8.5 Key Takeaways, Knowledge Check and Key Terms
Key Takeaways
In this chapter, we learned that:
- Personality is our stable traits that help us to interact with the world.
- Our values and attitudes have an influence on our personality.
- There are many methods used by researchers to measure personality including objective tests, projective tests, implicit tests, and by directly observing behaviour.
- There are many theories to describe personality.
- Studying specific traits can be useful to predict behaviour in the workplace. However, we also need to consider situational factors including a person’s fit with their job and the organization when trying to understand behaviour in the workplace.
Knowledge Check
Review your understanding of this chapter’s key concepts by taking the interactive quiz below.
Key Terms
Key terms in this chapter include:
- Personality
- Nature/Nurture
- Heritability
- Values
- Terminal values
- Instrumental values
- Attitudes
- Objective tests
- Self-report
- Self-enhancement bias
- Informant ratings
- Reference groups
- Sibling contrast effect
- Letter of recommendation effect
- Honeymoon effect
- Projective tests
- Implicit tests
- Behavioural tests
- Central traits
- Secondary traits
- 16 factors of personality
- Big 5 (five factor)
- Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
- Positive and negative affectivity
- Self-monitoring
- Proactive personality
- Self-efficacy
- Type A personality
- Type B personality
- Self-esteem
- Locus of control
- Introversion and extroversion
- Authoritarianism
- Dogmatism
- Dependability
Personality encompasses our relatively stable feelings, thoughts, and behavioural patterns. See 8.1 Personality
Although there is debate between whether or not our personalities are inherent when we are born (nature) versus the way we grew up (nurture), most researchers agree that personality is usually a result of both nature and our environmental/education experiences. See 8.1 Personality
Heritability refers to the proportion of difference among people that is attributed to genetics. Some of the traits that the study reported as having more than a 0.50 heritability ratio include leadership, obedience to authority, a sense of well-being, alienation, resistance to stress, and fearfulness. See 8.1 Personality
Values refer to stable life goals that people have, reflecting what is most important to them. Values are established throughout one’s life as a result of the accumulating life experiences and tend to be relatively stable. See 8.1 Personality
Terminal values refer to end states people desire in life, such as leading a prosperous life and a world at peace. See 8.1 Personality
Instrumental values deal with views on acceptable modes of conduct, such as being honest and ethical, and being ambitious. See 8.1 Personality
Attitudes are favorable or unfavorable opinions toward people, things, or situations. Many things affect our attitudes, including the environment we were brought up in and our individual experiences. Our personalities and values play a large role in our attitudes as well. See 8.1 Personality
Objective tests represent the most familiar and widely used approach to assessing personality. Objective tests involve administering a standard set of items, each of which is answered using a limited set of response options (e.g., true or false; strongly disagree, slightly disagree, slightly agree, strongly agree). Responses to these items then are scored in a standardized, predetermined way. See 8.2 Measuring Personality
Self-report measures ask people to describe themselves. This approach offers two key advantages. First, self-raters have access to an unparalleled wealth of information. Second, asking people to describe themselves is the simplest, easiest, and most cost-effective approach to assessing personality. See 8.2 Measuring Personality
Personality ratings reflect a self-enhancement bias; in other words, people are motivated to ignore (or at least downplay) some of their less desirable characteristics and to focus instead on their more positive attributes. See 8.2 Measuring Personality
Informant ratings ask someone who knows a person well to describe their personality characteristics. Informant ratings are similar in format to self-ratings. As was the case with self-report, items may consist of single words, short phrases, or complete sentences. Informant ratings are particularly valuable when self-ratings are impossible to collect or when their validity is suspect. They also may be combined with self-ratings of the same characteristics to produce more reliable and valid measures of these attributes. See 8.2 Measuring Personality
The reference group effect occurs when we base our self-perceptions, in part, on how we compare to others in our sociocultural reference group. For instance, if you tend to work harder than most of your friends, you will see yourself as someone who is relatively conscientious, even if you are not particularly conscientious in any absolute sense. See 8.2 Measuring Personality
The sibling contrast effect occurs when parents exaggerate the true magnitude of differences between their children. See 8.2 Measuring Personality
The tendency for informants to produce unrealistically positive ratings has been termed the letter of recommendation effect. See 8.2 Measuring Personality
The tendency for informants to produce unrealistically positive ratings has been termed the honeymoon effect when applied to newlyweds (refer to the Letter of Recommendation Effect as well). See 8.2 Measuring Personality
Projective tests originally were based on the projective hypothesis: If a person is asked to describe or interpret ambiguous stimuli—that is, things that can be understood in a number of different ways—their responses will be influenced by nonconscious needs, feelings, and experiences. Two prominent examples of projective tests are the Rorschach Inkblot Test and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). See 8.2 Measuring Personality
Implicit personality are tests based on the assumption that people form automatic or implicit associations between certain concepts based on their previous experience and behavior. If two concepts (e.g., me and assertive) are strongly associated with each other, then they should be sorted together more quickly and easily than two concepts (e.g., me and shy) that are less strongly associated. See 8.2 Measuring Personality
Behavioural tests infer important personality characteristics from direct samples of behavior .For example, Funder and Colvin (1988) brought opposite-sex pairs of participants into the laboratory and had them engage in a five-minute “getting acquainted” conversation; raters watched videotapes of these interactions and then scored the participants on various personality characteristics. See 8.2 Measuring Personality
Central traits are those that make up our personalities (such as loyal, kind, agreeable, friendly, sneaky, wild, and grouchy). See 8.3 Theories of Personality
Secondary traits are those that are not quite as obvious or as consistent as central traits. They are present under specific circumstances and include preferences and attitudes. For example, one person gets angry when people try to tickle him; another can only sleep on the left side of the bed; and yet another always orders her salad dressing on the side. See 8.3 Theories of Personality
