1. Chapter 3 Personality, Perception, and Attribution
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2. Lewin’s Formula B = f(P,E), where B = behavior P = person
E = Environment

3. 3.1 Variables Influencing Individual Behavior

4. © 2011 Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.

5. Skills and Abilities Personality Emotional Intelligence (EI)
General Mental Ability (GMA)
Defined as an individual’s innate cognitive intelligence.
Single best predictor of work performance across many occupations studied both in the U.S. and across many different cultures.
What are the implications of this “fact”? See the article Dweck Research.

6. Pfeffer & Sutton (2006) on talent
Treat talent as something almost everyone can earn, not that just a few people own. Talent isn’t fixed unless you believe it is.
The law of crappy systems trumps the law of crappy people
Wisdom, not intelligence, is probably the most important talent for sustaining organizational performance
Encourage people to be noisy and nosy – it promotes wisdom

7. Pfeffer & Sutton (2006) on talent
Wisdom
Acting with knowledge (??) while doubting what you know
Antithesis
Acting without knowledge or without doubting; also inaction combined with endless analysis or, worse yet, no effort to learn what to do
Understanding and acknowledging the limits of your knowledge
Acting like a know-it-all, not seeming to understand, accept, or acknowledge the limits of your knowledge
Having humility about your knowledge
Being arrogant or insecure about your knowledge
Asking for and accepting help from others
Not asking for, or refusing, help from others
Giving help
Not giving help, even when people clearly need your knowledge and skill
Being curious – asking questions, listening, constantly striving to learn new things from the events, information, and people around you
Lacking curiosity about people, things, and ideas; answering questions and talking only to show people how smart you are, without learning anything from them

8. Pfeffer & Sutton (2006) The talents of wisdom: people who sustain organizational learning
Noisy complainers: Repair problems right away and then let every relevant person know that the system failed
Noisy troublemakers: always point out others’ mistakes, but do so to help them and the system learn, not to point fingers (purposeful vs. egocentric)
Mindful error-makers: Tell managers about their own mistakes, so that others can avoid making them too. When others spot their errors, they communicate learning – not making the best impression – is their goal.
Disruptive questioners: won’t leave well enough alone. They constantly ask why things are done the way they are done. Is there a better way of doing things?

9. Definition of Personality
A set of relatively stable characteristics that lead to consistent patterns of behavior
As a manager, how can you know or assess an individual’s personality? Why would you want to do this?

10. Value of understanding personality is primarily to help leaders understand their own basic personality dimensions, and then to learn to emphasize the positive and mitigate the negative aspects of their own style.
Also helps you understand others to know something about their personality – knowledge that you can use to guide YOUR behavior.

11. 3.1 The Big Five Personality Traits

12. Openness to Experience + Extraversion + Conscientiousness -
Emotional Stability +
Agreeableness +
Firm Performance
ROA
ROI
ROS
Strategic
Flexibility
Nadkarni & Herrmann, AMJ, 2010

13. Personality
Core self-evaluation (CSE) is a broad set of personality traits that refers to self-concept.
CSE is comprised of
Locus of control
Self-esteem
Generalized self-efficacy
Emotional stability

14. People and circumstances control my fate!
Personality
Locus of Control
Internal
External
I control what
happens to me!
People and circumstances control my fate! 8 9 9 9

15. Locus of control
Internals have higher job satisfaction, are more likely to assume managerial positions, prefer participative management, have higher work motivation, hold stronger belief that efforts lead to performance, receive higher salaries, and display less anxiety than externals. Will not react well to being closely supervised.
Externals prefer more structured work setting and may be more reluctant to participate in decision making.

16. Self-Esteem Failure tends to decrease self-esteem Success tends
to increase
self-esteem 10 11 11 11

17. Self Esteem: An individual’s general feeing of self-worth
High SE: perceive strengths as well as weaknesses, but believe strengths more important; perform better and are more satisfied with their jobs; seek out higher status jobs; contribute to success of teams; may also be seen by others as bragging.
Low SE: more strongly affected by what other people think of them; compliment individuals who give them positive feedback while cutting down people who give them negative feedback
Encourage SE by giving subordinates challenges and opportunities for success.

