Personality and Individual

Differences
 Chapter 4 Study Questions

 What is personality?
 How do personalities differ?
 What are value and attitude differences
among individuals, and why are they
important?
 What are individual differences and how
are they related to workforce diversity?
 Personality
 Personality.
- A common sense definition is: “
Personality presents distinctive set
of characteristics that tend to
remain the same across similar
situation and are relatively stable
over time
 Personality
Three Key themes
1. Uniqueness:
- Each person is a collection of unique
characteristics that results in behavior that is
unique to that individual and differentiate one person
from another
2. Situational Consistency
- Difference in opinion regarding the issue of
consistency and variability
- Individual characteristics will be similar in different
situations only if (a) the situations are similar or (2)
the characteristics have produced similar outcomes
in these situations in the past
 Personality
3. Stability:
Considerable evidence suggest it is stable
and enduring over time
The overall profile or combination of
characteristics that capture the unique
nature of a person as that person reacts
and interacts with others.
 Determinants of Personality
Development
• Heredity
– Study of identical twins
– Assessments of
newborns
– Genes
• Environment
– Social exposures
– Physiological forces
– Socioeconomic factors
Determinants of Personality
Development
 Determinants of Personality
Development
 Heredity and environment.
– Heredity sets the limits on the development of
personality characteristics.
– Environment determines development within these
limits.
– About a 50-50 heredity-environment split.
– Cultural values and norms play a substantial role in
the development of personality.
– Social factors include family life, religion, and many
kinds of formal and informal groups.
– Situational factors reflect the opportunities or
constraints imposed by the operational context.
 Determinants of Personality
Development
• Chris Argyris, Daniel Levinson and Grail Sheehy
systematically examine the ways personality develops
across time
• Chris Argyris notes that people develop along a
continuum of dimensions from Immaturity to maturity
• Argyris believes that many organizations treat mature
adults as if they were still and this creates many
problems in terms of bringing out the best in employees
• Levinson and Sheehy maintains that an individuals
personality unfolds in a series of stages across times
 Big Five Personality Traits

Extraversion Conscientiousness

Personality

Openness to
Agreeableness
experience

Emotional stability

Adapted from: Exhibit 5.1 The Big Five Personality Traits

Extravert Introvert
Talkative Reserved
Extraversion
Sociable Quiet

Adapter Challenger
Trusting Co- Agreeableness Rude, cold
operative soft- Uncaring
hearted
Flexible
Focused Conscientiousness sloppy, inefficient,
dependable, careless
efficient, organized
Unstable
Stable Emotional stability Anxious, angry
Self-confident,
depressed
relaxed, secure

