Personality

• An early debate in personality research centered on whether an

individual’s personality was the result of heredity or of environment.
It appears to be a result of both.

• Heredity refers to factors determined at conception. Physical stature,

facial attractiveness, gender, temperament, muscle composition and
reflexes, energy level, and biological rhythms are generally considered
to be either completely or substantially influenced by who your
parents are that is, by their biological, physiological, and inherent
psychological makeup. The heredity approach argues that the
ultimate explanation of an individual’s personality is the molecular
structure of the genes, located in the chromosomes
Example
• One set of twins separated for 39 years and raised 45 miles apart
were found to drive the same model and color car. They chain-
smoked the same brand of cigarette, owned dogs with the same
name, and regularly vacationed within three blocks of each other in a
beach community 1,500 miles away.
• enduring characteristics that describe an individual’s behavior,
including shy, aggressive, submissive, lazy, ambitious, loyal, and timid.
When someone exhibits these characteristics in a large number of
situations, we call them personality traits of that person.
• The more consistent the characteristic over time, and the more
frequently it occurs in diverse situations, the more important that
trait is in describing the individual.
five basic dimensions underlie all others
and encompass most of the significant
variation in human personality.Moreover,
test
scores of these traits do a very good job of
predicting how people behave in a variety
of
real-life situations
• Extraverts tend to be happier in their jobs and in their lives as a whole.
They experience more positive emotions than do introverts, and they
more freely express these feelings.
• they also tend to perform better in jobs that require significant
interpersonal interaction, perhaps because they have more social skills
they usually have more friends and spend more time in social situations
than introverts.
• Finally, extraversion is a relatively strong predictor of leadership
emergence in groups; extraverts are more socially dominant, “take
charge” sorts of people, and they are generally more assertive than
introverts.
 Other Personality Traits
• Core Self-Evaluations (CSE)
• People who have positive core self-evaluations like themselves and see themselves as
effective, capable, and in control of their environment. Those with negative core self-
evaluations tend to dislike themselves, question their capabilities, and view
themselves as powerless over their environment.
• Machiavellianism
• Kuzi is a young bank manager in Taiwan. He’s had three pro_x0002_motions in the
past 4 years and makes no apologies for the aggressive tactics he’s used to propel his
career upward. “I’m prepared to do whatever I have to do to get ahead,” he says. Kuzi
would properly be called Machiavellian.
• An individual high in Machiavellianism is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and
believes ends can justify means. “If it works, use it”
• A considerable amount of research has found high Machs manipulate more, win more,
are persuaded less, and persuade others more than do low Machs.
• Narcissism
• narcissism describes a person who has a grandiose sense of self-importance,
requires excessive admiration, has a sense of entitlement, and is arrogant. Evidence
suggests that narcissists are more charismatic and thus more likely to emerge as
leaders
• evidence suggests that narcissism is undesirable. A study found that while narcissists
thought they were better leaders than their colleagues, their supervisors actually
rated them as worse.

• Self-Monitoring
• Self-monitoring refers to an individual’s ability to adjust behavior to external,
situational factors
• Individuals high in self-monitoring show considerable adaptability in adjusting their
behavior to external situational factors. They are highly sensitive to external cues
and can behave differently in different situations, sometimes presenting striking
contradictions between their public persona and their private self.
• Risk Taking
• People differ in their willingness to take chances, a quality that affects how much time
and information they need to make a decision. For instance, 79 managers worked on
simulated exercises that required them to make hiring decisions.46 High risk-taking
managers made more rapid decisions and used less information than did the low risk
takers. Interestingly, decision accuracy was the same for both groups

