INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES, MENTAL ABILITY AND PERSONALITY

I. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

It refers to the deviations among individuals in regard to a single characteristic

or number of characteristics. It refers on how people react to the same
situation-based on their differences.

Consequences of Individual Differences

1. Productivity- It is the rate of output per worker. One cannot sell or produce
the same product as the other. This may be attributed to individual differences
like experience, age, education and the like.

2. Quality- People are different from each other. Some people were not
contented in making products of mediocre quality, while others will just strive
to produce outputs that barely passed standard requirements.

3. Empowerment- It means giving someone the power to do something. It

differs from how each person reacts based on the authority they are given.
Also, people have different leadership styles.

4. Need for contact with other people –People differs from one another in the
case of social contact with others. Some can work better alone while some
needs more contact with others to be more productive.

5. Commitment- This varies among individual. Most people are well-

committed and loyal that they tend to produce high quality outputs. While
there are some who care less about the company and are less concerned
about the output and attendance.

6. Self- esteem – People with low self-esteem tend to be less productive

since they also avoid accepting more responsibilities. It might be because
they think that their abilities do not match the requirements. While, people
with high self-esteem are the opposite.

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II. WHAT MAKES PEOPLE DIFFERENT FROM EACH OTHER

A. Demographic Diversity

Workplace performance and worker’s behavior are occasionally

influenced by variances in demographic traits. These sources are:

Gender Differences. The workplace is frequently caused by social

variables that impact men and women's conduct. Some companies
value gender diversity and encourage both sexes to participate
in company decisions and promotions. Other businesses prohibit
women from working together and encourage bias in the workplace.
Gender differences bring value and a variety of viewpoints to most
businesses.

Generational and Age-Based Differences. A worker from one generation

may act in a different manner than a worker from another. Also,
employees' age influences their behavior. Age is frequently, though not
always, linked to experience.

Culture. Culture affects the workplace because it affects what we do and

how we behave. Cultural differences influence our values, which in turn
shape our attitudes and behavior. Culture refers to the learned and
shared ways of thinking and acting among a group of people or society.
The two dimensions of culture are:

1. Social Culture – A complex set of meanings, habits, values and

behaviors adopted by one or more social
formations.
2. Organizational culture – defined as the underlying beliefs,
assumptions, values and ways of
interacting that contribute to the unique
social and psychological environment of an
organization.
B. Aptitude and Ability

People differ in terms of aptitude and ability and by which these could
greatly affect the organization in deciding on whether a person is qualified
to do a particular assignment or tasks. Aptitude is the capacity of a person
to learn or acquire skills. It is like a natural intelligence or an inborn
potential to do certain kinds of work whether developed or undeveloped.
Ability, on the other hand, refers to an individual’s capacity to perform the
various tasks in a job. It is a developed knowledge, understanding, or

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acquired abilities. Aptitude and abilities are very important
considerations when people are considered for employment in an
organization. Low aptitude and abilities would mean a higher training costs
of the business. A person’s overall abilities are made up of two sets of
factors: (a) physical and (b) mental.

a) Physical ability is the capacity of the individual to do tasks

demanding stamina, dexterity, strength, and similar
characteristics. Individuals will differ as to the extent by which
they can perform the various physical abilities.

9 Physical abilities needed to perform certain tasks:

i. Dynamic strength – ability to exert muscular force

continuously over time. That means, the exercises require
your muscle and joints to move in order to be executed.

ii. Trunk strength – ability to exert muscular strength

using particularly the abdominal muscles. This is an
important component of physical fitness.

iii. Static strength – ability to exert force against external

objects. The ability to hold pose without movement. These kinds
of exercises can benefit climbers by specifically targeting either
your upper or lower body strength.

iv. Explosive strength – ability to expend a maximum of energy

in one or a series of explosive acts in minimal time. This can be
viewed as moving a heavy weight as fast as possible.

v. Extent flexibility - this is the ability to move the trunk and

back muscles as far as possible. The maximum range of motion
possible at a particular joint or series of joints working together.

vi. Dynamic flexibility - ability to make rapid, repeated

flexing movements. It moves the muscles and joints
through their full range of motion during active movement.

vii. Body coordination - ability to coordinate simultaneous

actions of different parts of the body. Good coordination can
help prevent all kinds of injuries and help you stay more
effective as you age.

