GEN 1017AEF Psychology of Work and Internship Preparation Lecture 2&3 PDF

GEN 1017AEF Psychology of Work and Internship Preparation Lecture 2&3 Individual differences and diversity Personality 2   The word “personality” is derived from the word “persona”...

GEN 1017AEF Psychology of Work and Internship Preparation Lecture 2&3 Individual differences and diversity Personality 2   The word “personality” is derived from the word “persona”  Refers to theatrical masks worn by Greek actors  Personality refers to enduring, inner characteristics of individuals who organize their behavior Definition of  Can be summarized in 2 major themes: 1. Originates from the perspective of an observer and personality involves a person’s public presence and social reputation (the outer aspects) 2. Refers to the inner self of a person  The deep and enduring structures of a person that form the central core of the self  Measurement of personality is complicated as these 2 perspectives are not easily integrated 3  Human behavior is characterized by consistent patterns of behavior known as traits, factors, dimensions, or types History of 2 paradigms of trait theories personality  Ideographic (uniqueness): theory and  Believes that every human being has their own unique set of traits research  Nomothetic (commonness):  Believes that the exact same set of traits exists within each person, but they differ from each other in the way and intensity that each trait is manifested 4 Cattell’s (1965) Sixteen Personality Questionnaire (16PF)  He generated an original list of trait names, and used factor analysis to identify 16 core personality traits and developed this well-known personality assessment questionnaire Cross-cultural studies on personality characteristics:  The etic approach focuses on “universals” among all humans  The emic approach focus on culture-specific dimensions  Focusing largely on specific values and tendencies of only the Western culture may lead to omission of some universal constructs and indigenous patterns of each culture 5  Personality traits measured by the 16PF (Conn & Rieke, 1994): Factor Description Warmth (A) Warm, outgoing, attentive to others, kindly, easygoing, participating, likes people Reasoning (B) Abstract-thinking, more intelligent, bright, higher general mental capacity, fast-learner Emotional Stability (C) Emotionally stable, adaptive, mature, faces reality calmly Dominance (E) Dominant, forceful, assertive, aggressive, competitive, stubborn, bossy Liveliness (F) Lively, animated, spontaneous, enthusiastic, happy-go-lucky, cheerful, expressive, impulsive Rule-consciousness (G) Rule-conscious, dutiful, conscientious, conforming, moralistic, staid, rule-bound Social Boldness (H) Socially bold, venturesome, thick-skinned, uninhibited Sensitivity (I) Sensitive, aesthetic, sentimental, tender-minded, intuitive, refined Vigilance (L) Vigilant, suspicious, skeptical, distrustful, oppositional Abstractedness (M) Abstract, imaginative, absentminded, impractical, absorbed in ideas Privateness (N) Private, discreet, non-disclosing, shrewd, polished, worldly, astute, diplomatic Apprehension (O) Apprehensive, self-doubting, worried, guilt-prone, insecure, worrying, self-blaming Openness to Change (Q1) Open to change, experimental, liberal, analytical, critical, freethinking, flexibility Self-Reliance (Q2) Self-reliant, solitary, resourceful, individualistic, self-sufficient Perfectionism (Q3) Perfectionistic, organized, compulsive, self-disciplined, socially precise, exacting will power, control, self-sentimental Tension (Q4) Tense, high-energy, impatient, driven, frustrated, over-wrought, time-driven  Try the test at: https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/16PF.php 6  The Big Five personality model  Since mid-1980s, research has focused on using the five-factor model to classify personality  5 basic personality dimensions underlie all others The Big Five personality dimensions Extroversion Sociable, talkative, and assertive Agreeableness Good-natured, co-operative, and trusting Conceptualization Conscientiousness Responsible, dependable, persistent and achievement- of personality oriented Emotional stability Calm, enthusiastic, secure (Neuroticism) (Tense, nervous, depressed and insecure) Openness to experience Imaginative, sensitive and intellectual  Research showed the Big Five factors impact on motivation, and in turn affect job performance  E.g. conscientiousness and emotional stability affects self-efficacy, which impacts both goals and performance 7 Relationship between personality and work outcomes  Barrick & Mount (1991):  Conscientiousness is a general predictor across occupations and criteria, and the other factors are only valid in some occupations and criteria  Extroversion for managers  Emotional stability for police  Agreeableness for police and managers  Openness to experience did not show validity for specific occupation  The 4 factors above can predict work training proficiency  Salgado (1997):  Conscientiousness and Emotional stability predicted all performance criteria for most occupational groups  Openness