Personality and individual differences (chapter 8)

Question 1

Carl Gustav Jung (1923)

Answer 1

Noted the distinction between introverted and extraverted personalities.

Question 2

Katharine Cook Briggs and Isobel Myers Briggs (1962)

Answer 2

Applied Jung’s theory to create the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test.

Question 3

Hans Eysenck

Answer 3

German psychologist who noted the role of emotional stability and instability in personality formation.

Question 4

Raymond Cattell

Answer 4

British psychologist who devised the 16 personality factor model of personality used in workplace selection.

Question 5

Sigmund Freud

Answer 5

Austrian psychoanalyst who outlined ways in which personalities change and develop.

Question 6

Nomothetic approach

Answer 6

Views personality as a set of measurable traits or types which can be represented on a static framework/model. Most familiar in the workplace in the form of personality tests.

Question 7

Personality testing

Answer 7

The use of questionnaires to measure personality, often used during the recruitment and selection process of organisations.

Question 8

Ideographic approach

Answer 8

Views personality as complex and unique to each individual, and as something which changes through outside influences. Rejects the simplistic view offered by the nomothetic approach

Question 9

Social-radical approach

Answer 9

Recognises that organisations have an effect upon the personalities of their members. The workplace is a part of an individual’s environment which actively shapes their personality.

Question 10

Personality types

Answer 10

Broad personality groupings which are associated with a set of particular traits.

Question 11

Recruitment

Answer 11

The process of attracting a pool of candidates for a job vacancy. The desired personality characteristics are formalised as documents, such as the person specification.

Question 12

Selection

Answer 12

The process of selecting the most appropriate candidate from a pool of applicants for a particular vacancy. Includes techniques such as interviewing, reviewing CV’s, and personality testing.

Question 13

Job description

Answer 13

A document which outlines the formal duties and activities that the person will be expected to perform, and their place within the overall organisational structure.

Question 14

Person specification

Answer 14

A formal list of the main requirements for a successful candidate for a particular job. Can be split into ‘essential’ and ‘desirable’ characteristics.

Question 15

The personality measurement trade-off

Answer 15

The more time that is available, the more rich and complex the information that can be gathered surrounding a candidate’s personality. The less time that is available, the more efficient methods might be needed which give more blunt and abstract information about a candidate’s personality (e.g. personality tests).

Question 16

Trait

Answer 16

A characteristic of the person - the behaviour, thoughts, and emotions that the person exhibits - considered stable over time.

Question 17

Type theories

Answer 17

Some theories classify people into broad personality types; associated with each type is a set of personality traits that people belonging to that type are likely to display.
(nomothetic approach)

Question 18

Trait theories

Answer 18

Nomothetic theories of personality which see individual traits rather than broad personality groups as the foundations of personality.

Question 19

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) (1962)

Answer 19

A personality testing instrument based on the personality types of Carl Jung. It uses a questionnaire to determine where an individual lies between a set of four personality indices: extraversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, judgement/perception.

Question 20

Four humours

Answer 20

The four elements that Hippocrates suggested made up the human body and which also divided into four personality types.

1. Blood = sanguine = warm and outgoing.
2. Phlegm = phlegmatic = cool and rational.
3. Yellow bile = choleric = impulsive, excitable.
4. Black bile = Melancholic = reserved and withdrawn.

Question 21

Introversion (Jung, 1923)

Answer 21

A tendency to focus and gain energy from within the self rather than externally.
An introvert thrives when working alone, perhaps doing work that requires consideration and contemplation rather than needing to be part of a team.

Question 22

Extraversion (Jung, 1923)

Answer 22

A tendency to focus and gain energy externally rather than from within the self.
An extravert thrives on action and being engaged with people.

Question 23

External world

Answer 23

The rational, day-to-day reality that goes on around us.

Question 24

Inner world

Answer 24

The word of our own thoughts, dreams, fantasies, etc.

Question 25

Cain (2012)

Answer 25

Argues that today’s working environment is more suited to people with the personality characteristics of an extravert - e.g. open plan offices, job advertisements calling for ‘team players’ and upbeat personalities. Cain suggests that such environments may miss out on the valuable ideas generated by contemplative introverts.

Question 26

Kiersey’s temperament sorter (1998)

Answer 26

A personality testing instrument which relates personality types to suggested occupational roles.
Kiersey combines both the MBTI and Hippocrates’ personality types within his temperament sorter.

Question 27

16 personality factor

Answer 27

A personality test which measures personality on a set of 16 scales of opposing character traits.

Question 28

Neuroticism

Answer 28

Emotional instability.