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 viii. Balance - ability to maintain equilibrium despite forces
pulling off balance.

ix. Stamina - ability to continue maximum effort requiring

prolonged effort over time. It is a resistance to fatigue, hardship
or illness.

b) Mental or the intellectual ability of a person is one of the

major sources of individual differences. It refers to the capacity
to do mental activities such as thinking reasoning, and problem
solving. Intelligence is composed of four subparts:

i.Cognitive - Intelligence that refers to the capacity of a person

to acquire and apply knowledge including solving problems.

ii. Social - Intelligence that refers to a person’s ability

to relate effectively with others.

iii. Emotional - Intelligence that refers to a person’s qualities

such as understanding one’s own feeling, empathy for
others, and the regulation of emotion to enhance living.

iv. Cultural - Intelligence that refers to an outsider’s

ability to interpret someone’s unfamiliar and ambiguous
behavior the same way that person’s compatriot would.

The intelligence levels on the four sub-parts differ from person

to person. For instance, an individual could get high
ratings on two intelligence subparts like for example,
cognitive and social but low one motional and cultural. Another
person could be rated average on all four subparts and the like.

The Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

This was developed by a researcher named Robert Stenberg.
He maintains that there are three important parts of intelligence,
namely:
a) Componential intelligence - also called ‘analytical
intelligence’. It involves the mental components or process
used in thinking. This is the traditional type of intelligence
needed for solving difficult problems with abstract reasoning.

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 People who score high on this part perform well in most school
subjects.
b) Experiential intelligence - also known as ‘creative
intelligence’. The type of intelligence that focuses on how
people perform on tasks with which they have either little
or no previous experience. It is the type of intelligence
that is required for imagination and combining things.
c) Contextual intelligence- also referred as ‘practical
intelligence’. A type of everyday intelligence or street smarts. It
requires adapting to, selecting, and shaping our real-world
environment. It incorporates the idea of common sense
and wisdom.

Multiple Intelligences
Developed by an another researcher named Howard Gardner. He
developed a very useful means of understanding intelligence. He proposes the
eight different components of intelligence which individual possesses in varying
degrees.
i. Linguistic - People who possess this component is sensitive to
language, meanings, and the relations among words. It makes
people able to communicate through language including reading,
writing, and speaking. This is a distinct characteristics of novelist,
poets, scriptwriter, editors, and such.
ii. Logical - Mathematical - This intelligence covers abstract thought,
precision, counting, organization, and logical structure, enabling
the individual to see relationship between objects and solve
problems such as algebra and actuarial concerns. This is a
characteristic of mathematician, scientist, engineers, lawyers, and
investigators.
iii. Musical - This intelligence component gives people the capacity to
create and understand meanings made out of sounds and to enjoy
different types of music. People with such intelligence is sensitive
to pitch, rhythm, timbre, the emotional power and complex
organization of music. These characteristics is found in performers,
composers, musical audience and makers of musical instruments.
Multiple Intelligences
Developed by another researcher named Howard Gardner. He
developed a very useful means of understanding intelligence.
He proposes the eight different components of intelligence
which individual possesses in varying degrees.

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i. Linguistic - People who possess this component is
sensitive to language, meanings, and the relations among
words. It makes people able to communicate through
language including reading, writing, and speaking. This is a
distinct characteristic of novelist, poets, scriptwriter, editors, and
such.
ii. Logical - Mathematical - This intelligence covers abstract
thought, precision, counting, organization and logical structure,
enabling the individual to see relationship between
objects and solve problems such as algebra and
actuarial concerns. This is a characteristic of
mathematician, scientist, engineers, lawyers, and investigators.
iii. Musical - This intelligence component gives people the
capacity to create and understand meanings made out of
sounds and to enjoy different types of music. People with such
intelligence is sensitive to pitch, rhythm, timbre, the emotional
power and complex organization of music. These
characteristics is found in performers, composers, musical
audience and makers of musical instruments.
iv. Spatial - This component of intelligence enables people to
perceive and manipulate images in their brain and to re-create
them from memory, such as in making graphic designs.
People with this intelligence is blessed with keen
observation, visual thinking, mental images and metaphor.
These characteristics is found in architects, painters,
sculptors, chess players and navigators.
v. Bodily-kinesthetic - This enables people to use their
body and perceptual and motor systems in skilled ways, such
as dancing, playing sports, and expressing emotion through
facial expressions.
vi. Intrapersonal - The person with this kind of intelligence has
highly accurate understanding of himself or herself.
These people are sensitive to his or her values, purpose,
feelings, and has developed a sense of self. This is found in
novelists, counselors, philosophers, etc.
vii. Interpersonal - This intelligence component makes it
possible for persons to recognize and make distinctions among
the feelings, motives, and intention of others, as in
managing people and parenting children. Found in teachers,
counselors, managers, and such.