Raymond Cattell (1946, 1957) identified 16 factors or dimensions of personality: warmth, reasoning, emotional stability, dominance, liveliness, rule-consciousness, social boldness, sensitivity, vigilance, abstractedness, privateness, apprehension, openness to change, self-reliance, perfectionism, and tension. He developed a personality assessment based on these 16 factors, called the 16PF. See 8.3 Theories of Personality
The Five Factor Model is the most popular theory in personality psychology today and the most accurate approximation of the basic personality dimensions. The five factors are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. A helpful way to remember the factors is by using the mnemonic OCEAN. See 8.3 Theories of Personality
Openness is the degree to which a person is curious, original, intellectual, creative, and open to new ideas. People high in openness seem to thrive in situations that require being flexible and learning new things. They are highly motivated to learn new skills, and they do well in training settings. See 8.3 Theories of Personality
Conscientiousness refers to the degree to which a person is organized, systematic, punctual, achievement oriented, and dependable. Conscientiousness is the one personality trait that uniformly predicts how high a person’s performance will be, across a variety of occupations and jobs. See 8.3 Theories of Personality
Extraversion is the degree to which a person is outgoing, talkative, and sociable, and enjoys being in social situations. One of the established findings is that they tend to be effective in jobs involving sales. See 8.3 Theories of Personality
Agreeableness is the degree to which a person is nice, tolerant, sensitive, trusting, kind, and warm. In other words, people who are high in agreeableness are likeable people who get along with others. Not surprisingly, agreeable people help others at work consistently, and this helping behaviour is not dependent on being in a good mood. See 8.3 Theories of Personality
Neuroticism refers to the degree to which a person is anxious, irritable, aggressive, temperamental, and moody. These people have a tendency to have emotional adjustment problems and experience stress and depression on a habitual basis. People very high in neuroticism experience a number of problems at work. See 8.3 Theories of Personality
Aside from the Big Five personality traits, perhaps the most well-known and most often used personality assessment is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Unlike the Big Five, which assesses traits, MBTI measures types. MBTI classifies people as one of 16 types. In MBTI, people are grouped using four dimensions. Based on how a person is classified on these four dimensions, it is possible to talk about 16 unique personality types, such as ESTJ and ISTP. See 8.3 Theories of Personality
Behaviour is function of moods and people can manifest by positive and negative affectivity traits. Positive affective people experience positive moods more frequently, whereas negative affective people experience negative moods with greater frequency. Negative affective people focus on the “glass half empty” and experience more anxiety and nervousness. Positive affective people tend to be happier at work, and their happiness spreads to the rest of the work environment. See 8.3 Theories of Personality
In self-monitoring (stage 1 of Behavioural self-management), the individual tries to identify the problem. For example, if your supervisor told you that your choice of clothing was unsuitable for the office, you would more than likely focus your attention on your clothes. See 5.5 Learning at Work
Proactive personality refers to a person’s inclination to fix what is perceived as wrong, change the status quo, and use initiative to solve problems. Instead of waiting to be told what to do, proactive people take action to initiate meaningful change and remove the obstacles they face along the way. In general, having a proactive personality has a number of advantages for these people. For example, they tend to be more successful in their job searches. See 8.3 Theories of Personality
Self-efficacy is a belief that one can perform a specific task successfully. Research shows that the belief that we can do something is a good predictor of whether we can actually do it. Self-efficacy is different from other personality traits in that it is job specific. See 8.3 Theories of Personality
Type A personality is characterized by impatience, restlessness, aggressiveness, competitiveness, polyphasic activities (having many “irons in the fire” at one time), and being under considerable time pressure. Work activities are particularly important to Type A individuals, and they tend to freely invest long hours on the job to meet pressing (and recurring) deadlines. See 8.3 Theories of Personality
Type B personality people experience fewer pressing deadlines or conflicts, are relatively free of any sense of time urgency or hostility, and are generally less competitive on the job. See 8.3 Theories of Personality
Self-esteem can be defined as one’s opinion or belief about one’s self and self-worth. See 8.4 Personality at Work
Locus of control refers to the tendency among individuals to attribute the events affecting their lives either to their own actions or to external forces; it is a measure of how much you think you control your own destiny. Two types of individual are identified. People with an internal locus of control tend to attribute their successes—and failures—to their own abilities and efforts. In contrast, people with an external locus of control tend to attribute things that happen to them as being caused by someone or something else. See 8.4 Personality at Work
Introverts (introversion) tend to focus their energies inwardly and have a greater sensitivity to abstract feelings, whereas extroverts (extroversion) direct more of their attention to other people, objects, and events. Research evidence suggests that both types of people have a role to play in organizations. See 8.4 Personality at Work
Authoritarianism refers to an individual’s orientation toward authority. More specifically, an authoritarian orientation is generally characterized by an overriding conviction that it is right and proper for there to be clear status and power differences among people. See 8.4 Personality at Work
Dogmatism refers to a particular cognitive style that is characterized by closed-mindedness and inflexibility. This dimension has particularly profound implications for managerial decision-making; it is found that dogmatic managers tend to make decisions quickly, based on only limited information and with a high degree of confidence in the correctness of their decisions. See 8.4 Personality at Work
Dependability refers to people's behavioral consistency. Individuals who are seen as self-reliant, responsible, consistent, and dependable are typically considered to be desirable colleagues or group members who will cooperate and work steadfastly toward group goals. See 8.4 Personality at Work
