LESSON 4 – INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

NOTES ON INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

I. Personality
A. What Is Personality?
1. Personality is the sum of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with
others.
2. Measuring personality
a. The most important reason managers need to know how to measure personality is
that research has shown personality tests are useful in hiring decisions and help
managers forecast who is best for a job.
b. The most common means of measuring personality is through self-report surveys,
with which individuals evaluate themselves on a series of factors.
c. Research indicates our culture influences the way we rate ourselves. People in
individualistic countries trend toward self-enhancement, while people in
collectivist countries like Taiwan, China, and South Korea trend toward self-
diminishment.
d. Observer-ratings surveys provide an independent assessment of personality. Here,
a coworker or another observer does the rating.
e. Though the results of self-reports and observer-ratings surveys are strongly
correlated, research suggests observer-ratings surveys predict job success more
than self-ratings alone.
f. However, each can tell us something unique about an individual’s behavior, so a
combination of self-reports and observer reports predicts performance better than
any one type of information.
3. Personality determinants
a. Introduction
b. An early argument centered on whether personality was the result of heredity or
environment.
c. Personality appears to be a result of both influences.
d. Heredity refers to those factors that were determined at conception.
e. The heredity approach argues that the ultimate explanation of an individual’s
personality is the molecular structure of the genes, located in the chromosomes.
f. Early work on personality revolved around attempts to identify and label enduring
characteristics.
g. Popular characteristics include shy, aggressive, submissive, lazy, ambitious, loyal,
and timid. These are personality traits.
h. The more consistent the characteristic, the more frequently it occurs, the more
important it is.
II. Personality Frameworks
A. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
1. One of the most widely used personality frameworks is the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator (MBTI).
2. It is a 100-question personality test that asks people how they usually feel or act in
particular situations.
3. Individuals are classified as:
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a. Extroverted or Introverted (E or I).

b. Sensing or Intuitive (S or N).
c. Thinking or Feeling (T or F).
d. Perceiving or Judging (P or J).
4. These classifications are then combined into sixteen personality types. For example:
a. INTJs are visionaries. They usually have original minds and great drive. They are
characterized as skeptical, critical, independent, determined, and often stubborn.
b. ESTJs are organizers. They are realistic, logical, analytical, decisive, and have a
natural head for business or mechanics.
c. The ENTP type is a conceptualizer. He or she is innovative, individualistic,
versatile, and attracted to entrepreneurial ideas. This person tends to be
resourceful in solving challenging problems but may neglect routine assignments.
5. MBTI is widely used in practice although its validity as a measure of personality is
unclear.
B. The Big Five Personality Model
1. An impressive body of research supports that five basic dimensions underlie all other
personality dimensions. The five basic dimensions known as the Big Five Model are:
a. Extraversion. Comfort level with relationships. Extroverts tend to be gregarious,
assertive, and sociable. Introverts tend to be reserved, timid, and quiet.
b. Agreeableness. Individual’s propensity to defer to others. High agreeableness
people—cooperative, warm, and trusting. Low agreeableness people—cold,
disagreeable, and antagonistic.
c. Conscientiousness. A measure of reliability. A high conscientious person is
responsible, organized, dependable, and persistent. Those who score low on this
dimension are easily distracted, disorganized, and unreliable.
d. Emotional stability. A person’s ability to withstand stress. People with positive
emotional stability tend to be calm, self-confident, and secure. Those with high
negative scores tend to be nervous, anxious, depressed, and insecure.
e. Openness to experience. The range of interests and fascination with novelty.
Extremely open people are creative, curious, and artistically sensitive. Those at
the other end of the openness category are conventional and find comfort in the
familiar.
2. How Do the Big Five Traits Predict Behavior at Work?
a. Research has shown relationships between these personality dimensions and job
performance.
3. Conscientiousness at Work
a. Employees who score higher, for example, in conscientiousness develop higher
levels of job knowledge.
i. The study found conscientiousness—in the form of persistence, attention to
detail, and setting of high standards—was more important than other traits.
