THE NATURE OF
PERSONALITY

To recapitulate: at present, there is little
disagreement over the fact that people differ
from one another in important ways, and some
of these differences, at least, are stable over
time.
Considerably
greater
controversy
persists, however, over another issue: what are
the origins of such differences? In other words,
to what extent personality learned, and to what
extent does it reflect the operation of genetic
factors?
For each item below, indicate whether you feel that choice (a) or choice (b) is
closer to your own beliefs.
1. (a) I am the master of my fate
(b) A great deal of what happens to me is probably a matter of
choice
2. (a) Promotion are earned through hard work and persistence
(b) Making a lot of money is largely a matter of getting the right breaks
3. (a) People like me can change the course of world affairs if we make ourselves
heard
(b) It is only wishful thinking to believe that we can really influence what
happens is society at large
4. (a) In my experience, I have noticed that there is usually a direct connection
between how hard I study and the grade I get
(b) Many times the reactions of professors seem haphazard to me
5. (a) getting along with people is a skill that must be practiced
(b) It is almost impossible to figure out how to please some people
Component of social skills:
 Emotional expressivity
 Emotional sensitivity
 Emotional control
 Social expressivity
 Social sensitivity
 Social control
Self-monitoring are person who seem place
aware of or concerned with their impact on
other
Self-monitoring appears to be related
performance in other tasks or roles
to
Self-monitoring is also related to certain
aspects of organizational conflict
Self-efficiency, belief in one’s capability to
perform a specific task
Feeling of self-efficiency influence the difficulty
of goals chosen by individual
Self-efficiency may moderate
various types of feedback
reactions
to
Self-esteem, the extent to which people hold
positive or negative views about themselves
Considerable evidence indicates that they do
have 3 points
Relates to the strength of individuals desire to
excel- to succeed at difficult tasks and do
them better than anyone else
Person high in such motivation show several
consistent tendencies:
1. They’re task-oriented in outlook
2. They tend to prefer situations involving
moderate levels of risk
These consist of a series of question or
statements to which individuals respond in
various ways
Projective techniques assume that if different
persons are expose to ambiguous stimuli,
each will report something different
The pattern of these differences, in turn, will
reveal much about important aspects of
personality
Some measures of personality
reliability and validity
are
doubtful
Even when measures of personality are both
reliable and valid, relationships between the
traits they assess and organizational behavior are
often complex
When using information about personality, it’s all
too easy to fall into the trap of allowing the
labels we assign to specific persons to influence
our perceptions of them



The Nature of Personality. Personality refers to the unique
but stable set of characteristics and behaviors than set
each individual apart from others. It is influenced by
genetic factors as well by experience, and plays an
important role in several aspects of organizational
behavior
Work-Related Aspects of Personality. Self-monitoring are
expressive , concerned with making good impression on
others, and can adapt their behavior to match
requirements of a given situation. Self-efficiency react to
negative feed back by increasing their effort and
motivation. Several personal motives (achievement, power,
and affiliation motivation) are relevant to organizational
behavior.
Measuring Personality. Personality is often assessed by
means of inventories and questionnaires in which
individuals answer various questions about themselves. It
is sometimes also measured by means of projective
techniques. Finally, personality (and many other individual
differences) can be measured in assessment centers.