Personality, Perception and Employee Attitudes
INTRODUCTION
Through this report we discuss the cognitive, personal variables of personality, perception, and employee attitudes towards the organization. These major psychological constructs are very popular ways to describe and analyze what goes into organizational behavior. Yet, like the other cognitively oriented processes, personality, perception, and employee attitudes are quite complex.
First section of the report is defines the concept of personality. Here we explain the personality development and the socialization process. This foundation of understanding of the personality and how and the way of it is developed. Specifically, attention is given to the “BigFive” personality traits that have been found to best relate to performance in organizations and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) based on Carl Jung’s personality theory, which has been a very popular personal development and career assessment tool.
The next sections of the report are focus on two more important cognitive processes, perception and attitudes. After examining the perceptual process and dimensions, a detailed analysis is first made of the dispositions of positive and negative affectivity, the two most widely recognized attitudes to organizational behavior, job satisfaction and organizational commitment.
The remaining part of this report we analyze the case study about “It’s all matter of personality.”
PERSONALITY
Personality is a complex, multi-dimensional construct and there is no simple definition of what personality is.
Personality - All our behavior is somewhat shaped by our personalities. – A dynamic concept describing the growth and development of a person’s whole psychological system. It is the sum total of ways in which an individual reacts and interacts with others. Some aggregate whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
The dynamic organization within an individual of those psychological systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment.
- Personality, according to Fred Luthans, will mean how people affect others and how they understand and view themselves, as well as their pattern of inner and outer measurable traits and the person-situation interaction.
- How people affect others depends on external appearance (height, weight, facial features, color, and other physical aspects) and traits.
PERSONALITY FORMATION
The personality formation of an individual starts at birth and continues throughout his life. Three major types of factors play important roles in personality formation, which are as follows:
Determinants: The most widely studied determinants of personality are biological, social and cultural. An adult’s personality is generally considered to be made up of both hereditary and environmental factors, moderated by situational conditions. People grow up in the presence of certain hereditary characteristics (body shape and height), the social context (family and friends) and the cultural context (religion and values). These three parts interact with each other to shape personality. As people grow into adulthood, their personalities become very clearly defined and generally stable.
- Traits: Traits to personality are also based on psychology. According to some trait theories, all people share common traits, like social, (political, religious and aesthetic preferences but each individual's nature differentiates that person from all others.
THE ROLE OF HEREDITY AND
THE BRAIN
Heredity
Factors that was determined at conception - physical stature, facial attractiveness, gender, temperament, muscle composition and reflexes, energy level, and biological rhythms – biological, physiological and inherent psychological makeup of parents. – The heredity approach says that the ultimate explanation of an individual’s personality is the molecular structure of the genes, located in the chromosomes.
- Research among children support the hereditary theory – shyness, fear, and distress, height, hair colour.
- Research among twins – separated at birth and brought up separately – one set of twins separated 39 yrs ago and raised 45 miles apart were found to drive the same model and color car, chain-smoked the same brand of cigarette, owned dogs with the same name, and regularly vacationed within 3 blocks of each other in a beach community 1500 miles away. Genetics accounts for 50% of the personality differences and more than 30% of the variation in occupational and leisure interests.
- Influenced by Nature (Heredity)
- Heredity explains about 50 percent of behavioral tendencies and 30 percent of temperament
- Minnesota studies – twins had similar behavior patterns
- Influenced by Nurture (Environment)
- Socialization, life experiences, learning also affect personality
- Personality isn’t stable at birth
- Stabilizes throughout adolescence
- Executive function steers using our self-concept as a guide
- A report by the American Psychological Association concludes,
Studies over the past 20 yrs on twins and adopted children have firmly established that there is a genetic component to just about every human trait and behavior, including personality, general intelligence and
behavior disorders.
Many genes are responsible for various aspects of people’s temperament, and those genes appear to interact with each other in complicated ways that influence several traits at once- and then likely only in very subtle ways, with any one gene likely accounting for only 1 or 2% of the variance in trait.