(Exhibit 4-1)
ii. These results attest to the importance of conscientiousness to organizational
success.
iii. Like any trait, conscientiousness has pitfalls.
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iv. Extremely conscientious individuals can be too deliberate and perfectionistic,

resulting in diminished happiness and performance, which includes task
performance, safety performance, and OCB.
v. They may also become too focused on their own work to help others in the
organization.
vi. Finally, they are often less creative than less conscientious people, especially
artistically.
b. Although conscientiousness is the Big Five trait most consistently related to job
performance, there are other traits that are related to aspects of performance in
some situations.
c. All five traits also have other implications for work and life. Let’s look at these
one at a time. (Exhibit 4-2)
4. Emotional Stability at Work
a. Of the Big Five traits, emotional stability is most strongly related to life
satisfaction, job satisfaction, and low stress levels.
i. People with high emotional stability can adapt to unexpected or changing
demands in the workplace.
5. Extraversion at Work
a. Extraverts tend to perform better in jobs that require significant interpersonal
interaction.
i. Extraversion is a relatively strong predictor of leadership emergence in
groups.
ii. One downside is that extraverts are more impulsive than introverts and may be
more likely than introverts to lie during job interviews.
b. Openness at Work
i. Individuals who score high on openness to experience are more likely to be
effective leaders and are more comfortable with ambiguity.
ii. They cope better with organizational change and are more adaptable in
changing contexts.
c. Agreeableness at Work
i. Agreeable individuals are better liked than disagreeable people, which
explains why they tend to do better in interpersonally-oriented jobs such as
customer service.
ii. They also are more compliant and rule abiding and less likely to get into
accidents as a result.
iii. People who are agreeable are more satisfied in their jobs and contribute to
organizational performance by engaging in citizenship behavior.
iv. They are also less likely to engage in organizational deviance.
v. One downside is that agreeableness is associated with lower levels of career
success (especially earnings).
6. The five personality factors identified in the Big Five model appear in almost all
cross-cultural studies.
a. These studies have included a wide variety of diverse cultures such as China,
Israel, Germany, Japan, Spain, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, and the United States.
b. Generally, the findings corroborate what has been found in U.S. research: of the
Big Five traits, conscientiousness is the best predictor of job performance.
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C. The Dark Triad

1. With the exception of neuroticism, the Big Five traits are what we call socially
desirable, meaning we would be glad to score high on them.
2. Researchers have found that three other socially undesirable traits, which we all have
in varying degrees, are relevant to organizational behavior.
a. They are: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.
b. Owing to their negative nature, researchers have labeled these three traits the
Dark Triad.
3. Machiavellianism
a. Named after Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote in the sixteenth century on how to
gain and use power.
b. An individual high in Machiavellianism is pragmatic, maintains emotional
distance, and believes that ends can justify means.
c. High Machs manipulate more, win more, are persuaded less, and persuade others
more.
d. Machiavellianism does not significantly predict overall job performance.
4. Narcissism
a. Narcissism describes a person who has a grandiose sense of self-importance.
b. They “think” they are better leaders.
c. Often they are selfish and exploitive.
5. Psychopathy
a. In the OB context, psychopathy is defined as a lack of concern for others, and a
lack of guilt or remorse when their actions cause harm.
i. Measures of psychopathy attempt to assess the person’s motivation to comply
with social norms; willingness to use deceit to obtain desired ends and the
effectiveness of those efforts; impulsivity; and disregard, that is, lack of
empathic concern, for others.
b. The literature is not consistent about whether psychopathy or other aberrant
personality traits are important to work behavior.
