Industrial-Organizational Psychology Learning Module

Personality andWork

Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP

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Lesson Objectives

What is meant by “personality.” A brief history of personality theory and research. The elements of the most commonly accepted model of

personality - the Five-Factor Model (“Big Five” or “FFM”). How personality has been shown to affect job performance and

other work-related outcomes. Why and how organizational managers use personality

assessment as a tool in decision-making.

At the end of this lecture, you should understand:

Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP

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What is Personality? Internal perspective: Processes within an individual that

explain why he or she behaves in characteristic ways. Attitudes, emotions, ways of thinking Fairly stable across time and situations Partly inherited

External perspective: How the individual is perceived by others that he or she interacts with (reputation). “She has a great personality!” Shaped by two fundamental motives related to social

interaction Getting along with others (cooperation) Getting ahead of others (competition)

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Personality Theory and Research

Allport: Cardinal and Central Traits

Cattell: Sixteen Personality Factors

Eysenck: Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Psychoticism

Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP

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Personality, Organizations, and the Organization of Personality Early researchers believed the personality-job

performance relationship was weak. Reasons: Comparatively weak analytic techniques. Inappropriate measures (most used psychopathology

inventories, e.g., MMPI). No theoretical framework on which to base research findings. The belief that behavior is determined more by situations

than by traits (Mischel,1968). Research and theoretical innovations that

“rehabilitated” personality in late 80’s, early 90’s. Meta-analysis: A new quantitative method for summarizing

research findings. The Five-Factor Model: A new organizing taxonomy for

personality structure (The Big Five).

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The Five-Factor Model Premise: Personality can be efficiently described with five

relatively independent trait dimensions. Model derived from factor-analytic studies of much larger

sets of traits. Factor analysis: A method for reducing a large set of

data into something interpretable Allport & Odbert (1936): Identified more than 18,000 trait

terms in unabridged dictionary Eventually factor analyzed into five dimensions

Five-factor model reproduced across many cultures and languages (Saucier, Hampson, & Goldberg, 2000).

Research evidence points to the heritability (Rowe, 1997) and stability (Costa & McCrae, 1997) of the FFM.

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The Five-Factor Model The Five Factors and their Characteristics:

Extraversion: Assertive, competitive, positive emotionality, sociable

Agreeableness: Warm, likeable, gentle, cooperative Conscientiousness: Orderly, dependable,

industrious, disciplined Emotional Stability: Relaxed, free from anxiety,

depression, negative emotionality Openness to Experience: Creative, cultured,

intellectual, perceptive

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The Five-Factor Model and Job Performance: Research Findings Summary of meta-analytic findings (Barrick & Mount, 1991):

Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability are the best personality predictors of job performance across nearly all jobs.

Extraversion and Agreeableness are important in jobs requiring a high degree of interpersonal work

Less consistent evidence for Openness to Experience Personality has been shown to predict:

Job performance and results (e.g. $ sales volume) Job satisfaction Training performance Leadership ….and many more important job-related behaviors and

attitudes

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How Does Personality Affect Job Performance?

Theory and research show that Big Five factors impact motivation, which in turn affects performance. For example…

Thus, personality’s effect on performance may be fully or partially (dotted line) mediated by motivation

Conscientiousness

Self-efficacy

Goals

Performance

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Why Should Organizations Test Personality?

Personality predicts aspects of job performance that may not be strongly related to knowledge, skills or abilities. Incremental validity Predicts what a person will do, as opposed to what they

can do. Contextual job performance (Borman & Motowidlo, 1993)

Organizational Citizenship Behaviors: Willingness to “go above and beyond” the call of duty

Unlike other selection tools, little or no evidence of adverse impact (different selection ratios between demographic groups).

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Personality in Selection Decisions: A Case Study

You’ve been hired to design a selection system for customer service workers at McToxic Pizza Step 1: Conduct a thorough Job Analysis

You discover that high-performers are friendly, dependable, and low in imagination

Step 2: Refer worker attributes to a validated model of personality (e.g., the Big Five)

Friendly: Agreeableness; Dependable: Conscientiousness; Unimaginative: (Low) Openness to Experience.

Step 3: Incorporate a personality test as one factor guiding selection decisions

DO NOT base selection decisions solely on a single test score of any kind!!

