Personality Theory and Biodata Flashcards
What is the underlying idea behind biodata? That is, what do we believe these questions accomplish? Use and example if it helps illustrate your point.
Biodata involves collecting biographical information about the candidate. The ideas is that job relevant experiences, accomplishments, and training will be related to subsequent job performance because they are signs of important characteristics, or they are proof of key knowledge, skills and motivational choices.
What is biodata? How well does it work?
Biodata involves collecting biographical information about the candidate. The ideas is that job relevant experiences, accomplishments, and training will be related to subsequent job performance because they are signs of importance characteristics, or they are proof of key knowledge, skills and motivational choices.
The items are based on judgment or job analysis. Biodata is atheoretical with a big pool of items to see what works. Biodata measures are reasonably predictive of aspects such as job and college performance, supervisor ratings, promotions and training success.
Explain the events that lead up to and caused the fall of personality traits as a part of mainstream personnel psychology. What was the remedy?
In the 1960s, people supported the idea that the situation was more important than personality. They believed that traits could not explain behavior and that situations were better. So personality tests were unpopular with I/O psychologists in mid 1960s. There were concerns over invasiveness, the perception that self-distortion of ratings would a problem, and a concern for poor criterion-related validities.
At the time, not all dimensions were equally predictive for all jobs and previous research did not match personality characteristics to jobs or dimensions of job performance. This resulted in lower validities for matches between personality characteristics to jobs and or performance dimensions. There was also no structure to organize personality literature.
The solution was the creation of the Big Five factors of personality, as opposed to situations. These allowed people to examine specific traits of personality (OCEAN), rather than overall personality. Now, meta-analysis of personality predictors produce data in support of their validity.
Define traits.
Traits are the basic unit of personality. They are generalized action tendencies and they explain behavior but cannot necessarily describe it. One of the most popular models of personality traits is the Big Five.
What is the lexical hypothesis?
All important individual differences have become encoded within the natural language over time. It’s the idea that all important characteristics that differ in people are included in their lexicon (embedded in our language), Personality characteristics that are most important in people’s lives will eventually become part of their language. Using words that describe personality, a factor analytical approach can be made to find traits that a certain culture places the most importance on.
What were the categories created by Allport and Odbert? What terms were eliminated? What might we miss in personality description as a result?
Allport and Odbert categorized personality terms into:
- States
- Obscure/metaphorical descriptions
- Evaluative
- Personality descriptors
States, obscure/metaphorical descriptions and evaluative were eliminated. Two dimensions that we miss in personality description as a result are: positive and negative valence. Markers of positive valence include: excellent, special, impressive, skilled. Whereas markers of negative valence include: evil, wicked, awful, disgusting, deserve to be hated, immoral. Positive is basically how admirable someone is, and negative is how evil a person is.
If we only use personality descriptors as a predictor, we will miss on people’s positive or negative valence of evaluative qualities. These evaluative characteristics were dropped so we don’t know if people are exceptional or wicked
Identify and describe the five factors in the Big Five model of personality
Extraversion: Characteristics such as excitability, sociability, talkativeness, assertiveness, and high amounts of emotional expressiveness
Neuroticism (emotional stability): Emotional instability, anxiety, moodiness, irritability, and sadness.
Agreeableness: Attributes such as trust, altruism, kindness, affection, and other prosocial behaviors.
Conscientiousness: Thoughtfulness, good impulse control and goal-directed behaviors. Persons high in C are organized and detailed.
Openness to Experience/Intellect: Culture and intelligence; imagination and insight; broad range of interests
Explain what is known about the relationship between five factors in the Big Five and job performance.
Barrick & Mound found that Conscientiousness (.23) was the most highly correlated across jobs and the most predictive. Conscientiousness is a good predictor for low counter-productive work behaviors, relating to the industriousness aspect of C (hard working, effort). This is followed by Extraversion (.10) which related to the Assertiveness aspect, linked to sensitivity to reward.