- Individual job satisfaction is found to be stable over time, according to research –Depends on the person and less on external environmental factors.
- If personality were completely dictated by birth, no experience could change it. But personality factors are not completely dictated by heredity.
- The debate should not be nature or nurture, but nature and nurture that contribute to one’s personality.
Role of the brainThe genes also affect brain functions that in turn affect how people interact with their environment and thus their personalities.
Some people, call the brain, “the last frontier” because we still know very little about it, may hold more answers for personality. Both evolutionary psychologists (those that suggest humans evolve and retain not only physically over the ages, but also psychologically) and neuropsychologists (those that explain psychological characteristics primarily through the brain) have traditionally not played a mainstream role in the study and understanding of personality. In recent years, however, they are gaining increasing attention because of rapid advances in their respective fields of study. Evolutionary psychologists are suggesting that humans may be “hardwired” from distant previous generations. As was noted in a Harvard Business Review article:
Although human beings today inhabit a thoroughly modern world of space exploration and virtual realities, they do so with the ingrained mentality of Stone Age hunter-gatherers . . . an instinct to fight furiously when threatened, for instance, and a drive to trade information and share secrets. Human beings are, in other words, hardwired. You can take the person out of the Stone Age, but you can’t take the Stone Age out of the person.
There is also a recent position being taken on what is called social evolution. This suggests that humanity is evolving along the lines of social phenomena such as trust, collaboration, and competition. This social evolutionary process is explained as follows:
People who are related collaborate on the basis of nepotism. It takes outrageous profit or provocation for someone to do down a relative with whom they share a lot of genes. Trust, though, allows the unrelated to collaborate, by keeping score of who does what when, and punishing cheats. . . . The human mind, however, seems to have evolved the trick of being able to identify a large number of individuals and to keep score of relations with them . . .
And also the Wall Street Journal even reported a study that indicated those with brain damage impairing their ability to experience emotion made better financial decisions than normal players in a simple investment game. It seems that the emotional brain damaged (but normal IQ) participants were more willing to take risks that yielded high payoffs and less likely to react emotionally to losses. They finished the game with significantly more money than the other players. There is also work being done on linking areas of the brain to specific organizational behaviors (e.g., the nucleus accumbens part of the brain responds to money much the way it reacts to sex or cocaine; money is valued for itself and not just for what it can purchase). Other examples include neuroscientific explanations for why employees resist change (i.e., change taps fear receptors in the brain and taxes the brain’s cognitive capacity to learn new ways of doing things) and beginning research evidence that leaders with high levels of psychological capital (i.e., confidence, hope, optimism, and resiliency etc.) have different brain activity on a vision task exercise than do those with low psychological capital.
Although not without criticism, there is little question that major inroads are being made in the role that genetics and the brain play both in organizational behavior in general and personality in particular. However, at present the field of psychology as a whole and organizational behavior itself is still dominated by the developmental, “soft” or nurture side, which is also making significant advances in understanding and application. For example, five personality traits (the so-called Big Five) have emerged from research as being especially related to job performance. These specific traits will be given detailed attention after the more theoretical foundation components of personality of self-esteem, person-situation interaction, and socialization are discussed.
Environment
- Culture in which one is raised, early conditioning, the norms among our family, friends, social groups, and other influences we experience.
- Both heredity and environment are important. Heredity sets the parameters or outer limits, but an individual’s full potential will be determined by how well he or she adjusts tot eh demands and requirements of the environment.
Self-Esteem
Self-Esteem (SE) - Individuals’ degree of liking or disliking themselves.- people’s self perceived competence and self-image.
- Self esteem is directly related to expectations of success – high SEs believes they have the ability to succeed at work. – take more risks at job, choose unconventional jobs. High SEs is more satisfied with their jobs.