6. Other Traits
a. The Dark Triad is a helpful framework for studying the three dominant dark-side
traits in current personality research, and researchers are exploring other traits as
well.
b. One emerging framework incorporates five additional aberrant compound traits
based on the Big Five.
i. First, antisocial people are indifferent and callous toward others.
ii. Second, borderline people have low self-esteem and high uncertainty.
iii. Third, schizotypal individuals are eccentric and disorganized.
iv. Fourth, obsessive compulsive people are perfectionists and can be stubborn,
yet they attend to details, carry a strong work ethic, and may be motivated by
achievement.
v. Fifth, avoidant individuals feel inadequate and hate criticism.
D. Other Personality Traits Relevant to OB
1. Core self-evaluations (CSEs)
a. People who have a positive core self-evaluation see themselves as effective,
capable, and in control.
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b. People who have a negative core self-evaluation tend to dislike themselves.

c. People with positive core self-evaluations perform better than others because they
set more ambitious goals, are more committed to their goals, and persist longer in
attempting to reach these goals.
2. Self-monitoring
a. This refers to an individual’s ability to adjust his or her behavior to external,
situational factors.
b. Individuals high in self-monitoring show considerable adaptability. They are
highly sensitive to external cues, can behave differently in different situations,
and are capable of presenting striking contradictions between their public persona
and their private self.
c. Low self-monitors cannot disguise themselves in that way. They tend to display
their true dispositions and attitudes in every situation, resulting in a high
behavioral consistency between who they are and what they do.
d. Evidence suggests:
i. High self-monitors tend to pay closer attention to the behavior of others.
ii. High self-monitoring managers tend to be more mobile in their careers and
receive more promotions.
3. Proactive personality
a. Actively taking the initiative to improve their current circumstances while others
sit by passively.
b. Proactives identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere.
c. Create positive change in their environment.
d. More likely to be seen as leaders and change agents.
e. More likely to achieve career success.
E. Personality, Job Search, and Unemployment
1. A relevant question involves the behaviors of those who are unemployed and looking
for a job: What personality characteristics predict job search behaviors (e.g.,
networking intensity) among the unemployed?
2. Many studies of unemployed job seekers have found that conscientiousness and
extraversion were predictive of networking intensity, general job search intensity,
interviews, and job offers, even after controlling for demographic characteristics and
the time spent unemployed.
3. It appears that extraversion, conscientiousness, and positive affectivity tend to have a
substantial effect on becoming employed and coping with unemployment (with
negative affectivity and hostility having equivalent negative effects).
4. If you find yourself in a situation where you are unemployed, can you expect your
personality to change? Or can you change your behavior to act in a way that goes
against your traits?
a. First, it appears as if “approach” and “avoidance” traits (e.g., traits that lead to
approaching challenges head-on or avoiding them) have an effect on job search—
for example, extraversion, conscientiousness, proactive personality, and positive
affect have a positive effect, whereas negative affect, hostility, and low self-
esteem and self-efficacy have a negative effect.
i. As such, it might be worthwhile to try to adopt an “approach” orientation—
take the challenge head on, try to stay positive and organized, and network!
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b. Second, some research in Germany suggests that your personality can change
after unemployment—in a sample of nearly 7,000 unemployed adults who were
tracked over 4 years, significant patterns of change in agreeableness,
conscientiousness, and openness were uncovered.
F. Personality and Situations
a. Increasingly, we are learning that the effect of particular traits on organizational
behavior depends on the situation. Two theoretical frameworks help explain how
this works.
2. Situation Strength Theory
a. Situation strength theory proposes that the way personality translates into
behavior depends on the strength of the situation.
b. By situation strength, we mean the degree to which norms, cues, or standards
dictate appropriate behavior.
c. Research suggests that personality traits better predict behavior in weak situations
than in strong ones.
d. Researchers have analyzed situation strength in organizations in terms of four
elements:
i. Clarity, or the degree to which cues about work duties and responsibilities are
available and clear.
ii. Consistency, or the extent to which cues regarding work duties and
responsibilities are compatible with one another.
iii. Constraints, or the extent to which individuals’ freedom to decide or act is
limited by forces outside their control.
iv. Consequences, or the degree to which decisions or actions have important
implications for the organization or its members, clients, supplies, and so on.
e. Some researchers have speculated that organizations are, by definition, strong
situations because they impose rules, norms, and standards that govern behavior.
