4e
Nelson/Quick
Chapter 3
Personality,
Perception,
and
Attribution
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Learning Outcomes
 Describe individual differences and explain why
they are important in understanding organizational
behavior
 Articulate key personality traits and explain how
they influence behavior in organizations
 Discuss how personality theories may be applied in
organizations
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Learning Outcomes
 Define social perception and explain the factors that
affect it
 Identify five common barriers to social perception
and explain the difficulties they cause
 Explain the attribution process and how attributions
affect managerial behavior
©2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Learning Outcome
Describe individual differences and explain
why they are important in understanding
organizational behavior
©2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Individual Differences
 Way in which certain factors differ from one
individual to another
 Interactional psychology: Understanding human
behavior by knowing something about the person
and the situation
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Propositions of Interactional
Psychology
 Behavior is a function of continuous,
multidirectional interaction between the person
and the situation
 Person changes situation and is changed by them
 People vary in many characteristics, including
cognitive, affective, motivational and ability factors
 Aspects of a situation that are important are the
objective situation and the person’s subjective view
of the situation
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Figure 3.1 - Variables Influencing
Individual Behavior
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Learning Outcome
Articulate key personality traits and explain
how they influence behavior in organizations
©2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Personality
 Relatively stable set of characteristics that
influences an individual’s behavior and lend it
consistency
 Probable origins
 Heredity
 Environmental factors
 Family, cultural, and educational influences
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Personality Theories
 Trait theory: Breaking down behavior patterns into
a series of observable traits in order to understand
human behavior
 Integrative approach: Describes personality as a
composite of one’s psychological processes
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Table 3.1 - The Big Five Personality
Traits
SOURCES: P. T. Costa and R. R. McCrae, The NEO-PI Personality Inventory (Odessa, Fla.: Psychological Assessment Resources, 1992); J. F. Salgado, “The
Five Factor Model of Personality and Job Performance in the European Community,” Journal of Applied Psychology 82 (1997): 30–43.
©2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Personality Characteristics in
Organizations
 Strong situation: Overwhelms the effects of
individual personalities by providing strong cues for
appropriate behavior
 Weak situation - Provides no cues to appropriate
behavior and no rewards for any particular behavior
 Locus of control: Individual’s generalized belief
about internal control versus external control
 Internal control - Self-control
 External control - Control by the situation or by
others
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Beyond the Book:
What’s Your Locus of Control?
 Choose A or B for each item:
 1. a. Becoming a success is a matter of hard work; luck has
little or nothing to do with it.
 b. Getting a good job depends mainly on being in the right
place at the right time.
 2. a. The average citizen can have an influence in government
decisions.
 b. This world is run by the few people in power, and there
is not much the little guy can do about it.
 3. a. As far as world affairs are concerned, most of us are the
victims of forces we can neither understand nor control.
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Beyond the Book:
What’s Your Locus of Control?
 b. By taking an active part in political and social
affairs, people can control world events.
 4. a. With enough effort we can wipe out political corruption.
 b. It is difficult for people to have much control over the
things politicians do in office.
 Scoring Key:
 The internal locus of control answers are: 1a, 2a, 3b, 4a
 The external locus of control answers are: 1b, 2b, 3a, 4b
©2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Personality Characteristics
in Organizations
 General self-efficacy: Person’s general belief that he
or she is capable of meeting job demands in a wide
variety of situations
 High - Employees are confident in job-related
abilities
 Low - Employees feel ineffective at work
 Task-specific self-efficacy - Person’s belief that she
or he can perform a specific task
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Self-Esteem
 Individual’s general feeling of self-worth
People with high selfesteem
People with low selfesteem
• Have positive feelings about
themselves
• Believe their strengths are
more important than their
weaknesses
• Perform better and are
more satisfied with their
jobs
• View themselves negatively
• Get affected by what other
people think of them
• Compliment those who give
them positive feedback and
cut down people who give
them negative feedback
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Self-Monitoring
 Extent to which people base their behavior on cues
from other people and situations
High self-monitors
• Pay attention to the behavior
of other people and behave
accordingly
• Appear unpredictable and less
consistent
• Demonstrate higher levels of
managerial self-awareness
Low self-monitors
• Pay less attention to
situational cues and act from
internal states
• Behave consistently across
situations
• Less likely to respond to work
group norms or supervisory
feedback
©2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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The Role of Affect
Positive affect
• Individual’s tendency to accentuate the positive
aspects of herself or himself, other people, and the
world in general
Negative affect
• Individual’s tendency to accentuate the negative
aspects of himself or herself, other people, and the
world in general
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Proactive Personality
 Identify opportunities and act on them
 Show initiative, take action, and persevere till the
desired objective is achieved
 Positively related to job performance, career
success, and job search success
©2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Learning Outcome
Discuss how personality theories may be
applied in organizations
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Four Measures of Personality
Projective test
• Elicits an individual’s response to abstract stimuli
Behavioral measures
• Involve observing an individual’s behavior in a controlled
situation
Self-report questionnaire
• Involves an individual’s responses to a series of questions
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI) instrument
• Measures Carl Jung’s theory of individual differences
©2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Table 3.2 - Type Theory Preferences
and Descriptions
SOURCE: Modified and reproduced by special permission of the Publisher, CPP, Inc., Mountain View, CA 94043 from Introduction to Type®, Sixth Edition by Isabel
Briggs Myers. Copyright 1998, 2011 by CPP, Inc. All rights reserved. Further reproduction is prohibited without the Publisher’s written consent.