- Low SEs are more susceptible to external influences- depend on positive evaluation from others – seek approval from others, conform to beliefs and behaviors of those they respect – concerned with pleasing others. They compliment individuals who give them positive feedback and cut down those who give negative feedback. Those with low self-esteem tend to view themselves in negative terms. They do not feel good about them, tend to have trouble in dealing effectively with others, and are hampered by self-doubts.
- High esteem can be a good thing, but only if it is nurtured and channeled in constructive and ethical ways. Otherwise it can become — antisocial and destructive. Others may treat it as boasting as egotistical. OBSE, Organization Based Self Esteem is “the self-perceived value that individuals have of themselves as organisation members acting within an organisation context.” people with high OBSE view themselves positively. And a Meta analysis found significant positive relationship with performance and satisfaction on the job.
Managers can build employee self-esteem in four ways:
- Be supportive by showing concern for personal problems, interests, status and contribution.
- Offer work involving variety, autonomy and challenges that suit the individual's values, skills and abilities.
- Strive for management-employee cohesiveness and trust building.
- Have faith in each employee's self-management ability, reward successes.
Person – Situation Interaction
Influences the effects of environment on personality, which changes in different situations. Certain situations are more significant than others.
And also the dimensions of enduring traits and the self-concept add to the understanding of the human personality. The person-situation interaction dimension of personality provides further understanding. Each situation, of course, is different. The differences may seem to be very small on the surface, but when filtered by the person’s cognitive mediating processes such as perception (covered next), they can lead to quite large subjective differences and diverse behavioral outcomes. In particular, this dimension suggests that people are not static, acting the same in all situations, but instead are ever changing and flexible. For example, employees can change depending on the particular situation they are in interaction with. For instance, it should be understood that even everyday work experience can change people. Especially today, with organizations transforming and facing a turbulent environment, those that can find, develop, and retain people who can fit into this dynamically changing situation will be most successful. Specifically, there is evidence that the employee’s personality will influence interpersonal behavior and the perception and the outcomes of organizational support. The next section dealing with the socialization process is especially relevant to today’s important person-organization interaction.
The Socialization Process
Socialization starts with the initial contact between a mother and her new infant. After infancy, other members of the immediate family (father, brothers, and sisters), close relatives and family friends, and then the social group (peers, school friends, and members of the work group) play influential roles. As the accompanying OB in Action:
Using Information Technologies to Nurture Relationships indicates, the way these socialization processes are being done is changing, but the impact is still dramatic. However, of particular interest to the study of organizational behavior is Schein’s idea that the organization itself also contributes to socialization.36 He points out that the process includes the learning of those values, norms, and behavior patterns that, from the organization’s and the work group’s points of view, are necessary for any new organization member.
Specific techniques of socializing new employees would include the use of mentors or role models, orientation and training programs, reward systems, and career planning. Specific steps that can lead to successful organizational socialization would include the following:
- Provide a challenging first job
- Provide relevant training
- Provide timely and consistent feedback
- Select a good first supervisor to be in charge of socialization
- Design a relaxed orientation program
- Place new recruits in work groups with high morale
The Big Five Model of Personality Dimensions
The 5 basic dimensions underlie all others and encompass most of the significant variations in human personality. The Big Five factors are:
Ø Extroversion
(extraversion)
o
Sociable, gregarious,
and assertive
o
A personality dimension
describing someone who is sociable, gregarious, and assertive. – One’s comfort
level with relationships. Introverts tend to be reserved, timid, and quiet.
Ø Agreeableness
o
Good-natured,
cooperative, and trusting.
o
Describes someone who
is good natured, cooperative, warm and trusting. People who score low on
agreeableness are cold, disagreeable, and antagonistic.
Ø Conscientiousness
o
Responsible,
dependable, persistent, and organized.
o
Responsible,
hard-working, dependable, persistent, and organized– Those who score low on
this dimension are easily distracted, lazy, disorganized, and unreliable.
