Chapter 2: Individual Differences: Personality and Values Flashcards
What does the MARS model stand for, and what are its components?
MARS stands for Motivation, Ability, Role Perceptions, and Situational Factors.
- Motivation: The internal drive to perform well.
- Ability: The skills and competencies needed to perform tasks.
- Role Perceptions: Understanding of one’s job responsibilities.
- Situational Factors: External conditions that impact performance.
These four elements directly influence an individual’s voluntary behavior and performance in the workplace. Low levels in any of these areas can negatively affect behavior and performance. Motivation, ability, and role perceptions are internal, while situational factors are external but still impactful.
What are the four factors in the MARS model that directly influence individual behavior and performance?
- Motivation:
* Direction: The path people choose to steer their efforts, goal-directed, not random.
* Intensity: The amount of effort exerted towards achieving a goal.
* Persistence: How long individuals continue to apply effort towards a goal. - Ability:
* Learned Capabilities: Skills and knowledge acquired through training, practice, and experience.
* Aptitudes: Natural talents that make learning and performing certain tasks easier.
* Ability affects performance based on how well an individual’s skills align with job requirements. - Role Perceptions:
* Refers to how clearly employees understand their job responsibilities and expectations.
* Clear role perceptions lead to efficient and accurate work; role ambiguity leads to confusion and wasted effort.
* Role clarity helps in task prioritization (e.g., quantity vs. quality) and preferred behaviors or procedures for completing tasks. - Situational Factors:
* External conditions that impact performance, though they are outside the individual’s control.
Each of these factors plays a crucial role in shaping an employee’s behavior and performance in the workplace.
What is the definition of personality and personality traits?
Personality refers to the relatively enduring patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that characterize a person, along with the psychological processes behind those characteristics. It’s essentially the bundle of qualities that make us similar to or different from others.
Personality Traits are broad concepts that help us label and understand individual differences. Each trait suggests that there is something within the person—rather than environmental factors alone—that predicts a person’s behavioral tendencies. These traits give insight into consistent patterns of behavior.
What are the two factors that shape personality?
The two factors that shape personality are nature and nurture:
Nature: Refers to our genetic or hereditary origins, including the genes we inherit from our parents. This genetic code not only influences our physical traits (e.g., eye color, skin tone) but also significantly impacts our attitudes, decisions, and behavior.
Nurture: Refers to our socialization, life experiences, and interactions with the environment. These factors shape our personality through the experiences and influences we encounter throughout our lives.
What are the three techniques used to measure personality?
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI):
* Assesses four areas: Getting energy, perceiving information, making decisions, and orienting to the external world.
* Pros: Helps people understand themselves.
* Cons: Puts people in rigid categories, lacks flexibility, and is not a reliable predictor of job performance.
The Big 5 Personality Model:
* Based on five broad dimensions:
Conscientiousness
Emotional Stability
Openness to Experience
Agreeableness
Extraversion
* Supported by research and can accurately predict business behaviors and outcomes.
The Dark Triad:
* Measures three negative personality traits: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy.
* Used to understand potentially harmful or manipulative behaviors.
What is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and how does it categorize personality?
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is an instrument designed to measure elements of Jungian personality theory, particularly preferences in how people perceive and process information. It categorizes personalities based on four key preferences:
Perceiving Functions:
* Sensing: Focuses on information gathered through the five senses; prefers structured, factual, and quantitative details. Sensing types live in the present and focus on “here and now.”
* Intuition: Relies on insight and subjective experience; focuses on future possibilities and the relationships between variables.
Judging Functions:
* Thinking: Makes decisions based on logic, cause-effect relationships, and systematic data collection.
* Feeling: Makes decisions based on emotional responses and how choices impact others.
People with perceiving orientations are open, curious, and flexible, often keeping their options open and adapting as things unfold. Judging types prefer order, structure, and quick resolution of problems.
The MBTI framework helps individuals understand how their personality influences their decision-making, behavior, and interactions with others.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)?
Strengths:
* Widely used in career counseling and executive coaching; useful for understanding cognitive styles.
* Popular in management research, including its application by AI engineers to adapt robot behavior to human preferences.
* Takes a neutral approach by recognizing the strengths and limitations of each personality type in different situations.
Weaknesses:
* Poor predictor of job performance, so it should be avoided for employment selection and promotion decisions.
* Has measurement issues and may not accurately predict how well a team develops or functions.
* Limited value in predicting leadership effectiveness.
* Not suitable for assessing how well individuals perform in virtual teamwork versus face-to-face interactions.
What is the Big Five Personality Model, and what are the five factors?
The Big Five Personality Model includes five broad dimensions that represent the most common personality traits. These factors are:
Conscientiousness:
* People with high conscientiousness are organized, dependable, goal-focused, and disciplined.
* Low conscientiousness individuals tend to be disorganized, careless, and less thorough.
Agreeableness:
* High agreeableness individuals are trusting, helpful, good-natured, considerate, and tolerant.
* Low agreeableness individuals tend to be uncooperative, suspicious, and self-focused.
Neuroticism:
* People with high neuroticism are anxious, insecure, self-conscious, and easily upset.
* Low neuroticism individuals are calm, secure, and poised.
Openness to Experience:
* People with high openness are imaginative, creative, curious, and unconventional.
* They are more willing to explore new ideas and experiences.
Extraversion:
* High extraversion individuals are outgoing, energetic, talkative, and sociable.
* Introverts, the opposite of extraverts, are quieter, more reserved, and focused on their internal world. They are not necessarily antisocial but tend to direct their interest toward ideas rather than social events.
How do the Big Five traits predict behavior at work? Explain the relevance and effects of each factor.
Emotional Stability (opposite of Neuroticism)
* Relevance: Leads to fewer negative emotions and less negative thinking. Less hypervigilance.
* Affects: Higher job and life satisfaction, lower stress levels.
Extraversion
* Relevance: Better interpersonal skills, greater social dominance, and more emotionally expressive.
* Affects: Higher performance (not in all situations), enhanced leadership, and greater job and life satisfaction. Extraverts are more likely to be identified as leaders.
Openness
* Relevance: Increases learning, creativity, flexibility, and adaptability.
* Affects: Better training and performance, enhanced leadership abilities, and increased adaptability to change.
Agreeableness
* Relevance: Being better liked, more compliant, and conforming to social norms.
* Affects: Higher performance (not in all situations) and lower levels of deviant behavior.
Conscientiousness (Most predictive of higher performance)
* Relevance: Greater effort, persistence, drive, discipline, and better organizational and planning skills.
* Affects: Higher performance, enhanced leadership, and greater longevity in the workplace.
Note: Performance predictions are not universal, and the relevance of each trait can vary depending on the specific work context.
What are the three traits of the Dark Triad?
Narcissism:
* Traits: A grandiose view of oneself, requiring excessive admiration, a sense of entitlement, and arrogance.
* Impact: Individuals with high narcissism tend to seek admiration and validation and believe they are superior to others.
Machiavellianism:
* Traits: Pragmatic, emotionally distant, and manipulative. Believes “the ends justify the means.”
* Impact: High Machiavellians are skilled at using others for personal gain and may deceive or exploit situations to achieve their goals.
Psychopathy:
* Traits: A lack of concern for others, and no guilt or remorse when causing harm.
* Impact: Psychopathic individuals are often indifferent to the feelings or well-being of others, and may engage in harmful or reckless behaviors without feeling remorse.
The Dark Triad traits are often linked to negative workplace behaviors, such as manipulation, exploitation, and interpersonal difficulties.