These constraints are usually appropriate.
G. Trait Activation Theory
1. Trait activation theory (TAT) predicts that some situations, events, or interventions
“activate” a trait more than others.
a. Exhibit 4-3 shows jobs in which certain Big Five traits are more relevant.
III. Values
A. Introduction
1. Values represent basic convictions.
2. The intensity attribute specifies how important it is. The content attribute says a
mode of conduct or end-state of existence is important.
3. They have both content and intensity attributes.
4. An individual’s set of values ranked in terms of intensity is considered the person’s
value system.
5. Values have the tendency to be stable.
6. Many of our values were established in our early years from parents, teachers,
friends, and others.
B. The Importance and Organization of Values
1. Values lay the foundation for the understanding of attitudes and motivation.
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2. We enter an organization with preconceived notions of what “ought” and “ought not”
be.
a. These notions are not value-free; on the contrary, they contain our interpretations
of right and wrong and our preference for certain behaviors or outcomes over
others.
3. Values influence attitudes and behavior.
C. Terminal Versus Instrumental Values
1. How can we organize values?
2. Milton Rokeach separates them into:
a. Terminal Values—refer to desirable end states of existence; the goals that a
person would like to achieve during his/her lifetime.
b. Instrumental Values—refer to preferable modes of behavior; the means of
achieving the terminal values.
D. Generational Values
1. Contemporary work cohorts
i. Exhibit 4-4 segments employees by the era during which they entered the
workforce.
ii. Because most people start work between the ages of 18 and 23, the eras also
correlate closely with employee age.
(a) Boomers (Baby Boomers)—entered the workforce during the 1960s
through the mid-1980s.
(b) Xers—entered the workforce beginning in the mid-1980s.
(c) The most recent entrants to the workforce are the Millennials.
2. Though it is fascinating to think about generational values, remember these
classifications lack solid research support.
3. Generational classifications may help us understand our own and other generations
better, but we must also appreciate their limits.
IV. Linking an Individual’s Personality and Values to the Workplace
A. The Person-Job Fit
1. This concern is best articulated in John Holland’s personality-job fit theory.
2. Holland presents six personality types and proposes that satisfaction and the
propensity to leave a job depends on the degree to which individuals successfully
match their personalities to an occupational environment.
3. The six personality types are: realistic, investigative, social, conventional, enterprising,
and artistic. (Exhibit 4-5)
a. Each one of the six personality types has a congruent occupational environment.
b. Vocational Preference Inventory questionnaire contains 160 occupational titles.
Respondents indicate which of these occupations they like or dislike; their
answers are used to form personality profiles.
c. The theory argues that satisfaction is highest and turnover lowest when
personality and occupation are in agreement.
i. The key point of this model is that people in jobs congruent with their
personality should be more satisfied and less likely to voluntarily resign than
people in incongruent jobs.
B. Person-Organization Fit
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1. The person-organization fit essentially argues that people are attracted to and selected
by organizations that match their values, and they leave organizations that are not
compatible with their personalities.
2. Using the Big Five terminology, for instance, we could expect that people high on
extraversion fit well with aggressive and team-oriented cultures, that people high on
agreeableness match up better with a supportive organizational climate than one
focused on aggressiveness, and that people high on openness to experience fit better
in organizations that emphasize innovation rather than standardization.
3. Research on person-organization fit has also looked at whether people’s values match
the organization’s culture.
4. This match predicts job satisfaction, commitment to the organization, and low
turnover.
C. Other Dimensions of Fit
1. Although person-job fit and person-organization fit are considered the most salient
dimensions for workplace outcomes, other avenues of fit are worth examining.
2. These include person-group fit and person-supervisor fit.
a. Person-group fit is important in team settings, where the dynamics of team
interactions significantly affect work outcomes.
b. Person-supervisor fit has become an important area of research since poor fit in
this dimension can lead to lower job satisfaction and reduced performance.