to experience and Agreeableness were related to training proficiency  Extroversion predicted performance for managers and police 8 Class activity Complete the Big-Five Personality Test that measures the 5 personality dimensions of yourself Reflect on whether the test results accurately represent your perception about your own personality Discuss with classmates on how your personality characteristics can be strengths or weaknesses in your future career 9 A fundamental question in work psychology is whether personality traits are universal or cultural-specific Researchers found quite different personality structures in different cultures  South Africa: research classified traits into 9 clusters  Conscientiousness, Emotional stability, Extroversion, Facilitating, Integrity, Intellect, Openness, Relationship harmony, Soft-heartness  Blacks referred more to social-relational descriptions, and social norms  Whites referred more to personal-growth descriptions and abstract concepts  Indians had an intermediate pattern  → Assessment tools used in the workplace should consider cultural diversity 10 Personality assessment as a tool in decision-making Personality predicts aspects of job performance that may not be related to knowledge, skills, or abilities Performance can be distinguished in 2 types: 1. Task performance: effectiveness of a person to perform activities that contribute to the organization’s technical core  E.g. task performance of salesperson includes product knowledge, time management and task knowledge 11 2. Contextual performance: volunteering to carry out tasks that are not formally part of the job and helping with others to get the task accomplished  Includes the aspects:  Enthusiasm and extra effort to complete own task activities  Volunteering to carry out activities that are not formally part of the job  Helping and co-operating with others  Following organizational rules and procedures  Endorsing, supporting, and defending organizational objectives 12 Various reasons why personality is an important issue in the workplace:  Managers care about personality  Generally not willing to appoint a person who is anxious, unstable, or irresponsible  Research showed that personality predicts job performance beyond that explained by other predictors  Longitudinal research showed personality traits predict career success over a span of 50 years  Personality traits are significant predictors of:  Organizational citizenship behavior, turnover, absenteeism, safety, and leadership effectiveness 13  Definition of values  Values are stable and enduring characteristics of people  The basis on which attitudes and personal preferences are formed  Are people’s general beliefs about desirable/undesirable ways of behaving, and desirable/undesirable end state Values  Determines what people will strive for in their lives and what they are prepared to sacrifice  Values and culture  People are bound in their social environment with unique norms, language, and values  But people’s unique personal experience also forms a part in their values  Values are the foundation of cultural norms and set the standard for appropriate behavior in specific situations 14 Cultural values manifest in collectivism and individualism Individualism:  Traditional Western thinking tends to rate success and achievement highly Collectivism:  In other cultures such as Africa, the emphasis falls on traditions and conformity  The needs of the group are more important than that for the individual 15 Models of values Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck (1961):  Different value systems exist in different cultures  Identified 5 main problems that can be found across all cultural groups: 1. What is the essence of being human? 2. What is the relationship between humans, nature, and the supernatural? 3. What should the time focus of humans be? 4. What is acceptable for human activity? 5. What is the essence of human interpersonal relations? 16 Rokeach (1973): Suggested that values are in hierarchical order for every person Distinguished between terminal values and instrumental values  Terminal values: values that people find important in order to live a meaningful life  Instrumental values: values people use to achieve their objectives (the terminal values) 17 Class activity: Watch the story of Konosuke Matsushita, the founder of the Panasonic Corporation  https://youtu.be/kluQaK4-C7g Identify his instrumental and terminal values at different stages of his career life 18  During his early career:  Terminal value:  To overcome poverty  Instrumental value:  To start his own company to produce new sockets himself  To ensure job stability of his employees by refusing to cut workforce during the years of Great Depression  After the World War:  Instrumental value:  To resume and accelerate industrial production as the foundation of national recovery  Terminal value:  The trip to US stimulated him to contemplate the true meaning of wealth  Determined to bring prosperity and enrichment to people in his country  New instrumental value:  To create prosperity by making quality goods as