Psychology of Work - 3

Other Major Personality Attributes Influencing Organizational Behavior

--> Core Self-Evaluation --> Machiavellianism --> Narcissism --> Self-Monitoring --> Risk Taking --> Type A/B Personality --> Proactive Personality

2. Locus of control

-> A person's general belief about the amount of control he or she has over personal life events. -> The degree to which people believe that they are masters of their own fate.

Issues in Psychometrics

1. Features of Tests 2. Advantages of Tests 3. Disadvantages of Tests 4. Ethical Issues

Type A and Type B Personalities

Type A personality--> a personality with aggressive involvement in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time and, if necessary, against the opposing efforts of other things or other people. In contrast to the Type A personality is the Type B, who is exactly the opposite. Type Bs --> are "rarely harried by the desire to obtain a wildly increasing number of things or participate in an endless, growing series of events in an ever-decreasing amount of time."

Type As are often impatient, hurried, competitive, and hostile, -> but these traits tend to emerge most often when a Type A individual experiences stress or challenge.

Type As are fast workers because they emphasize quantity over quality. In managerial positions, Type As demonstrate their competitiveness by working long hours and, not infrequently, making poor decisions because they make them too fast.

Type A • Are always moving, walking, and eating rapidly • Feel impatient with the rate at which most events take place • Strive to think or do two or more things at once • Cannot cope with leisure time • Are obsessed with numbers, measuring their success in terms of how many or how much of everything they acquire ***In North American culture, such characteristics tend to be highly prized and positively associated with ambition and the successful acquisition of material goods.***

Type B • Never suffer from a sense of time urgency with its accompanying impatience • Feel no need to display or discuss either their achievements or accomplishments unless such exposure is demanded by the situation • Play for fun and relaxation, rather than to exhibit their superiority at any cost • Can relax without guilt

Aligning risk-taking propensity with specific job demands:

e.g., high risk taking for a stock trader in a brokerage firm → may lead to more effective performance e.g., high risk taking for an accountant who performs auditing activities → may be a major obstacle

Emotional Intelligence

A set of abilities to: --> perceive and express emotion, --> assimilate emotion in thought, --> understand and reason with emotion, --> and regulate emotion in oneself and others.

Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire --> Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) • Rests on four main abilities that underlie emotional intelligence: 1. Perceiving emotions in oneself and others, 2. Using emotions to secure an advantage, 3. Understanding emotions and making sense out of them, 4. Managing emotions so as to evaluate them with respect to self and others

After the analysis of MSCEIT, it was reported that employees with higher scores were; ✓ rated as easier to deal with, ✓ more interpersonally sensitive, ✓ more tolerant of stress, ✓ more sociable, ✓ and with greater potential for leadership than those with lower scores

Machiavellianism (Mach) -> 'If it works, use it'

Degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance and believes that ends can justify means.

Core Self-Evaluation --> Degree to which people like or dislike themselves.

Determined by two core elements: 1. Self-esteem 2. Locus of control

Those with higher EQ: • make personal connections with much ease • good at preventing & intervening crisis situations.

Goleman (1998) sees potential in applying EQ to organizational settings: • Occupational competencies based on EQ play a greater part in first-rate performance than does intellect or technical skills. • suggests that EQ plays a crucial role in determination of the effectiveness of leaders.

Self-Monitoring --> A personality trait that measures an individual's ability to adjust the behavior to external, situational factors. • 'I'm true to others, I don't remake myself to please others'

High self-monitoring (influenced by external factors-situational demands) • More sensitive to other's behavior • More capable of conforming • Receive better performance ratings & receive more promotions • More likely to emerge as leaders & managerial positions • Good at first impressions

Positive Self-Evaluation Effects & Job Performance & Satisfaction

• Set more ambitious goals, • Tend to obtain more challenging and complex jobs, • Are more committed to their goals, • Perceive themselves having control over their jobs. • Tend to attribute positive outcomes to their own actions.

Narcissism

• The tendency to be arrogant, have a grandiose sense of self-importance, require excessive admiration, and have a sense of entitlement. • Studies: they're rated as less effective at their jobs -> Particularly → helping others, teamwork

Features of Tests --> Objective, --> standardized measures --> well-controlled & uniform procedure or conducting & scoring.

• The test items, instructions, time allowed. • Same physical test conditions. • Objective scoring (whether operated manually or computerized)

The test should have scientific data to show the 'quality' of the test: • Reliability -> A test is reliable if it gives the same profile on a repeated basis in the same conditions. -> The measure must be consistent. • Validity -> A test is valid if it measures what it is supposed to be measuring.

➢ In a cross-cultural context, some types of tests may have greater significance than others. • Some non-verbal tests of cognitive ability do not discriminate respondents from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds - less prone to cultural effects. (Higgins, Peterson, Lee, & Pihl, 2007) • Personality tests make few allowances for cultural differences. (Feltham, Lewis, Anderson, & Hughes, 1998).

Proactive Personality --> People who identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere until meaningful change occurs.

In organizations: • More likely to be seen as leaders • More likely to act as change agents within the org. • More likely to achieve carrier success. Sometimes it can be + or - for the organization: • More likely to challenge the status quo or voice their displeasure. • More likely to leave the organization to start their own business.

Cognitive Perspective of Personality --> This perspective is evident when: people's unique perceptions & the action strategies based on them --> tend to determine who they are and how they react.

In the process, people rely on previous experience & future expectations, guided by their attitudes & prominent needs. Such as; • Locus of Control • Self-esteem • Self Monitoring, etc.

Locus of Control --> Internal & External

Individuals with more of an internal locus of control believe that their personal characteristics (i.e., motivation and competencies) mainly influence life's outcomes. Those with more of an external locus of control believe that events in their life are due mainly to fate, luck, or conditions in the external environment.

High Machs → manipulate more, win more, are persuaded less, and persuade others more than do low Machs.

It has been found that high Machs flourish: (1) when they interact face to face with others rather than indirectly; (2) when the situation has a minimum number of rules and regulations, thus allowing latitude for improvisation; and (3) when low Machs get distracted by emotional involvement with details irrelevant to winning.

In the past, most intelligence tests → concerned with the individual's ability to think and reason effectively.

Recent years in the West → more assessments has been aimed for more social and interpersonal aspects of intelligence.

1. Self-esteem

The degree to which people think they are worthy or unworthy as a person.

Risk Taking

The propensity to assume or avoid risk → how long it takes managers to make a decision & how much information they require before making their choice.

To ensure standardization: the tester has a 'key': ➢ Norm Table Norms: range of scores obtained from a large representative sample of people for whom the test was designed. + This ensures that the subjective interpretation of the data by the tester is removed.

➢ Percentile Score- represents the proportion of the reference group that has a lower score than the person tested. E.g., the person scored 75th percentile on a particular dimension of the test using the norms, then her/his score would be better than 75% of the reference group. Only 25% would have better score.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ/EI) is.. (popularized by Goleman -1998)

➢ The ability to monitor one's own and others' emotions; ➢ To discriminate among these emotions; ➢ To express emotions appropriately; ➢ To use the information acquired to guide one's thinking.