Module 2 Review Questions: Diversity and Individual Differences
Someone who is extroverted can be expected to be courteous, forgiving, and trustworthy.
False, agreeableness
Agreeableness is a personality trait that refers to dependability and achievement orientation.
False, conscientiousness
Cultural intelligence enables people to generate, recognize, express, understand, and evaluate their own and others emotions.
False, emotional intelligence
Muscular strength refers to the ability to sustain physical activity for a long period.
False, endurance
The mirror image fallacy is a perceptual distortion in which an individual presumes that no one else is "just like me."
False, it's that everyone else is "just like me"
The Big Five personality traits include extroversion, emotional intelligence, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience.
False, its emotional adjustment not intelligence
Physical ability consists of three major dimensions: muscular strength, endurance, and movement quantity.
False, movement quality
Endurance is a type of physical ability that refers to the ability to exert muscular force to push, pull, or carry.
False, muscular strength
Reasoning ability reflects a person's ability to perform arithmetic problems.
False, quantitative ability
Training is a way to compensate for any job-related deficiencies in individuals' traits or abilities by modifying their jobs.
False, reengineering
A great deal of evidence suggests that general cognitive ability is predictive of success in the work world.
True
A stereotype presumes that some person possesses certain individual characteristics based on their sex or membership in a racial, ethnic, or age group.
True
Conscientious people are dependable, organized, and thorough.
True
Conscientiousness, in the absence of ability, is not much of an asset, but when conscientiousness and ability both reside in the same person, the results can be dramatic.
True
Cultural intelligence is a critical individual difference for companies that are trying to move into global product markets.
True
Emotional adjustment reflects characteristics of emotional stability, security, and contentment.
True
Emotional intelligence helps predict success in jobs that involve interpersonal interaction.
True
For certain jobs, tests of specific mental ability can add significantly to the predictive power of tests of general intelligence.
True
General cognitive ability is important even for jobs that lack such complexity if these positions expose one to dangerous conditions, and workers who are high in cognitive ability show much lower on-the-job-accident rates.
True
General cognitive ability reflects the summed total of scores across different types of mental tests
True
Height and weight criteria were often substituted for specific abilities in the past, but because height and weight measures are considered to discriminate unfairly against women and members of some minority groups, they are rarely used today.
True
In order to gain competitive advantage from demographic and cultural diversity, managers need to move beyond false stereotypes regarding various groups and directly assess the true abilities and traits of each individual person with reliable and valid methods.
True
In the past, legal and political forces, particularly civil rights activists who tried to increase opportunities for women and minorities in the workplace, drove integration of the workforce.
True
Just as research on training has shown that certain people benefit more from training than others, research also suggests that some people respond better to the redesign of work than others.
True
Many organizations attempt to broaden the cultural experience of their current employees by sending them on international assignments.
True
Movement quality is the ability to maintain the body in a stable position and resist forces that cause a loss of stability.
True
Much of the current concern about managing demographic diversity can be traced to the fact that that an increasingly larger percent of new entrants into the labor pool tend to be women, minorities, or immigrants.
True
Older workers are another source of valuable talent that sometimes requires re-engineered jobs.
True
One of the more sweeping demographic forces with which many organizations are attempting to come to grips is the aging of the workforce.
True
People characterized by high openness to experience are curious and broad-minded.
True
People high in quantitative ability are able to apply mathematical rules appropriately.
True
People who are high on emotional intelligence have the ability to identify distinct emotions in themselves, as well as other people, and use this to guide their thinking and actions.
True
People who are psychologically flexible and open to experience are also more trainable, and this can be built into selection programs that rely heavily on work redesign initiatives to stay competitive.
True
Reengineering involves responding to any mismatch between person and job by changing the job.
True
Replacing outdated stereotypes with actual scientific data regarding individual differences is a critical skill for today's managers.
True
Research on how firms gain sustainable competitive advantage consistently identifies selectivity in hiring and an emphasis on training as two central characteristics of successful companies.
True
Selection programs enable managers to assess people and jobs, and then try to match up the two in a way that maximizes the fit between the abilities and traits of the individual and the abilities and traits required for the job.
True
Selection programs often begin with an analysis of the job, which leads to a written job description, which in turn leads to a list of the various characteristics needed for someone who is likely to be successful in that job.
True
Tests of physical abilities can predict not only a person's level of job performance, but also his or her risk of job-related injuries.
True
Verbal ability is the degree to which a person can understand and use written and spoken language.
True