Explorer Preserver,
Openness to Unimaginative,
Imaginative,
Experience conventional, habit
curious, broad
bound
minded
 Big Five Personality Traits
• Extraversion:
- The degree to which a person is outgoing and
drives energy from being around other people
- In more specific terms it the degree to which a
person :
1. Enjoys being around other people
2. Is warm to others
3. Speaks up in group settings
4. Maintains a vigorous pace
5. Like excitement and cheerful
 Big Five Personality Traits
- Research has shown that extraverts tend to have
modest but measurable performance advantage over
introverts in occupation requiring high level of interaction
with other people
- Specific occupations where extraverts have been found
to perform particularly well include sales and
management
- Introverts tend to do particularly well in occupations such
as engineering, accounting, and information technology
where more solitary work is required
- For any occupation where teams are emphasized
extraverts may have slight edge, as teams require face-
to-face-interaction, group decision making, and
navigation of interpersonal dynamics
- A team with very high percentage of extraverts as
members may function poorly, more interested in talking
than listening
 Big Five Personality Traits
2. Conscientiousness
• The degree to which an individual focuses on goals and
works towards them
• In specific terms it is the degree to which a person:
1. Feels capable
2. Is organized
3. Is reliable
4. Possesses a drive for success
5. Focuses on completing the task
6. Thinks before acting
• Research has shown that individuals scoring high on
conscientiousness have performance edge in most
occupations and tend to perform well on teams
• Research has shown that conscientiousness has a
stronger positive effect on job performance when a
person also scores high on agreeableness
 Big Five Personality Traits
• 3. Agreeableness
• The degree to which an individual is easy
going and tolerant
• Specifically it is the degree to which a
person:
1.Believes in the honesty of others
2.Is straightforward
3.Is willing to help others
4.Tends to yield under conflict
5.Is sensitive to the feeling of others
 Big Five Personality Traits
• Research has not shown consistent pattern of job
outcomes on individuals scoring high or low on
agreeableness
• Being agreeable and disagreeable can be valuable at
different times in the same job
• Agreeable individuals seems to be consistently effective
in team work
• They are positive for interpersonal dynamics, as they are
sensitive to the feelings of others and try to ensure the
participation and success of all team members
• Having a very high percentage of of very agreeable team
members may be associated with too little debate on
important issues
• When teams must make important decisions and solve
non-routine problems, having some members with lower
scores on agreeableness may be an advantage
 Big Five Personality Traits
4. Emotional Stability
• The degree to which an individual easily handles stressful situations
and heavy demands
• Specific traits include:
1. Is relaxed
2. Is slow to feel anger
3. Rarely becomes discouraged
4. Rarely becomes embarrassed
5. Resists unhealthy urges associated with addictions
6. Handles crisis well
• Research has shown that emotionally stable individuals tend to have
an edge in task performance across a large number of occupations
• Emotionally stable individuals have modest advantage as team
members
• Emotional stability is positively linked to job satisfaction,
independent of specific conditions of the job situation
 Big Five Personality Traits
5. Openness to Experience
• The degree to which a person seeks new
experiences and thinks creatively
• More specifically openness is the degree to
which a person:
1. Has vivid imagination
2. Has appreciation for art and beauty
3. Values and respects emotions in himself and
others
4. Prefers variety to routine
5. Has broad intellectual curiosity
6. Is open to reexamine closely held values
 Cognitive and Motivational
Properties of Personality
• Cognitive properties
– Perceptual and thought processes
– Affect how one typically processes
information
• Motivational properties
– Stable differences
– Energize and maintain overt behaviors
 Cognitive and Motivational
Properties of Personality

Authoritarianism

Locus of control Self-monitoring

Cognitive and
Motivational
Concepts

Achievement Approval
motivation motivation

Adapted from: Exhibit 5-3: Cognitive and Motivational Concepts of Personality

 Cognitive Concepts
• Locus of control
– Tendency to attribute the cause or control of
events to either
• Oneself
• Factors in the external environment
– Internals believe they can control what
happens to them
– Externals believe what happens to them is
more a matter of luck or fate, rather than their
own behavior
 Locus of Control: Internals
1., Are attentive to aspects of environment that provide
useful information. Engage in actions to improve their
environment
2. Place greater emphasis on striving for achievement
3. More inclined to develop skills
4. Less alienated from work environment
5. More likely to be the leader and the group led by
internals more effective than externals
.6. Internal leaders rely more on persuasion and
expertise, external leaders rely on coercive power
7. Internals are more satisfied with participative
management style than externals
 Authoritarianism:
Belief whether lines of power and status should be
clearly delineated or not.
Persons high in authoritarianism are more likely to:
1. Create and maintain power status differences by
actively using titles and symbols of their position and
conforming to rules
2. Less likely to employ participative techniques that
would result in subordinate being treated equally
3. Subordinates high in authoritarianism show proper
deference to their superiors and are willing to abide by
the rules of the game
 Machiavellianism:
It is the degree to which an individual is pragmatic,
maintains emotional distance, and believes that
ends could justify means
High Machs manipulate more, win more, are
persuaded less and persuade others more
The successful outcomes of high Machs behavior
depends upon
(1) face to face interaction with other persons not by
indirect means
(2) When situation has minimum number of rules and
regulations
(3) Where emotional involvement with details are
irrelevant to winning
 Self-monitoring

– Degree to which people attempt to present

the image they think others want to see in the
given situation
– High-self monitors want to be seen as others
want them to be
– Low self monitors want to be seen as
themselves, not as others want them to be
 Achievement motivation

– The need for achievement (n-Ach)

– Desire to perform in terms of a standard of
excellence
– Desire to succeed in competitive situations
– Persons high in the need to achieve
• Set goals
• Accept responsibility for both success and failure
• Focus on task excellence rather than on power
 Approval motivation

– Concerned about presenting one-self in a

socially desirable way in evaluative
situations
– Persons high in approval motivation tend to
• Be concerned about the approval of others
• Conform and “get along”
• Respond to personality tests in socially desirable
ways (may fake their answers according to
perceived desirability)