Chapter 9 - Personality Flashcards
What is personality?
Structures and propensities explaining individual characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behaviour (aka, what people are like).
What is personality a function of?
Both genes and environment.
For extraversion and openness to experience especially, genes seem to play a large role.
However, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism tend to change significantly over a person’s life span.
What is an important environmental factor to personality?
The culture in which one is raised.
What does personality create at a social level?
People’s social reputation - how they are prceived.
What are traits?
Recurring regularities or trends in people’s responses to their environment.
What are cultural values?
Shared beliefs about desirable end states/modes of conduct in a given culture.
What is the connection between personality and cultural values?
Cultural values may influence the development of people’s personality traits, and how these are expressed in daily life.
Big Five Taxonomy: What is conscientiousness?
-Dependability
-Organization
-Reliability
-Ambition
-Hard-working nature
-Perseverance
Big Five Taxonomy: What is agreeableness?
-Warmness/Kindness
-Cooperation
-Sympathy
-Helpfulness
-Courtesy
Big Five Taxonomy: What is neuroticism?
Degree of emotional stability/adjustment.
-Nervousness
-Moodiness
-Emotion-display
-Insecurity
-Jealousy
Big Five Taxonomy: What is openness to experience?
-Curiosity
-Inquisitiveness
-Imagination
-Creativity
-Complexity
-Refined-ness
-Sophistication
Big Five Taxonomy: What is extraversion?
-Talkativeness
-Sociableness
-Passion
-Assertion
-Courage
-Dominance
What is accomplishment striving?
A strong desire to accomplish task-related goals as a means of expressing personality.
Working harder and longer on task assignments.
Characteristic of conscientious individuals.
How is conscientiousness related to health?
Those who are conscientious are less likely to abuse substance/render in mortal situations.
Where is conscientiousness important?
Across all jobs/professions.
What is communion striving?
A strong desire to obtain acceptance in personal relationships, as a means of expressing personality.
Where is agreeableness important?
Not in management jobs that may demand dealing with unreasonable requests or demands.
Important in service-sector jobs.
When is extraversion most visible?
In zero-acquaintance situations, where people have just met.
What is status striving?
The strong desire to obtain power and influence within a social structure, as a means of expressing personality.
Constantly directing one’s work efforts toward moving up, developing strong reputation, and obtaining leadership roles.
Especially important in extroverted individuals.
What is extraversion related to?
-Leadership
-Effectiveness
-Job Satisfaction, thanks to positive affectivity
-Life Satisfaction
What is positive affectivity?
Dispositional tendency to experience pleasant, engaging moods such as enthusiasm, excitement, and elation.
What is negative affectivity?
Dispositional tendency to experience unpleasant moods, such as hostility, nervousness, and annoyance.
What is differential exposure to stressors?
The appraisal that one has for day-to-day situations to come across as stressful.
Neuroticism elevates exposure to stressors.
What is differential reactivity to stressors?
The belief that one has that they can cope with the stressors they experience.
Neuroticism elevates reactivity to stressors.
What is neuroticism related to?
-Lower job and life satisfaction;
-Type A behaviour pattern;
-External locus of control.
What are the two types of locus of control?
External: Belief that events occurring around them are driven by luck, chance, or fate.
Internal: Belief that one’s own behaviour dictates events.
What is an internal locus of control associated with?
-Higher job satisfaction and performance;
-Better health;
-More social support at work, and stronger relationships with supervisors;
-Viewing their job as having more beneficial characteristics;
-Higher salary.
When is openness most important?
In jobs that are fluid and dynamic, with rapid changes in job demands.
Where do employees high in openness excel?
-Learning and training environment: Creativity, adaptability, identifying new methods of doing things that are more effective.
-Creative performance jobs
What drives creative thought?
-Cognitive ability
-Openness to experience
What is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)?
A taxonomy of personality evaluating individuals based on four types of preferences.
- Energy stemming from people/social interactions (Extraversion) vs from private time and reflection (Introversion).
- Concrete/clear facts and data (Sensing) vs Hunches/speculations based on theory and imagination (Intuition).
- Decision-making using logic and critical analysis (Thinking) vs Emphasizing others’ needs and feelings (Feeling).
- Performing tasks through planning and setting goals (Judging) vs flexibility and spontaneity (Perceiving).
Where is MBTI most used, and why?
In team-building contexts, given that there are no ‘bad’ types.
What are interests?
Expressions of personality that influence behaviour through preferences for certain environments and activities.
What do interests reflect?
Stable and enduring likes and dislikes, which explain why people are drawn to some careers and away from others.
What is the RIASEC model?
Holland’s model, in which interests are summarized through six personality types.
What are the six personality types in the RIASEC model?
-Realistic: Keen for practical, hands-on, real-world tasks. Frank, practical, determined, rugged.
-Investigative: Keen for abstract, analytical, theory-oriented tasks. Analytical, intellectual, reserved, scholarly.
-Artistic: Keen for using imagination to entertain and fascinate. Original, independent, impulsive, creative.