Ø Emotional
Stability
o
Calm, self-confident,
secure (positive) versus nervous, depressed, and insecure (negative).
o Tests
a person’s ability to withstand stress. –calm, self-confident, cool, and secure
(positive) versus nervous, anxious, depressed, and insecure (negative) .
Ø Openness
to Experience
o
Imaginativeness,
artistic, sensitivity, and intellectualism, curiosity.
o Range
of interests and fascination with novelty, imagination, artistic sensitivity,
cultured, curiosity, and creativity. Those at the other end are conventional
and find comfort in the familiar- practical with narrow interests.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
The (MBTI) assessment is a psychomatic questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. A personality test that taps four characteristics and classifies people into 1 of 16 personality types - This methd is developed by Carl Jung.
Jung proposed the existence of two dichotomous pairs of cognitive functions:
The ratinal (judging) functions: thinking and feeling
The irrational (perceiving) functions: sensing and intuition
The MBTI sorts some of these psychological differences into four opposite pairs, or dichotomies, with a resulting 16 possible psychological types. None of these types are better or worse; however, Briggs and Myers theorized that individuals naturally prefer one overall combination of type differences. In the same way that writing with the left hand is hard work for a right-hander, so people tend to find using their opposite psychological preferences more difficult, even if they can become more proficient (and therefore behaviorally flexible) with practice and development.
The 16 types are typically referred to by an abbreviation of four letters—the initial letters of each of their four type preferences (except in the case of intuition, which uses the abbreviation N to distinguish it from Introversion). For instance:
- ESTJ: extraversion (E), sensing (S), thinking (T), judgment (J)
- INFP: introversion (I), intuition (N), feeling (F), perception (P)
e.g., INTJs are visionaries – have original minds and great drive for their own ideas and purposes – skeptical, critical, independent, determined, and often stubborn.
- ESTJs are organizers – realistic, logical, analytical, and decisive and have a natural head for business or mechanics. They like to organize and run activities.
- ENTPs are conceptualizes – innovative, individualistic, versatile, and attracted to entrepreneurial ideas. – Resourceful in solving challenging problems but may neglect routine assignments.
The following figure shows the Jung theory dimensions and the Myers –Brigger Type indicators.
PERCEPTION
Perception is the way in which how you interpret your sensory feelings towards people, object or events and it is to recognize that is a unique interpretation of the situation, not an exact recording of it. On the other hand perception is a very complex cognitive process that yields unique picture of the world, a picture that may be quite different from the reality.
Perception is an important mediating cognitive process. Through this complex process, people make interpretations of the stimulus or situation they are faced with. Both selectivity and organization go 'into perceptual, interpretations. Externally, selectivity is affected by intensity, size, contrast, repetition, motion and novelty and familiarity. Internally, perceptual selectivity is influenced by the individual's motivation, learning and personality. After the selective process filters the stimulus situation, the incoming information is organized into a meaningful whole.
Individual differences and uniqueness are largely the result of the cognitive processes. Although there are a number of cognitive processes, it is generally recognized that the perceptual process is a very important one. It is a process that takes place between the situation and the behavior and is most relevant to the study of organizational behavior. For example, the observation that a department head and a subordinate may react quite differently to the same top management directive can be better understood and explained by the perceptual process.
In the process of perception, people receive many different kinds of information through all five senses, assimilate them and then interpret them. Different people perceive the same information differently.
Perception plays a key role in determining individual behavior in organizations. Organizations send messages in a variety of forms to their members regarding what they are expected to do and not to do. In spite of organizations sending clear messages, those messages are subject to distortion in the process of being perceived by organizational members. Hence, managers need to have a general understanding of the basic perceptual process.
SENSATION VS PERCEPTION
Perception is more complex and much broader than sensation. The perceptual process or filter can be defined as a complicated interaction of selection, organization, and interpretation.
The starting point in the study of perception should clarify the relationship between perception and sensation. Physical senses are considered to be vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. The five senses are constantly bombarded by numerous stimuli that are both outside and inside the body.