Question 29

Eysenck’s model of personality (1985)

Answer 29

Eyenck made groupings of personality types which mapped onto the ancient groupings of Hippocrates; he also made a distinction between introversion and extraversion. He also added another dimension between emotional stability and emotional instability (neuroticism).

Question 30

Cattel’s (1966) 16 personality factor (16PF) theory

Answer 30

One of the most popular personality questionnaires used during the selection process. Suggested that personality boils down to 16 core factors that are arranged in opposites and measured on a scale from 1-10.

Question 31

Big five personality scale (Costa and McCrae, 1990, 1996)

Answer 31

A personality test which measures personality according to a set of five traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (also known as the OCEAN scale).

Question 32

Predictive validity

Answer 32

The ability for a test to predict a candidate’s job performance.

Question 33

Issues which diminish predictive validity of personality testing:

Answer 33

• Candidates may fake their answers,
• Language/assumptions of the test can lead them to have a particular bias,
• To what extent are different traits independent variables that can be measured, or do they have an effect upon each other (Passer et al, 2003)?

Question 34

Nature vs nurture

Answer 34

The debate between whether our personalities are something that we are born with, or that are nurtured and develop over time.
Eyesnck (1985) suggested that personality is so predetermined that it has biological and genetic elements.
The ideographic approach suggests that our personalities are processual - always changing.

Question 35

Processual

Answer 35

Always in a process of changing and developing

Question 36

Psychodynamic approach (Freud, 1927)

Answer 36

Sees personality as continually being developed and changed by various influences, such as: family and upbringing, school, university, the workplace, and social categories.

Question 37

Problems with Freud’s approach (1927)

Answer 37

Freud’s work has not been used in mainstream management theory to the same extent that Jung’s has. Its origins are in a clinical setting and is more focused on determining ‘abnormal’ personalities rather than identifying personality types.

Question 38

Drawbacks of the ideographic approach

Answer 38

Fast and efficient methods of identifying personality are needed within the workplace (e.g. personality testing) - the ideographic approach is too lengthy.

Question 39

Nomothetic vs ideogrpahic

Answer 39

The nomothetic approach can be seen as too scientific and reductionist - reducing a personality to something that can be calculated.
The ideographic approach is without any form of standarisation.
Suggests that some form of middle-ground is required between the two.

Question 40

Interpersonal perception

Answer 40

The way in which one individual perceives the personality of another.

Question 41

Halo/horns effect

Answer 41

The tendency for people to continually reaffirm their initial impressions of a person, whether good or bad.
E.g. a positive or negative trait that is picked up early in an interview can then bias the way in which an interviewer perceives the candidate from then on. This can lead to confirmation bias.

Question 42

Confirmation bias

Answer 42

A form of selective perception where people only tend to take note of information which confirms their already held perceptions.

Question 43

Stereotype

Answer 43

Where a characteristic is attributed to a person because of their membership of a particular social group, e.g. race, gender.

Question 44

Discrimination

Answer 44

Where a person is treated negatively and unfairly because of their membership of a particular group, e.g. because of race or gender.

Question 45

Unstructured interview

Answer 45

An interview with no preset formal structure.

Question 46

Structured interview

Answer 46

An interview with a set format and standard questions, based around job-specific questions.
Pilbeam and Corbridge (2006) believe that much greater predictive validity comes from structured interviews, which focus on behaviours relevant to the actual job.
However, a structured interview limits the extent to which organisations can get a view of the personality of candidates.

Question 47

The use of social networking sites during the selection process (Kluemper, Rosen, 2009)

Answer 47

Kluemper and Rosen (2009) found that social networking sites could be used to get a good estimation of personality on the big 5 scale.
However, recruiters can also gain information about candidates that is not usually provided in the selection process - such as their religion, marital status, sexual orientation - which may feed into discrimination/ stereotyping.

Question 48

Assessment centre

Answer 48

A recruitment strategy where different selection techniques are blended in a selection process. Combining a number of methods increases the predictive validity of the assessment.

Question 49

Michael Foucault (1977)

Answer 49

Examined power within society. We see personality categorisations as an organisational tool which come to take on lives of their own and actually have an effect on personalities, rather than just measuring them - once we are told we are a specific personality type, we will begin to behave in this way in order to fit the category we have been assigned.
(social part of the social-radical approach).

Question 50

Felix Guattari (1990)

Answer 50

Organisations directly effect personalities both negatively and positively. Organisations can act in a way which allows individual potential to be realised - the social-radical approach argues for the freedom of individual personalities to reach their potential.
(radical part of the social-radical approach).