V. Cultural Values
A. Hofstede’s Framework for Assessing Cultures
1. Five value dimensions of national culture:
a. Power distance: the degree to which people in a country accept that power in
institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.
b. Individualism versus collectivism: individualism is the degree to which people
in a country prefer to act as individuals rather than as members of groups;
collectivism emphasizes a tight social framework in which people expect others in
groups of which they are a part to look after them and protect them.
c. Masculinity versus femininity: masculinity is the degree to which the culture
favors traditional masculine roles such as achievement, power, and control, as
opposed to viewing men and women as equals.
d. Uncertainty avoidance: the degree to which people in a country prefer structured
over unstructured situations.
e. Long-term versus short-term orientation: long-term orientations look to the
future and value thrift and persistence. In a short-term orientation, people value
the here and now; they accept change more readily and don’t see commitments as
impediments to change.
2. Hofstede’s research findings. (Exhibit 4-6)
a. Asian countries were more collectivistic than individualistic.
b. United States ranked highest on individualism.
c. Germany and Hong Kong rated high on masculinity.
d. Russia and The Netherlands were low on masculinity.
e. China and Hong Kong had a long-term orientation.
f. France and the United States had short-term orientation.
3. Hofstede’s recent research
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a. Studies investigated the relationship of cultural values and a variety of

organizational criteria at both the individual and national level of analysis.
b. Overall, the five original culture dimensions were equally strong predictors of
relevant outcomes, meaning researchers and practicing managers need to think
about culture holistically and not just focus on one or two dimensions.
c. The researchers also found that individual scores were much better predictors of
most outcomes than assigning all people in a country the same cultural values.
d. In sum, this research suggests that Hofstede’s value framework may be a valuable
way of thinking about differences among people, but we should be cautious about
assuming all people from a country have the same values.
B. The GLOBE Framework for Assessing Cultures
1. The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) began
updating Hofstede’s research with data from 825 organizations and 62 countries.
2. Variables similar to Hofstede’s.
C. Comparison of Hofstede’s Framework and the GLOBE Framework
1. We give more emphasis to Hofstede’s dimensions here because they have stood the
test of time and the GLOBE study confirmed them.
2. Researchers continue to debate the differences between these frameworks, and future
studies may, in time, favor the more nuanced perspective of the GLOBE study.
VI. Summary and Implications For Managers
A. Personality matters to organizational behavior.
1. It does not explain all behavior, but it sets the stage.
B. Emerging theory and research reveal how personality matters more in some situations
than others.
C. The Big Five has been a particularly important advancement, though the Dark Triad and
other traits matter as well.
1. Every trait has advantages and disadvantages for work behavior and there is no
perfect constellation of traits that is ideal in every situation.
D. Personality can help you understand why people (including yourself!) act, think, and feel
the way we do, and the astute manger can put that understanding to use by taking care to
place employees in situations that best fit their personality. An understanding of
personality can also help you understand what strengths you may have (and should strive
for) when searching for a job.
E. Values often underlie and explain attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions. Values tend to
vary internationally along dimensions that can predict organizational outcomes; however,
an individual may or may not hold values that are consistent with the values of the
national culture.
1. Consider screening job candidates for high conscientiousness—as well as the other
Big Five traits—depending on the criteria your organization finds most important.
Other aspects, such as core self-evaluation or narcissism, may be relevant in certain
situations.
2. Although the MBTI has faults, you can use it for training and development; to help
employees better understand each other, open up communication in work groups, and
possibly reduce conflicts.
3. Evaluate jobs, work groups, and your organization to determine the optimal
personality fit.
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4. Consider situational factors when evaluating observable personality traits, and lower
the situation strength, to better ascertain personality characteristics.
5. The more you consider people’s different cultures, the better you will be able to
determine their work behavior and create a positive organizational climate that
performs well.