Individual differences 2-Personality

Question 1

What is personality used in business for?

Answer 1

. Recruitment and selection
. Internal promotions (not often)
. Coaching and training courses – helping people understand their own and others’ preferences

Question 2

What do businesses care about in terms of personality tests?

Answer 2

. Validity: do tests measure what they say they measure?

. Reliability: e.g. test-retest reliability: if a person redoes a test, they will get the same result

Question 3

What is the definition of personality?

Answer 3

Those characteristics of the person that account for consistent patterns of experience and action

Question 4

What are the sources of personality differences?

Answer 4

. Genetic Inheritance
. Family Experience
. Culture
. Life experience

Question 5

What is the nature debate of personality?

Answer 5

. Determined at birth

. Stable and unchanging

Question 6

What is the nurture debate of personality?

Answer 6

. Determined by experience

. Evolves through life

Question 7

What are two main theoretical approaches to personality?

Answer 7

nomothetic and idiographic

Question 8

What are the key points about the nomothetic approach?

Answer 8

. Tries to explain relationships between variables across many cases
. Uses factor analysis
. Generalisation
. Universal principles

Question 9

What are the key points about the idiographic approach?

Answer 9

. Tries to explain relationships among variables within a particular case or event
. Study of individual cases

Question 10

Explain nomothetic theories?

Answer 10

. Nomothetic theories of personality operate by looking for general criteria on which ALL individuals may be measured and compared. E.g. Trait theories

Question 11

Explain idiographic theories?

Answer 11

Not concerned with making comparisons between people. Instead, their focus of interest is how the single individual works i.e. how psychological processes produce individuality not personality. E.g. Freud

Question 12

What are examples of nomothetic theories?

Answer 12

. Big five
. MBTI
. Allport
. Cattell

Question 13

What are examples of idiographic theories?

Answer 13

. Psychoanalytic-Freud

. Social cultural- Bandura

Question 14

What are the advantages of nomothetic theories?

Answer 14

. Generalisable findings
. Measures are relatively quick and easy to use
. Perceived to be ‘scientific’

Question 15

What are the disadvantages of nomothetic theories?

Answer 15

. Predictions made on a single trait may not explain much of the variance in behaviour
. Reductionist - provides a superficial understanding of the person

Question 16

What are the advantages of idiographic theories?

Answer 16

. Explains the whole person

Question 17

What are the disadvantages of idiographic theories?

Answer 17

. Non-Generalisable
. Analysis may be time consuming (£)
. Perceived as unreliable and unscientific

Question 18

What are type theories?

Answer 18

Distinct, discreet, discontinuous categories of personality

Question 19

What are trait theories?

Answer 19

People differ in amounts on a single continuum

Question 20

How are nomothetic theory results usually shown?

Answer 20

In a normal distribution

Question 21

What results should type theories produce but rarely do?

Answer 21

. Bimodal distribution

Question 22

What is a personality trait?

Answer 22

Characteristics that influence how people think, feel and behave on and off the job.
E.g. tendencies to be enthusiastic, demanding, easy-going, nervous, etc.

Question 23

What is factor analysis?

Answer 23

“A statistical technique used to identify key factors that underlie relationships between variables” Arnold (2010, p. 701)

Question 24

What are the ‘Big five’ characteristics? (OCEAN) and outline each one

Answer 24

. Openness- the active seeking and appreciation of experiences for their own sake

. Conscientiousness-degree of organisation, persistence, control and motivation in goal-directed behaviour

. Extroversion- quantity and intensity of energy directed outwards into the social world

. Agreeableness- helpful to others while being mindful to others feelings and preferring cooperation to competition
. Neuroticism- identifies individuals who are prone to psychological distress

Question 25

Explain the Big 5 Personality theory

Answer 25

. Developed since the 1960s but major progress in 1980s
. Five factors independent of each other
. Normal distribution for each trait
. Measured through self-report inventories – agree or disagree with statements

Question 26

How does the Big 5: Predict Performance following a meta analytic study?(Arnold & Randall, 2010)

Answer 26

. Conscientiousness – predicts job performance across a range of jobs
. Emotional stability (i.e. low Neuroticism) – is positively associated with job performance
. Extraversion – positively correlated with some jobs i.e. social jobs, such as sales
. Agreeableness – positively correlated for teamwork
. Openness – positively correlated with training performance
. Leadership:high extraversion, conscientiousness, openness, emotional stability

Question 27

What is the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)?

Answer 27

. Type theory

. Measures fundamental individual differences on a dichotomy rather than positions on a scale

Question 28

What is the critique of the MBTI by Prof Grant?

Answer 28

. Incomplete – doesn’t address emotional stability
. Construct validity – doesn’t replicate in research studies
. Reliability – Many people would be reclassified if they took the test five weeks from now.
. Reductionist – misses much of an individuals personality. Problematic for recruitment and selection

Question 29

How created psychoanalysis?

Answer 29

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Question 30

Explain phychoanalysis

Answer 30

. Idiographic theory.
. Emphasises the importance of:
- Early childhood experiences, particularly parental relationships
- Different levels of consciousness and the importance of the unconscious mind
- Understanding the ‘whole’ person in relation to their past

Question 31

What are the three parts of the psyche in psychoanalysis? and explain each

Answer 31

1. Id:
   - Unconscious (young infant only has id)
   Instincts (sex, aggression), irrational, pleasure principle
2. Ego:
   - Conscious (developed when we realise that in reality we can’t have everything we want) e.g Maybe I can find a compromise
3. Superego
   - Unconscious (rules, principles and duties which are imposed by those in authority and internalised)
   - Conscience, moral arm of the personality
   “Nice people don’t do that

Question 32

What are the benefits of psychological testing?

Answer 32

. Sufficiently inexpensive: financial benefits of improved productivity outweigh costs of test development
. Measures of intelligence & personality seem to work
. Relate to a number of factors which are of interest to managers in the workplace

Question 33

What are the criticisms of psychological testing?

Answer 33

. Faking a good impression=social desirability and lie scales

. Concentrates on predicting present rather than future competencies
. Reliability
. Validity
. Norms

Question 34

Explain Catells theory of personalty

Answer 34

. Built on the pioneering work of Allport
. Traits which he called ‘source traits’ – the building blocks for personality
. Produced the 16PF (16 Personality Factor Questionnaire). Widely used today