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Big Five Mini-Marker Exercise

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1. Bashful

15. Harsh

29. Sloppy2. Bold

16. Imaginative

30. Sympathetic3. Careless

17. Inefficient

31. Systematic4. Cold

18. Intellectual

32. Talkative5. Complex

19. Jealous

33. Temperamental6. Cooperative

20. Kind

34. Touchy7. Creative

21. Moody

35. Uncreative8. Deep

22. Organized

36. Unenvious9. Disorganized

23. Philosophical

37. Unintellectual10. Efficient

24. Practical

38. Unsympathetic11. Energetic

25. Quiet

39. Warm12. Envious

26. Relaxed

40. Withdrawn13. Extraverted

27. Rude14. Fretful

28. Shy

1 2 3 4 5Inaccurate Slightly Neither Slightly Accurate

Inaccurate Accurate

How Accurately Can You Describe Yourself?

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Reverse score items:1, 3, 4, 9, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 25, 27, 28, 29,33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40

1 = 52 = 43 = 34 = 25 = 1

Sum items:

1, 2, 11, 13, 25, 28, 32, 40 = Factor I

12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 33, 34, 36 = Factor II

4, 6, 15, 20, 27, 30, 38, 39 = Factor III

3, 9, 10, 17, 22, 24, 29, 31 = Factor IV

5, 7, 8, 16, 18, 23, 35, 37 = Factor V

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1. Bashful

15. Harsh

29. Sloppy2. Bold

16. Imaginative

30. Sympathetic3. Careless

17. Inefficient

31. Systematic4. Cold

18. Intellectual

32. Talkative5. Complex

19. Jealous

33. Temperamental6. Cooperative

20. Kind

34. Touchy7. Creative

21. Moody

35. Uncreative8. Deep

22. Organized

36. Unenvious9. Disorganized

23. Philosophical

37. Unintellectual10. Efficient

24. Practical

38. Unsympathetic11. Energetic

25. Quiet

39. Warm12. Envious

26. Relaxed

40. Withdrawn13. Extraverted

27. Rude14. Fretful

28. Shy

Extraversion (Factor I)

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1. Bashful

15. Harsh

29. Sloppy2. Bold

16. Imaginative

30. Sympathetic3. Careless

17. Inefficient

31. Systematic4. Cold

18. Intellectual

32. Talkative5. Complex

19. Jealous

33. Temperamental6. Cooperative

20. Kind

34. Touchy7. Creative

21. Moody

35. Uncreative8. Deep

22. Organized

36. Unenvious9. Disorganized

23. Philosophical

37. Unintellectual10. Efficient

24. Practical

38. Unsympathetic11. Energetic

25. Quiet

39. Warm12. Envious

26. Relaxed

40. Withdrawn13. Extraverted

27. Rude14. Fretful

28. Shy

Emotional Stability (Factor II)

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1. Bashful

15. Harsh

29. Sloppy2. Bold

16. Imaginative

30. Sympathetic3. Careless

17. Inefficient

31. Systematic4. Cold

18. Intellectual

32. Talkative5. Complex

19. Jealous

33. Temperamental6. Cooperative

20. Kind

34. Touchy7. Creative

21. Moody

35. Uncreative8. Deep

22. Organized

36. Unenvious9. Disorganized

23. Philosophical

37. Unintellectual10. Efficient

24. Practical

38. Unsympathetic11. Energetic

25. Quiet

39. Warm12. Envious

26. Relaxed

40. Withdrawn13. Extraverted

27. Rude14. Fretful

28. Shy

Agreeableness (Factor III)

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1. Bashful

15. Harsh

29. Sloppy2. Bold

16. Imaginative

30. Sympathetic3. Careless

17. Inefficient

31. Systematic4. Cold

18. Intellectual

32. Talkative5. Complex

19. Jealous

33. Temperamental6. Cooperative

20. Kind

34. Touchy7. Creative

21. Moody

35. Uncreative8. Deep

22. Organized

36. Unenvious9. Disorganized

23. Philosophical

37. Unintellectual10. Efficient

24. Practical

38. Unsympathetic11. Energetic

25. Quiet

39. Warm12. Envious

26. Relaxed

40. Withdrawn13. Extraverted

27. Rude14. Fretful

28. Shy

Conscientiousness (Factor IV)