Followings are the Examples that point out the difference between sensation and perception.
- The same team member may be viewed by one colleague as a very hard worker and by another as a slacker.
- The same product may be viewed by the design team to be of high quality and by a customer to be of low quality.
- The division manager purchases a program that she thinks is best, not the program that the software engineer says is best.
- An associate’s answer to a question is based on what he heard the boss say, not on what the boss actually said.
SOCIAL PERCEPTION
Characteristics of Perceiver and Perceived
- Knowing oneself makes it easier to see others accurately.
- One’s own characteristics affect the characteristics one is likely to see in others.
- People who accept themselves are more likely to be able to see favorable aspects of other people.
- Accuracy in perceiving others is not a single skill.
Followings are the characteristics of the perceived.
- The status of the person perceived will greatly influence others’ perception of the person.
- The person being perceived is usually placed into categories to simplify the viewer’s perceptual activities.
Stereotyping
Stereotyping is the process of categorizing or labeling people on the basis of a single attribute. Perceptions based on stereotypes about people's sex exist more or less in all work places. Typically, these perceptions lead to the belief that an individual's sex determines which tasks he or she will be able to perform. For example, if a woman is sitting behind the table in the office, she will be very often, perceived as a clerk and not an executive at first. But it would induce holding an exactly opposite assumption about a man. Stereotyping consists of three steps: identifying categories of people (like women, politician), associating certain characteristics with those categories (like passivity, dishonesty respectively) and then assuming that anyone who fits a certain category must have those characteristics. For example, if dishonesty is associated with politicians, we are likely to assume that all politicians are dishonest.
The Halo Effect
The halo effect in social perception is very similar to stereotyping. Whereas in stereotyping the person is perceived according to a single category, under the halo effect the person is perceived on the basis of one trait.
Halo is often discussed in performance appraisal when a rater makes an error in judging a person’s total personality and/or performance on the basis of a single positive trait such as intelligence, appearance, dependability, or cooperativeness. Whatever the single trait is, it may override all other traits in forming the perception of the person. For example, a person’s physical appearance or dress may override all other characteristics in making a selection decision or in appraising the person’s performance. The opposite is sometimes called the “horns effect” where an individual is downgraded because of a single negative characteristic or incident.
The halo effect problem has been given considerable attention in research on performance appraisal. For example, a comprehensive review of the performance appraisal literature found that halo effect was the dependent variable in over a third of the studies and was found to be a major problem affecting appraisal accuracy.84 The current thinking on the halo effect can be summarized from the extensive research literature as follows:
- It is a common rater error.
- It has both true and illusory components.
- It has led to inflated correlations among rating dimensions and is due to the influence of a general evaluation and specific judgments.
- It has negative consequences and should be avoided or removed.
ATTITUDES
Attitude is the combination of beliefs and feelings that people have about specific ideas, situations or other people. Attitude is important because it is the mechanism through which most people express their feelings.
WORK-RELATED
ATTITUDES
People in an organization form attitude about many things such as about their salary, promotion possibilities, superiors, fringe benefits, food in the canteen, uniform etc. Especially some important attitudes are relating to job satisfaction or dissatisfaction, organizational commitment and job involvement.
In particular, the dispositions of positive affectivity (PA) and negative affectivity (NA) have been found to be important antecedents to attitudes about one’s job. NA reflects a personality disposition to experience negative emotional states; those with high NA tend to feel nervous, tense, anxious, worried, upset, and distressed.
Accordingly, those with high NA are more likely to experience negative affective states—they are more likely to have a negative attitude toward themselves, others, and the world around them.
Those with high Positive Affectivity (PA) have the opposite disposition and tend to have an overall sense of well-being, to see them as pleasurably and effectively engaged, and to experience positive attitudes.