18. Self-monitoring
The extent to which people base their behavior on cues from other people and situations
High SM pay attention to what is appropriate in particular situations and to the behavior of other people, and they behave accordingly
Low SM are not as vigilant to situational cues and act from internal states rather than paying attention to the situation

19. Self-Monitoring Behavior based on cues High self monitors
flexible: adjust behavior according to the situation and the behavior of others
can appear unpredictable and inconsistent
Low self monitors
act from internal states rather than from situational cues
show consistency
less likely to respond to work group norms or supervisory feedback 11 12 12 12

20. Make a job-related geographic move
WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO. . .
Low self monitors
High self monitors 
Get promoted 
Change employers
Make a job-related geographic move 

21. The Role of Affect
Positive Affect – an individual’s tendency to accentuate the positive aspects of oneself, other people, and the world in general
Negative Affect – an individual’s tendency to accentuate the negative aspects of oneself, other people, and the world in general 12 13 13 13

22. Attachment Orientation
Characteristic related to how people form and maintain supportive relationships with others.
Three patterns of attachment behavior that affect the ways individuals perceive and enact relationships at work:
Interdependence
Counterdependence
Overdependence

23. Attachment Orientation
Interdependence: secure pattern of behavior, involves the formation of flexible, reciprocal relationships. Belief that others will be there for help when they are needed.
Counterdependence: pattern of behavior in which individuals, believing that no one will be available to turn to in stressful situations, isolate themselves and resist supportive overtures by others.

24. Attachment Orientation
Overdependence: pattern of behavior where individuals cling too tightly to others and may drain their support systems by failing to reciprocate support.
Previous research: Counterdependence and overdependence negatively related to worker health and interdependence positively related to worker health

25. Hope
Trust
Burnout
0.64
0.39
0.21
Interdependence
Performance
-0.64

26. Machiavellianism
A personality trait involving willingness to manipulate others for one’s own (selfish) purposes. Do whatever it takes to get your way.
Machiavellian tactics:
Neglecting to share important information (e.g., claiming to “forget” to tell you about key meetings and assignments).
Finding subtle ways of making you look bad to management (e.g., damning you with faint praise).
Failing to meet obligations (e.g., not holding up their end on joint projects, thereby causing you to look bad).
Spreading false rumors about you (e.g., making up things about you that embarrass you in front of others).

27. Narcissism
Exploitativeness/Entitlement: I deserve respect, and insist you give it to me
Leadership/Authority: I love to be the center of attention
Superiority/Arrogance: I am better than others
Self-absorption/Self-Admiration: I truly am extraordinary and special
Judge et al. (2006)

28. Narcissistic Leaders Not concerned with treating people fairly
Not good for morale and motivation
Higher manager turnover
Judge et al. (2006)

29. Narcissistic Employees
Do not have a realistic conception of their own talent and abilities.
Likely to also be extraverted and agreeable
Not good in teams
Don’t take negative feedback well
Disparage evaluator
Disparage co-workers
Judge et al. (2006)

30. If the CEO is a Narcissist
Bold, risky actions
Big wins or big losses
Performances swings between the extremes
No significant difference in corporate performance
Chatterjee & Hambrick (2007)

31. If CEO is a Narcissist
A CEO’s tendency to be arrogant not only caused the CEO to discount the advice of other company directors, in many cases the CEO tended to do the exact opposite of what these other experienced leaders advised.
Zhu & Chen (2015)

32. Leadership and Narcissism
Narcissism is a mixed bag; neither wholly beneficial nor harmful, but is best in moderation.
Curvilinear relationship between narcissism and observer-reported leadership effectiveness, suggesting that narcissism can indeed be positive up to a point.
Actually good news for most of us, because 68% of us are within one standard deviation of the population mean for narcissism.
Grijalva et al. (2014)