plentiful as tap water  During his later career:  Instrumental value:  By expanding the business worldwide starting from the America branch  Terminal value:  To improve the lives of people around the world 19  To contribute to the progress of the society and well-being of people Class discussion Suppose you are a secondary school teacher: what would be your terminal value in your career? And what would be the instrumental values (or achievements) in the process of obtaining it? Share with your fellow classmates on your views towards your future career too 20 Outcomes of values in organizations  Employees holding values congruent with their organization’s values are more productive and satisfied  Holding values inconsistent with the organization can be a major source of conflict, frustration, and non-productivity  Sometimes people forget or are not being aware of their own value priorities, behaving in ways inconsistent with their own values  Can lead to misdirected decisions and frustration in long term  People seldom seek to clarify when they encounter a threat to their values  To become mature in value development, people need to develop a set of internalized principles that govern their behavior  Development of these principles requires confronting, discussing, and thinking about issues relevant to a person’s values 21  Definition of attitude  Attitude represents a predisposition to respond in a favorable or unfavorable way to persons or objects in the environment  “Like” or “dislike” something Attitudes  A learned implicit response that varies in intensity and tends to guide our overt responses to an object  Research showed that job attitudes of employees are very stable over a 5-year period  Those with negative attitude remain negative, and may change jobs and occupations 22 Attitude should not be confused with values  Values influence behavior across situations, while attitudes are directed only towards specific objects, persons, or situations 3 important assumptions underlying the concept of attitudes: 1. We cannot see attitudes; attitudes must be inferred from people’s behaviors 2. Attitude is unidimensional: can be measured along a continuum from +ve to –ve 3. Attitudes are somewhat related to subsequent behavior 23 Attitudes and behavioral intentions Beliefs about a job lead to an attitude, resulting in behavioral intentions, e.g.:  “I do not have sufficient advancement opportunities” (belief)  → “I am dissatisfied with my job” (attitude)  → “I am intending to quit my job” (behavioral intention) Beliefs influence attitudes  A person will have +ve attitudes towards performing a behavior when believing it is associated with +ve outcomes  E.g. if a person believes quitting the job will lead to better advancement opportunities, then he will be more likely to quit 24 Beliefs influence subjective norms  The outcome of beliefs that a person thinks he should (or should not) perform the behavior  Can exert powerful influence on behavioral intentions in people who are sensitive to the opinions of role models  Beliefs that behavior leads to Attitude an outcome (like or dislike)  Evaluation of the outcome Intention Behavior  Beliefs of what others think Subjective norm  What others think (should or should  Motivation to not) comply with what others think 25 Attitude change Attitude can cause behavior, but behavior can also affect attitude Festinger’s (1957) theory of cognitive dissonance  When a person perceive discrepancy between their attitude and behavior, between behavior and self-image, or between one attitude and another, an unpleasant state of dissonance results, motivating the person to eliminate such state  Cognitive dissonance can be reduced by: 1. Reducing the importance of one of the dissonant elements 2. Adding consonant elements 3. Changing one of the dissonant elements 26 E.g. an employee believes he is a good performer, but received poor performance ratings… He may: 1. Tell himself that performance ratings are not important, and that performance is not closely related to ratings 2. Believe that the supervisor was unfair, or that he had difficult circumstances at home which affected his performance 3. Revise his own opinion regarding his performance, or perform better to achieve better ratings  Think: Which one of the 3 do you think is the best strategy? 27 Assessing and managing attitudes Organizational psychologists can play the following roles in assessing and managing attitudes in organizations:  Attitude surveys  Use survey to learn about employees’ attitudes on job issues such as compensation, quality of supervision, work/non-work balance  Job design  Design jobs in a way such that positive attitude could be built  Personnel selection  Develop reliable and valid prediction tools of performance that incorporate attitudinal components  Change management  Assess how employees view changes in the organization and their attitude toward them 28   Definition of an ability  A broad and stable characteristic responsible for a person’s maximum rather than typical performance on mental and physical tasks  Intelligence and cognitive