Job
Satisfaction
Job satisfaction is an attitude reflects the extent to which an individual is gratified or fulfilled by his or her work. Extensive research conducted on job satisfaction has indicated that personal .factors such as an individual's needs and aspirations determine this attitude, along with group and organizational factors such as relationships with co-workers and supervisors, working conditions, work policies and compensation.
A satisfied employee also tends to be absent less often, makes positive contributions, and stays with the organization. In contrast, a dissatisfied employee may be absent more often may experience stress that disrupts co-workers, and may keep continually look for another job.
Organizational factors that influence employee satisfaction include pay, promotion, policies and procedures of the organizations and working conditions. Group factors such as relationship with co-workers and supervisors also influence job- satisfaction. Similarly, satisfaction depends on individual factors like individual's needs and aspirations. If employees are satisfied with their job, it may lead to low employee turnover and less absenteeism and vice-versa.
There are three generally accepted dimensions to job satisfaction.
- Emotional response to a job satisfaction.
- Job satisfaction is often determined by how well outcomes meet or exceed expectations.
- Job satisfaction represents several related attitudes.
Five job dimensions have been identified to represent the most important characteristics of a job about which employees have affective responses. These are:
- The work itself - The extent to which the job provides the individual with interesting tasks, opportunities for learning, and the chance to accept responsibility
- Pay - The amount of financial remuneration that is received and the degree to which this is viewed as equitable vis-á-vis that of others in the organization.
- Promotion opportunities - The chances for advancement in the organization
- Supervision - The abilities of the supervisor to provide technical assistance and behavioral support
- Coworkers - The degree to which fellow workers are technically proficient and socially supportive.
Influences on Job Satisfaction
- Mental challenge in the work itself
- Pay – Wages and salaries are recognized to be a significant but cognitively complex. Money not only helps people to attain their basic needs but is also instrumental in providing upper-level need satisfaction.
- Promotions – Promotional opportunities seem to have a varying effect on job satisfaction. This is because promotions take a number of different forms and have a variety of accompanying rewards.
- Supervision – There are 2 dimensions of supervisory style that affect job satisfaction. One is employee-centered-ness which is measured by the degree to which a supervisor takes a personal interest and cares about the employees. The second is participation or influence, as illustrated by managers who allow their people to participate in decisions that affect their own jobs.
- Work Group – Friendly cooperative co-workers or team members are modest source of job satisfaction to individual employees. Especially a “tight – team” serves as a source of support, comfort, advice and assistance to the individual members.
- Working Conditions – If the working conditions are good (clean, attractive surroundings etc.), the personnel will find it easier to carry out their jobs. If the working conditions are poor (hot, noisy surroundings) personnel will find it more difficult to get things done.
Outcomes of Job Satisfaction
- Satisfaction and Performance
- Satisfaction and Turnover
- Satisfaction and Absenteeism
- Other Effects and Ways to Enhance Satisfaction
- Make job more fun
- Have fair pay, benefits, and promotion opportunities
- Match people with jobs that fit their interests and skills.
- Design jobs to make them exciting and satisfying
ORGANIZATIONAL
COMMITMENT AND INVOLVEMENT
Two other important work-related attitudes are organizational commitment and involvement. Organizational commitment is the individual's feeling of identification with and attachment to an organization. Involvement refers to a person's willingness to be a team member and work beyond the usual standards of the job. An employee with little involvement is motivated by extrinsic motivational factor and an employee with strong involvement is motivated by intrinsic motivational factors.
There are a number of factors that lead to commitment and involvement. Both may increase with an employee's age and years with the organization, with his sense of job security and participation in decision-making. If the organization treats its employees fairly and provides reasonable rewards and job security, employees are more likely to be satisfied and committed. Involving employees in decision-making can also help to increase commitment. In particular, designing jobs, which are interesting and stimulating, can enhance job involvement.
REFERENCE
Organizational Behavior by Fred Luthans 12th Edition Chapter 05 “Personality, perception and employee attitudes”