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 viii. Naturalist - A person with intelligence possesses the ability
to seek patterns in the external physical environment.
Individuals with naturalist intelligence have a sensitivity to and
appreciation for nature. With this type of intelligence, we are
able to recognize the differences between species, groups
of people or objects and understand how they relate
to each other. As a result, the opportunity to enrich all the
other seven intelligence is provided.
C. Personality

Personality refers to the sum total of ways in which an individual

reacts and interacts with others. It refers to the persistent and enduring
behavior patterns of an individual that are expressed in a wide
variety of situations. It is a combination of attributes, traits, and
characteristics that makes an individual unique. Personality is who
we are.

Determinants of Personality
A. Hereditary Factors
1. Physical stature – refers to a person’s height. For
example, if a person is tall, he is determined by other
people as having genes of a tall person. Either of his
parents have those genes and passed it to him or
both of his parents possesses those genes.
2. Facial attractiveness – facial attractiveness
refers to the facial attributes that a person has that
contributes as to how attractive he is. So for instance,
a person is born in a family with curl eye lashes,
perfect nose, blue eyes, small ears, perfect form
of eyebrows, defined jawline, etc., then that person
can be determined by other people that he has
good genes that could add to his facial
attractiveness. His attractiveness can actually be
traced towards his ancestors from which he inherited
from.
3. Gender – this refers as to how much of a certain
gender your family has. For example, a person has

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 four sisters and one brother. This would mean that
their family has these particular genes.
4. Temperament – this is concerned with emotional
dispositions and reactions and their speed and
intensity. This is basically how a person reacts
towards a particular situation in a short span of time.
For example, a person might be ill-tempered and this
could be used by other people on how to determine
her personality, and might say “He got it from his dad.”
5. Muscle composition and reflexes – this depends
on the genes that runs in the family of a person.
Some families have genes that stores more fat
reserves than muscles. Another example is on how
one family possesses the gene that they are good in
dancing and that they might be known by other
people as the family that dances well.
6. Energy level – this pertains to a person’s natural
energy level. Not all people are born with natural high
energy that goes rambling, talking and laughing first
thing in the morning. Other people want sit to be calm,
fine, and just brews coffee to start the day. Some
people do not even like to say “Good morning” the
moment they wake-up because they still need a 30-
minute session of sitting on the edge of the bed, still
daydreaming, and registering the fact that it is already
a new day. Though one’s energy level could also be
determined by one’s social environment, energy level
of a person can also be determined with where on
either his parents did, he got it from.
7. Biological rhythms – this refers to how your body
functions daily. For instance, if your body has
an internal clock that gets you waking up by 5
in the morning or gets you sleepy at around 10 in the
evening. This also pertains to your metabolism,
whether you have a fast one or not, your hormone
secretion, and many others.

B. Environmental Factors

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 1. Cultural factor – refer to the established norms,
attitudes, and values that are passed along from one
generation to the next and creates consistency over
time. An example for this is our culture of
“pagmamano” to the elders. Nowadays, as we can
observe in the children of the new generation, you
can barely see them practicing this particular culture
of ours. In a family where this culture is really
practiced from generation to generation, this
could be a determinant towards the personality
of a person from that particular family. People
can say that an individual came from a respectful
and well-behaved family because they practice
the “pagmamano”.
2. Social factor – refer to those that reflect family life,
religion and the many kinds of formal and
informal groups in which the individual
participates throughout his life. Social factors
also encompass an individual’s peer life. So, for
an example, if an individual’s peers are known
to be alcoholic and wild, that individual might be
also referred to or determined by other people as
alcoholic and wild because that is what they see and
that is their conclusion based on observing your social
life.
3. Situational factors – indicate that the
individual will behave differently in different
situations. For instance, a teenager will be less
talkative when in the presence of strangers. He will be
more relaxed, however, when he is among friends
and relatives. Another example is, if a person is being
put in a situation where he is teased insultingly, he
would either react violently and angrily about it or just
shrug it off and save time instead of giving
attention to nonsense things.

