Personality and Cultural Values

Personality and Cultural Values 9

Class Agenda • Vocabulary • George Meyer debrief • Grading scheme: Decision making task • Personality defined • Dimensions of personality • Cultural values • Personality effects • Application: Personality tests

Personality and Cultural Values Personality • The structures and propensities that explain a person’s characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior • Captures what people are like Traits • Recurring regularities or trends in people’s responses to their environment Cultural values • Shared beliefs about desirable end states or modes of conduct in a given culture • Influence the development of a person’s personality traits

Nature vs. Nurture • Nature • Studies of identical twins • Research suggests between 35% and 49% of variation in personality is genetic • Nurture • Surrounding • Experiences

The Big Five Personality Traits • Conscientiousness • Dependable • Organized • Reliable • Ambitious • Hardworking • Persevering • Biggest influence on daily job performance • Prioritize accomplishment striving • Strong desire to accomplish task-related goals as a means of expressing personality

The Big Five Personality Traits • Agreeableness • Warm • Kind • Cooperative • Sympathetic • Helpful • Courteous • Beneficial in some positions, detrimental in others • Prioritize communion striving • Strong desire to obtain acceptance in personal relationships as a means of expressing personality • Focus on “getting along,” not “getting ahead”

The Big Five Personality Traits • Extraversion • Talkative • Sociable • Passionate • Assertive • Bold • Dominant • Easiest to judge in zero acquaintancesituations • Prioritize status striving • Strong desire to obtain power and influence within a social structure as a means of expressing personality • Tend to be high in positive affectivity — a dispositional tendency to experience pleasant, engaging moods

The Big Five Personality Traits • Neuroticism • Nervous • Moody • Emotional • Insecure • Jealous • Synonymous with negative affectivity • Differential exposureto stressors: neurotic people are more likely to appraise day-to-day situations as stressful • Differential reactivityto stressors: neurotic people are less likely to believe they can cope with the stressors they experience

The Big Five Personality Traits • Openness to experience • Curious • Imaginative • Creative • Complex • Refined • Sophisticated • Valuable in jobs that require high levels of creative performance • Job holders need to be able to generate novel and useful ideas and solutions • Highly open individuals are more likely to migrate into artistic and scientific fields

Other Personality Variables Locus of control • Strongly related to neuroticism • Tend to hold an external locus of control • Belief that the events that occur around us are driven by luck, chance, or fate • Less neurotic people tend to hold an internal locus of control • Belief that one’s own behavior dictates events

Other Personality Taxonomies Myers-Briggs Type Indicator • Focuses on how people process information • Gather information • Make decisions • Preference for plans and action vs. flexibility and data gathering

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator • Extraversion - energized by people and social interactions vs. • Introversion - energized by private time and reflection • Sensing - prefer clear and concrete facts and data vs. • Intuition - prefer hunches and speculation based on theory and imagination

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator • Thinking - approach decisions with logic and critical analysis vs. • Feeling - approach decisions with an emphasis on others’ needs and feelings • Judging – approach tasks by planning and setting goals vs. • Perceiving - prefer to have flexibility and spontaneity when performing tasks

Holland’s RIASEC Model Six personality constellations identify & summarize interests, largely for careers • Realistic: Enjoy practical, hands-on, real-world tasks • Investigative: Enjoy abstract, analytical, theory-oriented tasks • Artistic: Enjoy entertaining and fascinating others using imagination • Social: Enjoy helping, serving, or assisting others • Enterprising: Enjoy persuading, leading, or outperforming others • Conventional: Enjoy organizing, counting, or regulating people or things

Cultural Values • Culture • Shared beliefs about desirable end states or modes of conduct in a given culture • Result from common experiences • Transmitted across generations • Cultural values provide societies with their own distinctive personalities

Table 9-3 Hofstede’s Dimensions of Cultural Values

Cultural Values Project GLOBE • Collection of 170 researchers from 62 cultures • Studied 17,300 managers in 951 organizations since 1991 • Examine the impact of culture on the effectiveness of various leader attributes, behaviors, and practices

Project GLOBE • Power Distance and Uncertainty Avoidance • Institutional Collectivism • Formalized practices encourage collective action and collective distribution of resources • In-group Collectivism • Individuals express pride and loyalty to specific in-groups • Gender Egalitarianism • The culture promotes gender equality and minimizes role differences between men and women • Assertiveness • The culture values assertiveness, confrontation, and aggressiveness in social relationships

Project GLOBE • Future Orientation • The culture engages in planning and investment in the future while delaying individual or collective gratification • Performance Orientation • The culture encourages and rewards members for excellence and performance improvements • Humane Orientation • The culture encourages and rewards members for being generous, caring, kind, fair, and altruistic Ethnocentrismis defined as a propensity to view one’s own cultural values as “right” and those of other cultures as “wrong.”

Importance of Personality and Cultural Values • Conscientiousness affects job performance • Key driver of typical performance, reflecting performance in the routine conditions that surround daily job tasks • More likely to engage in citizenship behaviors • Tend to be more committed to the organization • An employee’s ability is a key driver of maximum performance, reflecting performance in brief, special circumstances that demand a person’s best effort

Importance of Personality and Cultural Values • Situational strength • “Strong situations” have clear behavioral expectations, incentives, or instructions • “Weak situations” lack those cues • Differences between individuals are less important in strong situations • Trait activation • Some situations provide cues that trigger the expression of a given trait

Application: Personality Tests • Increasing number of organizations are attempting to measure “honesty” or “integrity” for use in hiring. • Tap into three of the Big Five personality dimensions • High conscientiousness • Low neuroticism • High agreeableness • Because people are likely to lie about (or exaggerate) their integrity, these tests actually do work • Concerns over “faking” also apply to measures of the Big Five

Application: Personality Tests Integrity testsfocus specifically on a predisposition to engage in theft and other deviant behaviors • More strongly related to job performance than conscientiousness scores • Clear purpose testsask applicants about their attitudes toward dishonesty • Beliefs about the frequency of dishonesty • Endorsements of common rationalizations • Desire to punish dishonesty • Confessions of past dishonesty • Veiled purpose tests assess more general personality traits that are associated with dishonest acts

Application: Personality Tests • Research suggests that almost everyone engages in some form offaking—exaggerating your responses to a personality test in a socially desirable fashion. • Because everyone fakes to some degree, correlations with outcomes like theft or other counterproductive behaviors are relatively unaffected. • Must be careful in using personality tests to indicate suitability for particular jobs. • Development and teambuilding vs. selection

Personality and Cultural Values