33. Narcissism and Humility
Overly narcissistic leaders can be effective if they are able to show humility.
The ability of a leader to admit mistakes, limitations, and to sincerely seek the advice and feedback of others is a virtuous personal characteristic than can be developed with practice.
Owens et al. (2015)

34. Humility
Grounded in a self-view of accepting that something is greater than self (purposeful)
Self awareness
Openness to feedback
Appreciation of others
Low self-focus
Self-transcendent pursuits
Weak correlation between narcissism and humility implying these traits may co-exist in some people
Ou et al. (2014)

35. Strong Situation
A situation that overwhelms the effects of individual personalities by providing strong cues for appropriate behavior.
Strong personalities will dominate in weak situations
Implications?

36. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Based on Carl Jung’s work
People are fundamentally different
People are fundamentally alike
People have preference combinations for extraversion/introversion, perception, judgment
Briggs & Myers developed the MBTI to understand individual differences

37. MBTI Preferences
E/I
S/N
T/F
J/P

38. Type Theory Preferences and Descriptions

39. Uses of MBTI
Help employees understand their coworkers perspective
Facilitates team building
Demonstrates how differences and diversity lead to successful performance
Helps managers develop interpersonal skills

40. 3.2 A Model for Social Perception

41. Barriers to Social Perception
Impression Management
Stereotype
First Impression Error
Projection
Self-fulfilling prophecy 24 24

42. Stereotypes
Psychological representations of the characteristics of people that belong to particular groups. It is a categorization process.
Aids to explanation. Help the perceiver make sense of a situation.
Energy saving devices
Shared group beliefs.
Categorization is the cognitive process by which we detect differences and similarities between groups.

43. Impression Management
The process by which individuals try to control the impression others have of them
Name dropping
Appearance
Self-description
Flattery
Favors
Agreement with opinion 24 24

44. Attribution Theory
Attribution theory - explains how individuals pinpoint the causes of their own behavior or that of others – two theories of attribution in this chapter (be familiar with text examples) and chapter 6 (Kelley’s Theory)).
Information cues for attribution information gathering (relates to the behavior/performance of others)
consensus
distinctiveness
consistency

45. Explaining the behavior of others
Consensus - the extent to which peers in the same situation behave the same way (within task comparison)
Distinctiveness - degree to which the person behaves the same way in other situations (between task comparison)
Consistency - the frequency of a particular behavior over time

46. Attribution Model

47. Information Cues & Attributions

48. Information Cues & Attributions

49. Attributions (explanations) of the causes of behavior in yourself.
Internal
Ability and effort
External
Task difficulty and luck

50. Causal Attributions Of Your Behavior (Success and Failure)
Stable Unstable
Internal
External
S = esteem, efficacy
F = depression
S = luck
F = hope/optimism
F = frustration

51. Attributional biases Two types of attribution errors
Fundamental attribution error: tendency to make attributions to internal causes when focusing on someone else’s behavior
Self-serving bias
Prevents individuals from accurately assessing their own performance and abilities and makes more difficult determining real cause of failure
Tendency to blame others for a person’s own failures associated with poor performance and an inability to establish satisfying interpersonal relationships at work and other social settings
When problems occur at work, managers and employees often make different attributions about the causes.

52. Advice for managers when problems occur at work
Avoid the fundamental attribution error (stop blaming)
Anticipate the employee’s self-serving bias and be proactive. Know that the employee will attribute causes of failure to (blame) the environment, including management. Account for the impact of the environment, including your own behavior, on the employee’s behavior. Look inside first. Eliminate all other causes as much as possible before you blame employees. Employees that see you doing this will credit you with procedural justice.
If the environment is a major cause, it will be affecting others as well. Fix the system and stop blaming.