IAS1162 – Human Personality & Team Building Trait Approach

Scenario  You’ve just been assigned a new roommate whom you don’t know  Both of you introduce one another  What are the questions you might ask?  How do you describe your personality?  Do you:  Present yourself by describing the type of person you are?  Quiet type, Independent type, Outgoing type …  Present yourself by describing your characteristics?  Studious? Shy? Friendly?  In essence, you would be using the trait approach to personality in answering the questions.

The Type (Typology) Approach  People has tried to describe personality for ages  Gordon Allport is one of the original trait theorists counted more than 4,000 adjectives in the English language used for this purpose  First attempt to identify and describe these characteristics were typology systems.  The ancient Greeks divided people into four types:  Sanguine (Happy)  Melancholic (Unhappy)  Choleric (temperamental)  Phlegmatic (apathetic) – indifferent, unconcerned, lazy, bored

… cont’d  Another effort identified three basic personality types based on general physique:  Endomorphic (obese)  Mesomorphic (muscular)  Ectomorphic (fragile)  However, this approach is strict and assumptions made are not easily justified  In this approach, a person is ‘judged’ to be strictly the type, meaning, if you are Type A, you cannot be half A, half B, you are all the while A.  Type approach has been replaced with the Trait Approach

Trait Approach  A trait is a dimension of personality used to categorize people according to the degree to which they manifest a particular characteristic  Built on 2 assumptions  Assume that personality characteristics are relatively stable over time  Personality characteristics are stable across situations

Gordon Allport  Born in Montezuma, Indiana, USA (1897)  Went to Harvard, together with his older brother Floyd  Took up psychology and mostly interested in finding the best way to understand human behavior  Accepted that behavior is influenced by a variety of environmental factors and recognized that traits alone cannot predict what a single individual will do  Believed that traits have physical components in the nervous systems  Identified two general strategies to use when investigating personality  Nomothetic approach  Idiographic approach

… cont’d  Nomothetic:  Assume that all people can be describe along a single dimension according to level of assertiveness or anxiety  Same traits among many people = common traits  Idiographic:  Identify the unique combination of traits that best accounts for the personality of a single individual

Proving a point  Choose 2 people in your team  Have each of them take a few minutes to list 10 traits to describe their behavior  DO IT NOW! Quietly…  Compare the traits between the two  Question:  Are the traits the same?  Allport referred to these 5 to 10 traits that best describe an individual’s personality as central traits  Occasionally, a single trait dominates a personality – cardinal trait  There have been historical figures whose behavior was so dominated by a single trait until it became synonymous with the individual hence the coined words: Machiavellian, Homeric or even Don Juans.

The Big Five  Many researches have been done to describe the basic dimensions of personality  Different teams of investigators used many different kinds of data  In any case, mostly they found evidence for five basic dimensions of personality, The Big Five  Different researchers sometimes used different names, but the commonly used:  Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness (or if you are clever, it can be OCEAN)

The Big Five Personality Factors  Neuroticism-Worried vs calm Insecure vs secure Self-pitying vs self-satisfied  Extraversion-Sociable vs retiring Fun-loving vs sober Affectionate vs reserved  Openness-Imaginative vs down-to-earth Preference for variety vs preference for routine Independent vs conforming  Agreeableness-Softhearted vs ruthless Trusting vs suspicious Helpful vs uncooperative  Conscientiousness-Well-organized vs disorganized Careful vs careless Self-disciplined vs weak willed

Neuroticism  Places people along a continuum (range) according to their emotional stability and personal adjustment  People with frequent emotional distress and wide emotional swings scores high on this measure  Tend to become more upset over daily stressors  Many types of negative emotions – sadness, anger, anxiety, guilt  People who score low tend to be calm, well adjusted, not prone to extreme emotional reactions

Extraversion  Extreme at one end – extrovert or extreme at the other end – introvert  Extroverts are very sociable people who also tend to be energetic, optimistic, friendly and assertive  Not to say introverts do not typically express these characteristic, but incorrect to say they are asocial or without energy  Introverts are just reserved, rather than unfriendly, independent rather than followers, paced rather than sluggish  However, extroverts usually have more friends and spend more time in social situations

Openness  Openness to experience rather than openness in an interpersonal sense  They have active imagination, willing to consider new ideas, divergent thinking and intellectual curiosity  Unconventional and independent thinkers  Low in openness tend to prefer the familiar rather than seeking out something new  Some researchers refer to openness as intellect and not the same as intelligence

Agreeableness  Helpful, trusting, sympathetic  Low on agreeableness – antagonistic and skeptical, like to fight for their interests and beliefs  Prefer cooperation over competition, have more pleasant social interactions and fewer quarrelsome exchanges

Conscientiousness  Controlled and self-disciplined  Organized, plan oriented and determined  Low end – apt to be careless, easily distracted from tasks, and undependable. Might have more automobile accidents

Big Five in a Workplace  Team work  Imagine each team is a company, and the team leader is the Head of HR. The other team members are a committee to hire a new employee. The company is in dire need of an extra help, there are five applicants shortlisted for the job. Who will be the BEST EMPLOYEE to hire?  Nordin – scored low in Neuroticism  Obe-wan-Kenobi – scored high in Openness  Chai – scored high in Conscientiousness  Elsa – scored high in Extraversion  Alf – scored high in Agreeableness  Discuss which among the 5 you are going to hire  The Team Leader will present the choice in front by telling why the team chooses the candidate

The verdict  So, which of the five applicants is likely to make the best employee?  A great deal of research indicates that of the Big Five factors, CONSCIENTIOUSNESS may be the best predictor of job performance  Why? The characteristics – careful, thorough, dependable  They don’t rush through the job – take time to do it correctly and completely  Highly conscientious people tend to be organized and to lay out plans before starting a big project  Hardworking, persistent and achievement-oriented  Set higher goals for themselves

What about the other 4?  Agreeableness  Trusting, cooperative and helpful  Pleasant to have around the office and especially well in jobs calling for teamwork  Extraverts  Have an edge in the business world  Openness  Beneficial in some job settings  Low in Neuroticism  Calm and collected, not easily panicked

Conclusion  Trait approach assumes we can identify individual differences in behaviors that are relatively stable across situations and over time  Gordon Allport was the first acknowledged trait theorist. Among his contributions were the notion of central and secondary traits, nomothetic versus idiographic research  The recent development of the five-factor model has renewed interest in the relationship between personality and job performance. Although several of the Big Five dimensions are related to performance in the business world, many studies indicate that Conscientiousness may be the best predictor of performance

THE END Continue on with Chapter 6