Campbell (1990): Personality is an indirect determinant of Motivation by influencing their volitional choices. Interests and personality are also related to the skills and knowledge developed.
The Big Five has small correlations with ability. The Big Five do not provide great incremental validity for technical performance, but they do for components of performance. For example, an effective leader positively correlates with all 5, while an emerging leader correlated with all except Agreeableness.
Explain what is known about the relationship between the five factors in the Big Five and contextual performance.
Contextual performance is performing tasks that are not directly related to their main task function. It is positively related to Conscientiousness through the Industriousness aspect because those who want to work hard will go above and beyond. It’s also positively related to Agreeableness, but the relationship’s significance is questionable and its probably related to the Politeness Aspect which relates to compliance and cooperation. The other Big Five don’t relate significantly to contextual performance not being as relevant as C and A.
Explain what is known about the relationship between the five factors in the Big Five and counterproductive behavior.
It has been found that Agreeableness is more strongly related to interpersonal deviance than organizational deviance. Conscientiousness, in contrast, is more strongly related to organizational deviance than interpersonal, so low conscientiousness is more related to these CWBs – (not following rules, stealing). To a certain extent, people who get into interpersonal deviance are disagreeable. People high in Neuroticism tend to get into trouble in both kinds of behaviors equally.
Specify what elements of the Big Five comprise integrity tests and what integrity tests predict.
Integrity tests measure constructs like social reliability and awareness, reliability, and honesty. Integrity tests predict who might act dishonestly or act out on a CWB in the future. Meta-analysis for integrity tests found that integrity is correlated with Conscientiousness most directly (.42), Agreeableness (.40) and Emotional Stability (.33)
A more recent meta-analysis finds a smaller but positive effect with rating of performance. Conscientiousness matter in its Orderliness aspect being the part that ensures that people are rule followers. Agreeableness probably has to do with Politeness aspect because these people are more considerate and compliant.
List 4 different types of personality measures that are specifically focused on predicting occupational criteria.
- Stress Tolerance Scales: Predicts tolerance for stress
- Drug and Alcohol Scales: Predicts use/abuse of drugs and alcohol
- Customer Service Orientation: Predicts tendency to provide good customer service
- Managerial Potential Scales – Predicts tendency to advance and perform effectively as a manager
- Sales performance scale – Predicts sales
It has been argued that personality traits are “fixed like plaster” once one reaches early adulthood. What evidence contradicts this assertion?
Research by Brent Roberts at U. Illinois found that people’s personality changes over the lifespan with people becoming more responsible and friendly and less neurotic and open to experience as they age. Life events may affect personality.
Having productive and high status work positively affects Conscientiousness and Positive Emotionality. Specific jobs also have an effect. Another evidence is the decline in Agreeableness after joining the military in Germany. Research by Kuncel found that people after medical school also become less empathetic and more self-controlled, and less autonomous.
Can work experience change personality? What research supports this finding? What has been found (2 things)?
Yes, because life events can affect people’s personality. Having productive and high status work positively affects Conscientiousness and Positive Emotionality. Also, specific jobs and work experience can have an effect on personality. Research has been found for a decline in Agreeableness for people joining the military in Germany —a study by Jackson in 2012 found declines in Agreeableness that persists 5 years after military service. Other research by Kuncel found that people after going to medical school and clinical experience become less empathetic, more self-controlled and less autonomous, and even a little bit more aggressive.
Describe two findings about the predictive power of personality ratings from a source other than the self (observer report).
A meta-analysis found more predictive power for observer reports being superior to self-reports.
Connelly & Ones revealed that the more familiar you are to the observer, the more correlated and similar the ratings. Observer report is a better predictor for performance on all personality traits. These results were conducted in low stakes setting, in a high stake setting, observers might distort if they like you.
Also, people who don’t know the observer too well also have some correlation with the self-report, showing that people are able to make somewhat accurate snap judgements, but this mostly occurs for Extroversion.