-Social: Keen for helping, serving, assisting. Helpful, inspiring, informative, empathic.
-Enterprising: Keen for persuading, leading, outperforming. Energetic, sociable, ambitious, risk-taking.
-Conventional: Keen for organizing, counting, regulating people/things. Careful, conservative, self-controlled, structured.
What two dimensions does Holland use to classify the personality types in the RIASEC model?
Preference for working with data, vs working with ideas;
Preference for working with people, vs working with things.
What is the central premise of the RIASEC model?
Employees will stem greater career satisfaction, job knowledge, and longevity when their employment matches their personality type.
Where is the RIASEC model commonly used?
Interest inventories that score people on their relevant personality dimensions, giving them a list of occupations that could provide a good match for that profile.
What is culture?
Shared values, beliefs, motives, identities, and interpretations resulting from common experiences of members of a society, transmitted across generations.
Patterns resulting from societal traditions.
Collective programming of the mind distinguishing societies from one another.
What does culture influence?
How are personalities are developed and how our traits are expressed.
What are cultural values?
In a given society, cultural values dictate the way things should be done.
What is the cultural value dimension of individualism-collectivism (Hofstede)?
Individualism: Loosely-knit social framework, with people taking care of themselves and their immediate family.
Collectivism: Tightly-knit social framework, with people taking care of and being loyal towards the members of a broader in-group.
What is the cultural value dimension of power distance (Hofstede)?
Low power distance: Culture with a preference for uniform distribution of power, egalitarianism.
High power distance: Culture that distributes power unequally within organizations.
What is the cultural value dimension of uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede)?
Low uncertainty avoidance: Culture with tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity, valuing unusual ideas and behaviours.
High uncertainty avoidance: Culture that feels threatened by uncertainty and ambiguity, relying instead on formal rules to create stability.
What is the cultural value dimension of masculinity-femininity (Hofstede)?
Masculine: Culture valuing assertiveness, acquisition of money and things.
Feminine: Culture valuing caring for others and quality of life.
What is the cultural value dimension of time orientation (Hofstede)?
Short-term Time Orientation: Past-and-present focused culture, with respect for traditions and fulfilling obligations.
Long-term Time Orientation: Future-focused culture, valuing persistence, prudence, and thrift.
What is Project GLOBE (Global Leadership and OB Effectiveness)?
Examines the impact of culture on the effectiveness of various leader attributes, behaviours, and prafctices.
What are the nine dimensions that Project GLOBE uses to summarize cultures?
-Power distance
-Uncertainty avoidance
-Institutional collectivism: Formalized practices that exist to encourage collective action and distribution of resources.
-Ingroup collectivism: Expression fo pride and loyalty toward specific ingroups.
-Gender egalitarianism: Minimal role differences between men and women.
-Assertiveness: Tolerance for confrontation and aggressiveness in social relationships.
-Future orientation: Engaging in planning and investment into the future, delaying individual/collective gratification.
-Performance orientation: Encouragement and reward for excellence and performance improvement.
-Humane orientation: Encouragement and reward for generosity, care, kindness, fariness, altruism.
What cultural dimension is most prevalent in differentiating societies?
Individualism-collectivism.
What is ethnocentrism?
A propensity to view one’s cultural values as “right”, and those of other cultures as “wrong”.
Which Big Five trait is most important for job performance?
Conscientiousness, which has a strong effect on task performance.
Conscientious employees are more ____ and engage in ________, while being unlikely to engage in _________.
Motivated; Citizenship Behaviour; Counterproductive Behaviour.
Why is conscientiousness related to citizenship behaviour?
High propensity of punctuality, good work attendance, work-related effort = More availability and energy in offering “extra mile” contributions.
Greater job satisfaction.
Why is conscientiousness negatively correlated with counterproductive behaviours?
-Job satisfaction = Less need to leave the organization.
-Dependable, reliable nature.
What type of performance is conscientiousness a key driver of?
Typical performance, in routine conditions surrounding daily job tasks.
What type of performance is ability a key driver of?
Maximum performance, in brief, special circumstances requiring for best efforts.
How is conscientiousness related to organizational commitment?
Conscientiousness has a moderate positive effect on organizational commitment, with greater levels of affective and normative commitment.
Conscientious employees are less likely to engage in withdrawal behaviours and voluntarily leave the organization.
Why are conscientious employees more committed?
-Persevering nature
-Better stress managers, perceiving lower levels of key stressors, and being less affected by them.
What is situational strength?
The degree to which a situation has clear behavioural expectations, incentives, or instructions, making personality and the difference between individuals less important.
What are integrity tests?
Honesty tests. Personality tests focusing on the predisposition to theft, or other counterproductive behaviour.
What is trait activation?
Principle which states that situational cues trigger the expression of given personality traits.
What is the importance of an integrity test?
Integrity test scores are more strongly related to job performance than conscientiousness.
What is faking?
Exaggeration of one’s personality test responses, so that they are socially desirable.
Is faking important?
Not really, because everyone fakes to some extent.
What is work centrality?
In personal values, the degree to which work is an individual’s central life interest.
