

Social pressures on the individual

Direct experience with the attitude
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Attitude-Behavior Relationship
Moderating Variables
Importance Specificity Accessibility Social pressures

Behavioral Influence High

Direct experience

Low

Self-Perception Theory
Attitudes are used after the fact to make sense out of an action that has already occurred.

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An Application: Attitude Surveys

Attitude Surveys Eliciting responses from employees through questionnaires about how they feel about their jobs, work groups, supervisors, and the organization.

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Attitudes and Workforce Diversity

Training activities that can reshape employee attitudes concerning diversity:
Participating in diversity training that provides for self-evaluation and group discussions. Volunteer work in community and social serve centers with individuals of diverse backgrounds. Exploring print and visual media that recount and portray diversity issues.
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