1. McGraw-Hill/Irwin
Copyright © 2009 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

2. Learning Goals
What is personality, and how can it be distinguished from ability? What are cultural values?
Is personality driven by nature or by nurture? How can we tell?
What are the “Big Five?” Are there other taxonomies that can used to describe personality other than the Big Five?
What are Hofstede’s dimensions of cultural values?
How does personality affect job performance and organizational commitment?
Are personality tests a useful tool for organizational hiring?

3. Personality and Cultural Values
Personality captures what people are like.
Traits
Cultural values

4. Discussion Question
How would you describe your first college roommate to one of your classmates?

5. Personality Determinants
How does personality develop?
Nature
Study of identical twins
Genes
Nurture
Surrounding
Experiences

6. Changes in Big Five Dimensions Over the Life Span
Figure 9-2

7. The Big Five Personality Traits
Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness has the biggest influence on job performance.
Conscientious employees prioritize accomplishment striving.
OB on Screen
The Break-Up

8. The Big Five Personality Traits, Cont’d
Agreeableness
Prioritize communion striving
Beneficial in some positions but detrimental in others.
Agreeable people focus on “getting along,” not necessarily “getting ahead.”

9. The Big Five Personality Traits, Cont’d
Extraversion
Easiest to judge in zero acquaintance situations.
Prioritize status striving.
Tend to be high in what’s called positive affectivity.

10. Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Typical Moods
Figure 9-3

11. The Big Five Personality Traits, Cont’d
Neuroticism
Synonymous with negative affectivity.
Associated with a differential exposure to stressors.
Associated with a differential reactivity to stressors.
Neuroticism is also strongly related to locus of control.
Tend to hold an external locus of control.
Less neurotic people tend to hold an internal locus of control.

12. External and Internal Locus of Control
Table 9-2

13. The Big Five Personality Traits, Cont’d
Openness to experience
Openness to experience is also more likely to be valuable in jobs that require high levels of creativity.
Highly open individuals are more likely to migrate into artistic and scientific fields.

14. Openness to Experience and Creativity
Figure 9-4

15. Trait Adjectives Associated with the Big Five
Figure 9-1

16. Other Taxonomies of Personality
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (or MBTI) evaluates individuals on the basis of four types of preferences:
Extraversion versus Introversion
Sensing versus Intuition
Thinking versus Feeling
Judging versus Perceiving

17. Other Taxonomies of Personality, Cont’d
Holland’s RIASEC model suggests that interests can be summarized by six different personality types:
Realistic
Investigative
Artistic
Social
Enterprising
Conventional

18. Holland’s RIASEC Model
Figure 9-6

19. Cultural Values
Employees working in different countries tended to prioritize different values, and those values clustered into several distinct dimensions.
Ethnocentrism

20. Hofstede’s Dimensions of Cultural Values
Table 9-3

21. Hofstede’s Dimensions of Cultural Values, Cont’d
Table 9-3

22. How Can We Describe What Employees Are Like?
Figure 9-7

23. Importance of Personality and Cultural Values
Conscientiousness affects job performance.
It is a key driver of what’s referred to as typical performance.
More likely to engage in citizenship behaviors.
Tend to be more committed to their organization.
An employee’s ability is a key driver of maximum performance.

24. Importance of Personality and Cultural Values, Cont’d
The principle of situational strength suggests that “strong situations” have clear behavioral expectations, incentives, or instructions that make differences between individuals less important, whereas “weak situations” lack those cues.
Trait activation

25. Effects of Personality on Performance and Commitment
Figure 9-8

26. A Sampling of Well-Validated Measures of the Big Five
Table 9-4

27. Personality Tests Integrity tests Clear purpose tests
Integrity test scores are more strongly related to job performance than conscientiousness scores.
Clear purpose tests
Veiled purpose tests

28. Sample Integrity Test Items
Table 9-5

29. Personality Tests, Cont’d
About one-third of Fortune 1000 organizations rely on, or plan to implement, some form of personality testing.
Research suggests that almost everyone engages in some form of faking.
Because everyone fakes to some degree, correlations with outcomes like theft or other counterproductive behaviors are relatively unaffected.

30. The Effects of Faking on Correlations with Integrity Tests
Figure 9-9

31. Takeaways
Personality refers to the structures and propensities inside a person that explain his or her characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior. It also refers to a person’s social reputation. In this way, personality captures what people are like (unlike ability, which reflects what people can do ). Cultural values are shared beliefs about desirable end states or modes of conduct in a given culture that influence the expression of traits.
Although both nature and nurture are important, personality is affected significantly by genetic factors. Personality can be changed, but such changes are only apparent over the course of several years.

32. Takeaways, Cont’d
The “Big Five” includes conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion. Although the Big Five is the dominant taxonomy of personality, other taxonomies include the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory and Holland’s RIASEC model.
Hofstede’s dimensions of cultural values include individualism–collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity–femininity, and short-term vs. long-term orientation.

33. Takeaways, Cont’d
Conscientiousness has a moderate positive relationship with job performance and a moderate positive relationship with organizational commitment. It has stronger effects on these outcomes than the rest of the Big Five.
Personality tests are useful tools for organizational hiring. Research suggests that applicants do “fake” to some degree on the tests, but faking does not lower the correlation between test scores and the relevant outcomes.