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1. Bashful

15. Harsh

29. Sloppy2. Bold

16. Imaginative

30. Sympathetic3. Careless

17. Inefficient

31. Systematic4. Cold

18. Intellectual

32. Talkative5. Complex

19. Jealous

33. Temperamental6. Cooperative

20. Kind

34. Touchy7. Creative

21. Moody

35. Uncreative8. Deep

22. Organized

36. Unenvious9. Disorganized

23. Philosophical

37. Unintellectual10. Efficient

24. Practical

38. Unsympathetic11. Energetic

25. Quiet

39. Warm12. Envious

26. Relaxed

40. Withdrawn13. Extraverted

27. Rude14. Fretful

28. Shy

Openness to Experience (Factor V)

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Caveats and Future Research Directions

Is the Big Five the best model? It’s a model of personality, not a theory Some research suggests that 3, 7, or 9 factor models best

represent human personality Studies have shown greater predictive validity for finer-grained

facets of personality - measure predictors and criteria at the same level.

Are self-report personality tests accurate? Personality test-takers can distort responses when instructed to

do so Most research suggests that distortion does not undermine

validity of personality tests Again: How does personality affect performance?

Are there other mechanisms besides motivation?

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References General overview

Barrick, M.R., & Ryan, A.M. (Eds.). (2003). Personality and work: Reconsidering the role of personality in organizations. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Roberts, B.W., & Hogan, R. (Eds.). (2001). Personality psychology in the workplace. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Hogan, R. (1991). Personality and personality measurement. In M.D. Dunnette & L.M. Hough (Eds.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (Vol 2). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.

Hogan, R., Hogan, J., & Roberts, B.W. (1996). Personality measurement and employment decisions. American Psychologist, 51, 469-477.

Meta-analyses Barrick, M.R., & Mount, M.K. (1991). The Big Five personality dimensions and job

performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 44, 1-26. Hough, L.M., Eaton, N.L., Dunnette, M.D., Kamp, J.D., & McCloy, R.A. (1990).

Criterion-related validities of personality constructs and the effect of response distortion on those validities. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75, 581-595.

The Five-Factor Model Wiggins, J.S. (Ed.) (1996). The Five-Factor Model of personality. New York:

Guilford. Saucier, G., Hampson, S.E., & Goldberg, L.R. (2000). Cross-language studies of

lexical personality factors. In S.E. Hampson (Ed.), Advances in personality psychology (Vol. 1). Philadelphia: Taylor & Francis.

Costa, P.T., & McCrae, R.R. (1997). Longitudinal stability in adult personality. In R. Hogan, J. Johnson, & S. Briggs (Eds.), Handbook of personality psychology. San Diego: Academic Press.

Rowe, D.C. (1997). Genetics, Temperament, and personality. In R. Hogan, J. Johnson, & S. Briggs (Eds.), Handbook of personality psychology. San Diego: Academic Press.

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References (con’t) Personality, Motivation, and Performance

Kanfer, R., & Ackerman, P.L. (2000). Individual differences in work motivation: Further explorations of a trait framework. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 49, 470-482.

Judge, T.A., & Ilies, R. (2002). Relationship of personality to performance motivation: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 797-807.

Barrick, M.R., Mount, M.K., & Strauss, J.P. (1993). Conscientiousness and performance of sales representatives: Test of the mediating effects of goal-setting. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 715-722.

Contextual Performance/OCB’s Borman, W.C., & Motowidlo, S.J. (1993). Expanding the criterion domain to

include elements of contextual performance. In N. Schmitt & W.C. Borman (Eds.), Personnel selection in organizations. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Alternatives to the Big Five Block, J. (1995). A contrarian view of the five-factor approach to personality

description. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 187-215. Schneider, R.J., Hough, L.M., & Dunnette, M.D. (1996). Broadsided by broad

traits: How to sink science in five dimensions or less. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 17, 639-655.

Incremental validity for facets Stewart, G.L. (1999). Trait bandwidth and stages of job performance: Assessing

differential effects for conscientiousness and its subtraits. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84, 959-968.

Distortion Hough, L.M. (1998). Effects of intentional distortion in personality measurement

and evaluation of suggested palliatives. Human Performance, 11, 209-244.