©2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Table 3.2 - Type Theory Preferences
and Descriptions
SOURCE: Modified and reproduced by special permission of the Publisher, CPP, Inc., Mountain View, CA 94043 from Introduction to Type®, Sixth Edition by Isabel
Briggs Myers. Copyright 1998, 2011 by CPP, Inc. All rights reserved. Further reproduction is prohibited without the Publisher’s written consent.
©2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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MBTI Scales
ISTJ
ISFJ
INFJ
INTJ
ISTP
ISFP
INFP
INTP
ESTP
ESFP
ENFP
ENTP
ESTJ
ESFJ
ENFJ
ENTJ
Introverts
Extraverts
Sensing Types
Intuitive Types
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Uses of MBTI
 Helps employees understand the different
viewpoints of others in the organization
 Facilitates team building
 Shows teams that diversity and differences lead to
successful performance
 Helps managers develop interpersonal skills
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Learning Outcome
Define social perception and explain the
factors that affect it
©2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Social Perception
 Process of interpreting information about another
person
 Discounting principle: Assumption that an
individual’s behavior is accounted for by the
situation
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Figure 3.2 - A Model for Social
Perception
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Beyond the Book:
Synesthesia: Unusual Perception
Synesthesia is a rare perceptual condition in which one
sensory perception triggers another—for example,
music evokes colors or smells.
How quickly can you spot the 2’s
in the picture to the right?
The task is effortless for “synesthetes,”
who perceive the 2’s as a different color
from the 5’s.
©2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Learning Outcome
Identify the common barriers to social
perception and explain the difficulties they
cause
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Barriers to Social Perception
Selective perception
• Selecting information that supports our individual viewpoints
while discounting information that threatens our viewpoints
Stereotype
• Generalization about a group of people
First-impression error
• Forming lasting opinions about an individual based on initial
perceptions
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Barriers to Social Perception
Projection
• Overestimating the number of people who share our own
beliefs, values, and behaviors
Self-fulfilling prophecy
• Allowing expectations about people to affect our interaction
with them in such a way that those expectations are fulfilled
Impression management
• Process by which individuals try to control the impressions
others have of them
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Beyond the Book:
Racial Stereotypes in Hiring
 Despite decades of progress in race relations,
discrimination against non-white workers is a harsh
reality
 In a study of the low-wage labor market in New York
city, researchers found that white applicants were twice
as more likely to receive a job offer than equallyqualified black counterparts
 The study also showed that white individuals just
released from prison were just as likely to receive a job
offer as blacks or Latinos with no criminal background
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33
Learning Outcome
Explain the attribution process and how
attributions affect managerial behavior
©2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Attribution Theory
 Explains how individuals pinpoint the causes of their
own and others’ behavior
 Internal source - Something within the individual’s
control
 External source - Something outside the individual’s
control
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Attribution Biases
 Fundamental attribution error
 Tendency to make attributions to internal causes
when focusing on someone else’s behavior
 Self-serving bias
 Attributing one’s successes to internal causes and
one’s failures to external causes
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Because I Said So
 Which Big Five personality traits best describe Daphne?
Give examples of behavior from the film scene to
support your observations.
 Which Big Five personality traits best describe Millie?
Give examples of behavior from the film scene to
support your observations.
 Review the discussion of the “Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator® instrument” in this chapter. Assess both
Daphne and Millie with the content of Table 3.3,
“Characteristics Frequently Associated with Each Type.”
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Theo Chocolate
 Describe the personality traits of Theo Chocolate’s
founders.
 What is your perception of CEO Joe Whinney? On
what do you base your perception?
 To what do you attribute Joe Whinney’s success?
©2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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