abilities  Intelligence: the general ability to act purposefully, think rationally, and deal effectively with the environment  Sternberg (1994): intelligence comprises 3 interrelated abilities Abilities  Analytical ability  Solves familiar problems by using strategies that manipulate the elements of a problem  E.g. comparing and analyzing  Creative ability  Solves new kinds of problems that require thinking about the problem and its elements in a new way  E.g. inventing and designing  Practical ability  Solves problems that apply what people know to everyday contexts  E.g. applying and using 29   Intelligence is also considered as a set of skills consisting of modifiable behaviors Practical problem-solving ability Verbal ability Social competence Good and logical reasoning Speaking clearly and articulating well Accepting others for what they are Identifying connection among ideas Studying hard Admitting mistakes Seeing all aspects of a problem Reading widely with high Displaying interest in the world Keeping an open mind and comprehension Being on time for appointments responding thoughtfully to others’ Writing without difficulty Thinking before speaking and doing ideas Setting aside time for reading Making fair judgments Sizing up situations well Displaying good vocabulary Assessing well the relevance of information to a problem at hand  Dunette (1976) distinguished 7 mental abilities that underlie performance of employees:  Verbal comprehension  Word fluency  Numerical ability  Spatial ability  Memory  Perceptual speed  Inductive reasoning  Research has suggested that general mental ability is one of the best predictors of job performance 30  Diversity refers to individual differences and similarities that exist among people  Makes people unique and different from each other Primary and secondary dimensions of diversity:  Primary dimension  Human differences which affect the early socialization of people and have sustained impact throughout their lives Diversity  E.g. gender, ethnicity, race, mental and physical abilities, sexual orientation, age  Secondary dimension  Personal characteristics that include an element of personal choice  Less visible to other people, and influence people’s lives in a less constant and more individualized way  E.g. education, language, religion, income, experience, geographic location, organizational role, communication 31 Valuing diversity  The awareness, recognition, understanding and appreciation of human differences Managing diversity  Organizations should enable people to perform at their maximum potential by changing its culture and infrastructure to allow people to be productive 32 Importance of diversity management  Diversity enables organizations to grow and be sustainable in the increasingly competitive marketplace, with the following reasons:  A diverse workforce  E.g. growing population of women workforce, people of different ethnicity, ageing workers, workers with disabilities, and with different sexual orientations and political views  The service economy  The sector of service industries is large in modern societies, and employees who can communicate most efficiently with the diversified clients would have a larger advantage  Globalization  Globalization has increased the contact with clients and co-workers from other countries  Understanding cultural difference can facilitate communication, and also avoid potentially embarrassing or insulting situations  The changing labor market  Employers also need to develop new strategies to accommodate the new diversity of labor market they must manage 33   In racial diverse settings, a psychologically-safe work environment would allow employees feel confident in expressing their true selves without fear of being judged as inferior or incompetent  It is significant for minorities in the workplace and is effective in shaping their performance behaviors Raising awareness of diversity in workplace  Rather than treating everyone equally, treat everyone equitably  Raise awareness that diversity do exist  Focus on how these differences influence people working together to get the job done  Focus on how these differences can be used to enhance productivity without treating people unfairly 34 Class activity Identify a classmate who is regarded as an introvert/extrovert, and explore the following issues:  How does the person prefer to interact with others in the team?  How does the person prefer others to interact with him or her?  Does he or she feel appreciated by others in the team? Elaborate with examples  What challenges does he or she expect to experience in the future workplace because of his or her introversion/extroversion?  What strategies can be applied to overcome these challenges? 35   Conn, S. R., & Rieke, M. L. (1994). The 16PF fifth edition technical manual. Institute for Personality and Ability Testing.  Panasonic North America. (2018, January 10). Meet Mr. Matsushita [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/kluQaK4-C7g  Rothmann, S., & Cooper, C. L. (2022). Work and organizational psychology (3rd ed.). Routledge. (Chapter 2) References 36