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What is Personality?
People differ People seem to
from show some
each other in consistency in
meaningful ways behavior

Personality is defined as distinctive and

relatively enduring ways of thinking,
feeling, and acting
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 What is Personality?
The dynamic organization within the individual of those
psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his
environment. - Gordon Allport.
The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts and interacts
with others, the measurable traits a person exhibits
 Measuring Personality
Helpful in hiring decisions
Most common method: self-reporting surveys
Observer-ratings surveys provide an independent assessment of
personality

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 Personality
• Personality refers to a person’s unique and
relatively stable pattern of thoughts, feelings, and
actions
• Personality is an interaction between biology and
environment
• Genetic studies suggest heritability of personality
• Other studies suggest learned components of
personality

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 Personality is:
• Relatively unique to the individual.
• Relatively stable over time.
• Exerts a strong influence over the
individual’s behavior.
• Some aspects are unobservable.

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 Personality Determinants
Heredity
◦ Factors determined at conception: physical stature, facial
attractiveness, gender, temperament, muscle composition and
reflexes, energy level, and bio-rhythms
◦ This “Heredity Approach” argues that genes are the source of
personality
◦ Twin studies: raised apart but very similar personalities
◦ Parents don’t add much to personality development
◦ There is some personality change over long time periods

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 The Big Five Model
• Openness to experience: Addresses ones range of
interests and fascination with novelty. A personality
dimension that characterizes someone in terms of
imagination ,sensitivity and curiosity.

• Conscientiousness: This dimension is a measure of

reliability. A personality dimension that characterizes
someone who is responsible, dependable, persistent
and organized.

• Extroversion: This dimension captures one’s comfort

level with relationships. A personality dimension that
characterizes someone who is sociable , gregarious
and assertive.
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 The Big Five Model (contd.)
• Agreeableness : This dimension refers to an
individual’s propensity to defer to others. A personality
dimension that characterizes someone who is good-
natured, cooperative and trusting.

• Emotional Stability : This dimension refers To a

person’s ability to withstand stress. A personality
dimension that characterizes someone as calm, self-
confident , secure (positive) versus nervous , depressed
and insecure.

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 Five-Factor Personality and
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 Conscientiousness and emotional stability
• Motivational components of personality
• Strongest personality predictors of performance
 Extroversion
• Linked to sales and mgt performance
• Related to social interaction and persuasion
 Agreeableness
• Effective in jobs requiring cooperation and helpfulness
 Openness to experience
• Linked to higher creativity and adaptability to change

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 How Do the Big Five Traits Predict
Behavior?
 Research has shown this to be a better framework.
 Certain traits have been shown to strongly relate to higher job
performance:
◦ Highly conscientious people develop more job knowledge,
exert greater effort, and have better performance.
◦ Other Big Five Traits also have implications for work.
 Emotional stability is related to job satisfaction.
 Extroverts tend to be happier in their jobs and have
good social skills.
 Open people are more creative and can be good leaders.
 Agreeable people are good in social settings.

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 Other Key Personality Traits
Locus of control - Belief that life is controlled by oneself vs.
outsiders
Machiavellianism - Tendency to manipulate and maintain
emotional distance
Self-esteem - Degree one likes or dislikes oneself
Self-monitoring - Sensitive to external cues to behave
differently
Risk propensity - Willingness to take chances
Type A personality - Incessantly struggling to achieve more

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 LOCUS OF CONTROL
• A person’s perception of the source of his
or her fate is termed as locus of control.
• Internals are those who believe that they
control what happens to them.
• Externals are individuals who believe that
what happens to them is controlled by
outside forces such as luck or chance.

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 Personality Characteristics
in Organizations
Locus of Control
Internal External
I control what People and
happens to me! circumstances
control my fate!

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• Core Self-Evaluation
– The degree to which people like or dislike themselves
– Positive self-evaluation leads to higher job performance
• Machiavellianism
– A pragmatic, emotionally distant power-player who believes
that ends justify the means.
– High Machs are manipulative, win more often, and
persuade more than they are persuaded. Flourish when:
• Have direct interaction
• Work with minimal rules and regulations
• Emotions distract others
• Narcissism
– An arrogant, entitled, self-important
person who needs excessive admiration.
– Less effective in their jobs.

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 Self-Monitoring Assessment

• You are a new sales person and just made a huge

sale and are very excited. You run into your
boss’s office and start to tell her but she keeps
looking at the computer. You…
a. Keep telling her about the sale excitedly – you
know she wants to know.
b. Say, “I’m sorry, did I catch you at a bad time?”

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 Self-Monitoring
Behavior based on cues from people & situations

 High self-monitors  Low self-monitors

flexible: adjust behavior act from internal states
according to the situation rather than from
and the behavior of situational cues
others show consistency
can appear unpredictable less likely to respond to
& inconsistent work group norms or
supervisory feedback
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 • Type A Personality
– Aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant
struggle to achieve more in less time
• Impatient: always moving, walking, and eating
rapidly
• Strive to think or do two or more things at once
• Cannot cope with leisure time
• Obsessed with achievement numbers
– Type B people are the complete opposite

• Proactive Personality
– Identifies opportunities, shows initiative, takes
action, and perseveres to completion
– Creates positive change in the environment

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 Implications for Managers
Personality
–Match personality types with compatible jobs

–Can be difficult to separate personality from

culture

–Personality measures widely used but poorly

understood

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 Personality Assessment
 Projective measures give the subject an abstract
or unstructured stimulus
 Inkblot or incomplete sentence
 Requires subject to interpret the stimulus and
respond
 Objective tests are standardized questionnaires
requiring written responses
 Usually self-report (NEO- Big Five, MMPI-II)
 Task is to answer some specified number of
questions about yourself

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 Rorschach Example

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 TAT Example

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 The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
 Most widely used instrument in the world.
 Participants are classified on four axes to determine one of
16 possible personality types, such as

Quiet and
Sociable and Shy
Assertive
Unconscious
Processes
Practical
and Uses Values &
Orderly Emotions
Use Reason
and Logic
Flexible and
Want Order Spontaneous
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& Structure