Lecture 08 - MOB - OB Chapter 05 Personality and Individual Differences - Curtailed

Chapter 5
Personality and
Individual differences
Chapter 2, Stephen P. Robbins and Nancy Langton, Fundamentals of Organizational Behaviour, Second Canadian Edition.
Copyright © 2004 Pearson Education Canada Inc.
Personality
The sum of ways in which an individual reacts and
interacts with the world around him/her
– When someone frequently exhibits these characteristics
across many situations and when they are relatively
enduring over time, we call them personality traits
• Personality Determinants
– Heredity
– Environment
– Situation
• Personality frameworks
• Theoretical frameworks and assessment tools help us
categorize and study these dimensions of personality
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
• The Big Five Model
The Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator
• The most widely used personality assessment instrument
in the world
• It is a one-hundred-question personality test that asks
people how they usually feel or act in situations
• Respondents are classified as
– extroverted or introverted (E or I),
– sensing or intuitive (S or N),
– thinking or feeling (T or F), and
– judging or perceiving (J or P)
• Extroverted (E) versus Introverted (I)- Extroverted
individuals are outgoing, sociable, and assertive. Introverts
are quiet and shy.
• Sensing (S) versus Intuitive (N)- Sensing types are
practical and prefer routine and order, and they focus on
details. Intuitive rely on unconscious processes and look at
the big picture.
• Thinking (T) versus Feeling (F)- Thinking types use
reason and logic to handle problems. Feeling types rely on
their personal values and emotions.
• Judging (J) versus Perceiving (P)- Judging types want
control and prefer order and structure. Perceiving types are
flexible and spontaneous.
problems with the use of
the MBTI
• First, the MBTI was developed in a rather unscientific,
subjective way based on Carl Jung’s neo-Freudian
theories
• Second, evidence does not support the validity of the
MBTI as a measure of personality
• Third, the MBTI forces a person into one type or another
• Fourth, when people retake the assessment, they often
receive different results.
The Big Five Model
• Classifications
– Conscientiousness
– Emotional Stability
– Extraversion
– Openness to Experience
– Agreeableness
• Conscientiousness
– a measure of personal consistency and reliability.
– A highly conscientious person is responsible,
organized, dependable, and persistent.
– Those who score low on this dimension are easily
distracted, disorganized, and unreliable.
• Emotional stability
– dimension taps a person’s ability to withstand stress.
People with emotional stability tend to be calm, self-
confident, and secure.
– High scorers are more likely to be positive and optimistic
and to experience fewer negative emotions
– Low scorers (those with high neuroticism) are
hypervigilant and vulnerable to the physical and
psychological effects of stress. Those with high
neuroticism tend to be nervous, anxious, depressed, and
insecure.
• Extroversion
– Extroverts tend to be gregarious, assertive, and
sociable. They experience more positive emotions
than do introverts, and they more freely express these
feelings
– Introverts (low extroversion) tend to be more
thoughtful, reserved, timid, and quiet
• Openness to experience
– addresses the range of interests and
fascination with novelty. Open people are
creative, curious, and artistically sensitive.
– Those at the low end of the category are
conventional and find comfort in the familiar
environment
• Agreeableness
– refers to an individual’s propensity to defer to
others. Agreeable people are cooperative,
warm, and trusting.
– people who score low on agreeableness are
cold and antagonistic
Other Personality Attributes
relevant to OB
• Core self evaluations (CSEs)
– bottom-line conclusions individuals have about their
capabilities, competence, and worth as a person
– People who have positive CSEs like themselves and
see themselves as effective and in control of their
environment
• Self-Monitoring
– an individual’s ability to adjust behavior to external,
situational factors
– High self-monitors show considerable adaptability in
adjusting their behavior to external situational
factors.
• Proactive Personality
– Identify opportunities, show initiative, take
action, and persevere until meaningful change
occurs, unlike those who generally react to
situations
– These personality traits predict many
important organizational outcomes
Values
• Basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end-
state of existence is personally or socially preferable to
an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of
existence
• Values contain a judgmental element because they carry
an individual’s ideas about what is right, good, or
desirable.
• They have both content and intensity attributes.
• value system
– A hierarchy based on a ranking of an individual’s
values in terms of their intensity
– According to the relative importance we assign to
values such as freedom, pleasure, self-respect,
honesty, obedience, and equality.
Terminal versus Instrumental Values
• terminal values
– Refers to desirable end-states. These are the goals a
person would like to achieve during a lifetime.
– Some examples of terminal values are prosperity and
economic success, freedom, health and well-being,
world peace, and meaning in life
• instrumental values,
– Refers to preferable modes of behavior, or means of
achieving the terminal values
– Examples of instrumental values are autonomy and
self-reliance, personal discipline, kindness, and goal
orSientation
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