Understanding Personality, Emotions, Perception & Decision Making
Personality
Definition
Personality: Characteristics that account for a consistent pattern of behavior.
Determinants of Personality
- Heredity (Genes): 50%
- Environment: 10%
- Voluntary Activities: 40%
Personality Frameworks
MBTI
MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) assesses personality based on four dichotomies:
- Extraverted/Introverted
- Sensing/Intuitive
- Thinking/Feeling
- Judging (Planned)/Perceiving (Spontaneous)
Big Five Personality Traits
The Big Five model identifies five broad dimensions of personality:
- Openness to Experience: Imagination, sensitivity, curiosity.
- Conscientiousness: Responsible, dependable, persistent, organized.
- Extraversion: Sociable, gregarious, assertive.
- Agreeableness: Good-natured, cooperative, trusting.
- Neuroticism: Calm, self-confident, secure (vs. depressed, negative).
Relationship to Job Performance and Well-being
- Conscientiousness is most consistently related to job performance.
- Emotional stability (low Neuroticism) is most strongly related to life and job satisfaction and low stress levels.
- Extraverts are happier in their jobs and lives.
- High scores for openness to experience are associated with more creativity in science and art.
- Agreeableness is associated with lower levels of career success.
Enhanced Leadership
Enhanced leadership qualities are associated with:
- Higher Extraversion
- Higher Openness
- Higher Conscientiousness
The Dark Triad
The Dark Triad refers to three socially undesirable personality traits:
- Machiavellianism: Maintaining emotional distance, believing that the ends justify the means.
- Narcissism: Grandiose sense of self-importance, requiring excessive admiration, sense of entitlement.
- Psychopathy: Lack of concern for others, lack of guilt.
Emotions and Moods
Basic Emotions
Six basic emotions:
- Anger
- Fear
- Sadness
- Happiness
- Disgust
- Surprise
Affect includes both moods and emotions.
Primary Sources of Emotions and Moods
- Time of Day (positive affect tends to peak in the late morning)
- Day of the Week
- Weather
- Stress
- Social Activities
- Sleep
- Exercise
- Age
- Sex
Emotional Intensity
Some professions require individuals to manage emotions effectively, including:
- Actors
- Trial Lawyers
- Sports Commentators
- Air Traffic Controllers
- Judges
The service industry requires displaying a high level of positive emotions. Displayed emotions (displaying emotions contrary to current feelings) can be stressful.
Affective Events Theory (AET)
AET proposes that:
- The work environment leads to different work events.
- Personality and mood, combined with work events, lead to positive and negative emotions.
- These emotions, in turn, affect job satisfaction and performance.
Key takeaways from AET:
- Emotions provide valuable insights into how workplace hassles and uplifting events influence employee performance and satisfaction.
- Employees and managers shouldn’t ignore emotions or the events that cause them, even when they appear minor, because they can accumulate.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence involves the ability to:
- Perceive emotions in oneself and others.
- Understand the meaning of these emotions.
- Regulate one’s emotions accordingly in a cascading model.
Perception
Definition
Perception is a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions to give meaning to their environment.
Factors Influencing Perception
Perceiver
- Attitudes
- Motives
- Interests
- Experience
- Expectations
Target
- Novelty
- Motion
- Sounds
- Size
- Background
- Proximity
- Similarity
Situation
- Time
- Work Setting
- Social Setting
Attribution Theory
Attribution theory attempts to determine whether an individual’s behavior is internally or externally caused.
Three Factors Considered in Attribution
- Distinctiveness: Whether an individual displays different behaviors in different situations (external attribution if behavior varies across situations).
- Consensus: If everyone facing a similar situation responds in the same way (external attribution if there is high consensus).
- Consistency: Does the person respond the same way over time? (internal attribution if behavior is consistent).
Attribution Errors
Fundamental Attribution Error: When judging others’ behavior, we tend to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal or personal factors.
Self-Serving Bias: The tendency to attribute our successes to internal factors and blame failures on external factors.
Common Shortcuts in Judging Others
- Selective Perception: The perceiver’s characteristics influence what they notice, leading to a biased perception.
- Halo Effect: A prominent positive or negative characteristic of the target influences the overall perception.
- Contrast Effects: Comparing two individuals or situations can exaggerate the differences between them.
- Stereotyping: Judging an individual based on the perceived characteristics of the group they belong to.
Other Decision-Making Biases
- Overconfidence Bias: We tend to be overconfident about our abilities and the abilities of others, often unaware of this bias.
- Anchoring Bias: Overreliance on initial information (first impressions).
- Confirmation Bias: Seeking out information that confirms existing beliefs and ignoring contradictory evidence.
- Availability Bias: Basing judgments on readily available information, even if it’s not representative.
- Escalation of Commitment: Continuing to invest in a failing course of action due to prior investments.
- Randomness Error: Believing we can predict the outcome of random events.
- Risk Aversion: The tendency to avoid risks, even when potential gains outweigh potential losses.
- Hindsight Bias: Believing, after an outcome is known, that we could have predicted it accurately.
Ethical Decision Criteria
Three Ethical Decision Criteria
- Utilitarianism: Making decisions that maximize overall good and minimize harm for the greatest number of people.
- Whistle-blowers: Protecting fundamental rights and ensuring fairness for individuals who report unethical behavior (e.g., protecting whistle-blowers).
- Justice: Designing and applying rules that are fair and impartial to everyone.
Creativity
Definition
Creativity is the ability to produce novel and useful ideas.
Three-Stage Model of Creativity in Organizations
Causes of Creative Behavior
- Creative Potential (individual characteristics)
- Creative Environment (organizational support)
Creative Behavior
- Problem Formulation
- Information Gathering
- Idea Generation
- Idea Evaluation
Creative Outcomes
- Novelty
- Usefulness