Personality Factors and Traits

-A person’s personality traits could either be on the positive
or negative side of the factors, and they will be in various
degrees of development. This alone provides sufficient

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indication that individuals are really different from one
another.
-Traits are partially inherited and they will develop depending
on the environment where the person is situated.
-There are 8 factors:
a. Emotional stability – a person could either be
emotionally stable or emotionally unstable. If a person
is emotionally stable, he is likely to be calm, self-
confident, and secure. Meanwhile, a person who is
emotionally unstable is totally the opposite which is
nervous, depressed, and insecure.
b. Extraversion – this is someone sociable,
gregarious, outgoing, and assertive. The total
opposite of this is introversion which is highly likely a
person who tends to be reserved, timid, and quiet.
c. Openness to experience – this is a person who is
imaginative, cultured, curious, original, broad-minded,
intelligent, adventurous, and artistically sensitive. The
opposite for this is a person who is conventional and
finds comfort in the familiar.
d. Agreeableness – an agreeable person is
cooperative, warm, and trusting. The opposite for this
is a person who is not agreeable which is cold,
disagreeable, and antagonistic.
e. Conscientiousness – refer to a person’s
reliability. These types of people are responsible,
organized, dependable, and persistent. Those with
a low degree of conscientiousness are easily
distracted, disorganized, and unreliable.
f. Self-monitoring behavior – this refers to how a
person behaves outside of his comfortable
environment, and how he behaves towards
situations outside. Those with high self-
monitors are pragmatic and capable of adapting and
are flexible depending on the different
audiences he presents himself into. Low self-
monitors find it hard to act accordingly on
different situations as they seem to find it
uncomfortable and awkward.

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 g. Risk taking and thrill seeking – this refers as to
how willing a person would take a risk and pursue
thrills that are sometimes required in
workplaces. Other persons also like to play it safe,
does not take risks and do thrills
h. Optimism – this refers to a person who
experience positive emotional states and to
typically believe that positive outcomes will be forth
coming from most activities. Opposite of optimism is
pessimism. This refers to persons who experience
negative emotional states and typically believe that
negative outcomes will be forth coming.

III. Emotional Intelligence

The concept of emotional intelligence or emotional quotient (EQ) was

introduced by Daniel Goleman. EQ refers to the ability of the person to accurately
perceive, evaluate, express, and regulate emotions and feelings.

EQ has five (5) components:

1. Self-regulation – this refers as to how a person regulates and controls

himself when in anger, impulsiveness, anxiety, or in any feelings a
certain situation would put him in.
2. Motivation – this refers to the unexplainable passion to do things that
a person is supposed to do.
3. Empathy – this refers to the awareness of a person to other people’s
feelings, emotions, and personality that they never speak of about.
4. Self-awareness – this is a person’s awareness of one’s self; the ability
to tune in with one’s own feelings, thoughts, and actions
5. Social skills – refers to the proficiency to manage
relationships and building networks. This refers to one’s ability to connect
with other people based on their feelings, personality, and traits.

IV. More on Physical Ability

The following are factors determined by the writer that are important in
determining the reasons for differences in individual behavior:

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i. Sense of sight – not all people see the same as others. For instance,
there are people who are colorblind.

ii. Sense of hearing – there are people who are tone deaf, those people
who cannot distinguish from one tone to another. Some people cannot
hear at all.

iii. Sense of taste – our tongues have different sensitivity when it comes to
taste. Some people have low sensitivity for saltiness and some have
high sensitivity with sweetness. It varies from person to person.

iv. Sense of smell – people differ in sensitivity related to their smell. Some
people have really high smell sensitivity and are fit in jobs related to
perfume, soap, and other fragrance-related products.

v. Sense of touch – a person’s touch differs from one to another, as a

result, they have different reactions and behaviors differ when
confronted with the same situations.

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