Individual Differences and Personality

Individual Differences

• People differ in their personality, abilities, emotions, and attitudes.
• Individual differences play a role in understanding human behavior, impacting job performance, and organizational effectiveness.
• The interactionist framework suggests that behavior is influenced by both individual predispositions and the environment.
• Situational strength refers to the degree to which situations pressure individuals to behave in a certain way (e.g., a classroom versus a sales job). Strong situations lead people to respond similarly; weak situations offer more leeway for interpretation.

Personality

• Personality refers to relatively enduring ways in which people think, act, and feel.
• There is no universally "good" or "bad" personality profile.
• Personality influences behavior. However, not all behavior is caused by personality.
• There are several dimensions of personality, a notable model being the Big Five (Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism).

The Big Five

• Openness to Experience: A tendency to seek out new experiences, reflecting intellect and creativity.
• Conscientiousness: A tendency to be hardworking, organized, and dependable. This trait is often a strong predictor of job performance across various roles.
• Extraversion: A tendency to be gregarious, sociable, and assertive. This trait is frequently tied to success in sales roles.
• Agreeableness: A tendency to be warm, amenable, and cooperative, often correlating positively with customer service performance.
• Neuroticism: A tendency toward insecurity, anxiety, and nervousness.

Dark Triad

• The Dark Triad comprises three traits—Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism.
• These traits are associated with callous, selfish, and sometimes malevolent behavior in social interactions.
• High scores on Dark Triad traits are linked with counterproductive workplace behaviors.
• However, moderate narcissism can predict effective leadership

Core Self-Evaluations

• Self-esteem: This is a person's general self-worth.
• Generalized self-efficacy: This reflects a person's confidence in their ability to perform across various tasks and situations.
• Locus of control: This refers to the degree to which a person believes they control their life's events.
• Emotional stability: This encompasses a person’s sense of confidence, security, and positive self-view.

Emotions and Moods

• Emotions: Short-lived, intense feelings (e.g., anger, fear) typically reactions to environmental events.
• Moods: Longer-lasting, less intense feelings (e.g., happiness, sadness) that do not always stem from a specific event.

Positive and Negative Affectivity

• Positive affectivity: A general mood characterized by pleasurable engagement with the environment. Linked to increased creativity, cooperation, and reduced work-family conflict.
• Negative affectivity: A general mood characterized by distress and unpleasant engagement with surroundings. Often associated with counterproductive workplace behaviors, conflict, and decreased job performance.

Abilities

• Abilities are stable capacities enabling performance. These differ from skills, which are performed behaviors with consistent results.
• Abilities can be categorized as cognitive, physical, and emotional.

Cognitive Ability

• General Mental Ability (GMA) is a person's capability to learn and acquire cognitive skills (e.g., spatial visualization, mathematical computation).
• The complexity of a job directly impacts the importance of GMA, as more complex roles often benefit from higher GMA.
• GMA frequently predicts job success.

Emotional Intelligence (EI)

• Emotional intelligence involves accurately identifying emotions and managing them effectively.
• Key aspects of EI include emotion perception, emotion understanding, and emotion regulation. Assessing and evaluating one's own emotional awareness is critical.

Job Attitudes

• Job attitudes represent appraisals and evaluations of a job encompassing feelings and beliefs about the role and workplace events.
• Examples:
  • Job satisfaction
  • Organizational commitment
  • Organizational cynicism

Job Satisfaction

• A global assessment of one's work role.
• Only moderately associated with happiness.
• Predicts job performance, particularly in complex roles.
• Often associated with increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Organizational Commitment

• Represents the extent to which employees identify with their organization.
• Types include affective, normative, and continuance commitment.

Organizational Cynicism

• Characterized by contempt, frustration, and distrust toward aspects of the organization.
• Often, a loss of faith in management's ability to perform effectively.
• Related to decreases in job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and trust.

Self-Awareness

• The skill to accurately assess one's own behaviors and skills.
• People often have poor self-evaluation.
• A strong relationship exists between skill proficiency and the ability to accurately judge the skill's degree of proficiency.

Feedback

• Feedback is a vital tool for enhancing self-awareness.
• Crucial to develop self-awareness by pushing beyond comfort zones, obtaining meaningful external feedback, understanding that self-awareness is a process, not an event, and not acting on everything at once simultaneously.