• Proactive Personality
• they identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere until meaningful
change occurs, compared to others who passively react to situations. Proactives create
positive change in their environment, regardless of, or even in spite of, constraints or
obstacles.
• Proactive individuals are more likely to be satisfied with work and help others more with
their tasks, largely because they build more relationships with others
• Proactives are also more likely to challenge the status quo or voice their displeasure
when situations aren’t to their liking
• Other-Orientation
• Some people just naturally seem to think about other people a lot,
being concerned about their well-being and feelings.
• other-orientation, a personality trait that reflects the extent to which
decisions are affected by social influences and concerns as opposed
to our own well-being and outcomes
• Is capital punishment right or wrong? If a person likes power, is that
good or bad? The answers to these questions are value laden.
• Some might argue capital punishment is right because it is an
appropriate retribution for crimes such as murder and treason. Others
might argue, just as strongly, that no government has the right to take
anyone’s life
Values represent basic convictions that “a specific mode of
conduct or end-state
of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or
converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence.

A significant portion of the values we hold is established in our

early years—by parents, teachers, friends, and others. As children,
we are told certain behaviors or outcomes are always desirable or
always undesirable, with few gray areas. You were never taught to
be just a little bit honest or a little bit responsible.
The Importance of Values
• We enter an organization with preconceived notions of what “ought”
and “ought not” to be. These notions are not value-free; on the
contrary, they contain our interpretations of right and wrong and our
preference for certain behaviors or outcomes over others. As a result,
values cloud objectivity and rationality; they influence attitudes and
behavior
• Suppose you enter an organization with the view that allocating pay
on the basis of performance is right, while allocating pay on the basis
of seniority is wrong. How will you react if you find the organization
you’ve just joined rewards seniority and not performance? You’re
likely to be disappointed—and this can lead to job dissatisfaction and
a decision not to exert a high level of effort
Terminal Versus Instrumental Values
• terminal values, refers to desirable end-states. These are the goals a
person would like to achieve during a lifetime.
• The other set, called instrumental values, refers to preferable modes
of behavior, or means of achieving the terminal values.
Person–Job Fit
• Holland presents six personality types and proposes that satisfaction
and the propensity to leave a position depend on how well individuals
match their personalities to a job
(Holland’s Typology of Personality and Congruent
Occupations)
Person–Organization Fit
• The person–organization fit essentially argues that people are
attracted to and se_x0002_lected by organizations that match their
values, and they leave organizations that are not compatible with
their personalities
• Using the Big Five terminology, for instance, we could expect that
people high on extraversion fit well with aggressive and team-
oriented cultures, that people high on agreeableness match up better
with a supportive organizational climate than one focused on
aggressiveness, and that people high on openness to experience fit
better in organizations that emphasize innovation rather than
standardization
 International Values (Geert
Hofstede, 1970)
• Power Distance.
• Power distance describes the degree to which people in a country accept that
power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally. A low power-
distance rating characterizes societies that stress equality and opportunity

• individualism Versus Collectivism

• Individualism is the degree to which people prefer to act as individuals rather
than as members of groups and believe in individual rights above all else.
Collectivism emphasizes a tight social framework in which people expect
othersin groups of which they are a part to look after them and protect them
• Masculinity Versus Femininity.
• degree to which the culture favors traditional masculine roles such as achievement,
power, and control.
• A high masculinity rating indicates the culture has separate roles for men and women,
with men dominating the society.
• A high femininity rating means the culture sees little differentiation between male and
female roles and treats women as the equals of men in all respects.

• Uncertainty Avoidance.
• degree to which people in a country prefer structured over unstructured situations
defines their uncertainty avoidance.
• In cultures that score high on uncertainty avoidance, people have an increased level of
anxiety about uncertainty and ambiguity and use laws and controls to reduce
uncertainty.
• People in cultures low on uncertainty avoidance are more accepting of ambiguity, are
less rule oriented, take more risks, and more readily accept change
• Long-Term Versus Short-Term Orientation.

• This typology measures a society’s devotion to traditional values. People in a

culture with long-term orientation look to the future and value thrift,
persistence, and tradition.

• In a short-term orientation, people value the here and now; they accept
change more readily and don’t see commitments as impediments (hindrance)
to change.