MCom I Semester Personality and Emotions Study Material Notes

MCom I Semester Personality and Emotions Study Material Notes : Personality Determinants Personality traits Major Personality attributes influencing OB Type a Personality Achieving Personality fit Personality and National Culture What are Emotions Felt Versus Displayed Emotions Gender and Emotions Dimensions Affective Events Theory External Constraints on Emotions Summary on Implications of Managers :

BBA I Semester Managerial Economics Profit Maximization Study Material Notes

Personality

Why are some people quiet and passive, while others are loud and aggressive? Are certain personality types better adapted for certain job types Before we can answer these questions, we need to address a more basic one:

Personality and Emotions

What is personality?

What Is Personality? When we talk of personality, we don’t mean that a person has charm, a positive attitude toward life, a smiling face, or is a finalist for “Happiest and Friendliest” in this year’s Miss World contest. When psychologists talk of personality, they mean a dynamic concept describing the growth and development of a person’s whole psychological system. Rather than looking at parts of the person, personality looks at some aggregate whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.

The most frequently used definition of personality was produced by Gordon Allport nearly 70 years ago. He said personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment.” For our purposes. you should think of personality as the sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others. It is most often described in terms of measurable traits that a person exhibits.

Personality and Emotions

Personality Determinants

An early debate in personality research centered on whether an individual’s personality was the result of heredity or of environment. Was the personality predetermined at birth, or was it the result of the individual’s interaction with his or her surroundings? Clearly, there is no simple black-andwhite answer. Personality appears to be a result of both influences. In addition, today we recognize a third factor–the situation. Thus, an adult’s personality is now generally considered to be made up of both hereditary and environmental factors, moderated by situational conditions.

Heredity refers to those factors that were determined at conception. Physical stature, facial attractiveness, gender, temperament, muscle composition and reflexes, energy level, and biological rhythms are characteristics that are generally considered to be either completely or substantially influenced by who your parents are; that is, by their biological, physiological, and inherent psycho logical makeup. The heredity approach argues that the ultimate explanation of an individual’s per sonality is the molecular structure of the genes, located in the chromosomes.

Three different streams of research lend some credibility to the argument that heredity plays an important part in determining an individual’s personality. The first looks at the genetic underpinnings of human behavior and temperament among young children. The second addresses the study of twins who were separated at birth. The third examines the consistency in job satisfaction over time and across situations. Studies of young children lend strong support to the power of heredity. evidence demonstrates that traits such as shyness, fear, and aggression can be traced to inherited genetic characteristics. This finding suggests that some personality traits may be built into the same genetic code that affects factors such as height and hair color

Researchers have studied more than 100 sets of identical twins who were sep rated at birth and raised separately. If heredity played little or no part in determining personality, you would expect to find few similarities between the separated twins. But the researchers found a lot in common. For almost every behavioral trait, a significant part of the variation between the twins turned out to be associated with genetic factors. For instance, one set of twins who had been separated for 30 years and raised 45 miles apart were found to drive the same model and color car, chain-smoked the same brand of cigarette, owned dogs with the same name, and regularly vacationed within three blocks of each other in a beach community 1,500 miles away. Researchers have found that genetics accounts for about 50 percent of the personality differences and more than 30 percent of the variation in occupational and leisure interests.

Further support for the importance of heredity can be found in studies of individual job satisfaction, which we discussed in the previous chapter. Individual job satisfaction is found to be remarkably stable over time. This result is consistent with what you would expect if satisfaction is determined by something inherent in the person rather than by external environmental factors.

What is of interest taxonomically is that situations seem to differ substantially in the constraints they impose on behavior. Some situations-e.g., temple, an employment interview–constrain many behaviors; other situations-e.g., a picnic in a public park-constrain relatively few.

Furthermore, although certain generalizations can be made about personality, there are significant individual differences. As we shall see, the study of individual differences has come to receive greater emphasis in personality research, which originally sought out more general, universal patterns.

Personality and Emotions

Personality Traits

The early work in the structure of personality revolved around attempts to identify and label enduring characteristics that describe an individual’s behavior. Popular characteristics include shyness, aggressiveness, submissive, lazy, ambition, loyal, and timid. Those characteristics, when they’re exhibited in a large number of situations, are called personality traits. The more consistent the characteristic and the more frequently it occurs in diverse situations, the more important that trait is in describing the individual

Why has so much attention been paid to personality traits? The answer is: Researchers have long believed that these traits could help in employee selection, matching people to jobs, and in guiding career development decisions. For instance, if certain personality types perform better on specific jobs, management could use personality tests to screen job candidates and improve employee job performance.

There were a number of early efforts to identify the primary traits that govern behavior. However, for the most part, these efforts resulted in long lists of traits that were difficult to generalize from and provided little practical guidance to organizational decision-makers. Two exceptions are the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Big-Five Model. Over the past 20 years, these two approaches have become the dominant frameworks for identifying and classifying traits.

These classifications are then combined into 16 personality types. To illustrate, let’s take several examples. INTIs are visionaries. They usually have original minds and great drive for their own ideas and purposes. They are characterized as skeptical, critical, independent, determined, and often stubhorn. ESTIs are organizers. They are realistic, logical, analytical, and decisive and have a natural head for business or mechanics. They like to organize and run activities. The ENTP type is a conceptualizer. He or she is innovative, individualistic, versatile, and attracted to entrepreneurial ideas. This person tends to be resourceful in solving challenging problems but may neglect routine assignments. A book that profiled 13 contemporary businesspeople who created supersuccessful firms including Apple Computer, FedEx, Honda Motors, Microsoft, and Sony found that all 13 were intuitive thinkers (NT). This result is particularly interesting because intuitive thinkers represent only about five per cent of the population.

As previously noted, the MBTI® is widely used in practice. Some of the organizations using it include Apple Computer, AT&T, Citigroup, GE, 3M Co., Tata Motors, plus many hospitals, educational institutions, and even the Indian Defence Services

In spite of its popularity, the evidence is mixed as to whether the MBTI is a valid measure of personality with most of the evidence suggesting it isn’t. The best we can say is that it can be a valuable tool for increasing self-awareness and for providing career guidance. But because MBTT results tend to be unrelated to job performance, it probably should not be used as a selection test for choosing among job candidates.

The Big-Five Model The MBTI may lack for strong supporting evidence, but that can’t be said for the five-factor model of personality n impressive body of research supports that more typically called the “Big Five.” This is the test John Bearden took, five basic dimensions… encompass most of described at the opening of this chapter, and which made him rethink the the significant variation in human personality. way he managed people.

In recent years, an impressive body of research supports that five basic dimensions underlie all others and encompass most of the significant variation in human personality. The Big Five factors are:

Extroversion. This dimension captures one’s comfort level with relationships. Extroverts tend to be gregarious, assertive, and sociable. Introverts tend to be reserved, timid, and quiet.

Agreeableness. This dimension refers to an individual’s propensity to defer to others. Highly agreeable people are cooperative, warm, and trusting. People who score low on agreeableness are cold, disagreeable, and antagonistic.

Conscientiousness. This dimension is a measure of reliability. A highly conscientious person is responsible, organized, dependable, and persistent. Those who score low on this dimension are easily distracted, disorganized, and unreliable.

Emotional stability. This dimension taps a person’s ability to withstand stress. People with positive emotional stability tend to be calm, self-confident, and secure. Those with high negative scores tend to be nervous, anxious, depressed, and insecure.

Openness to experience. The final dimension addresses one’s range of interests and fascination with novelty. Extremely open people are creative, curious, and artistically sensitive. Those at the other end of the openness category are conventional and find comfort in the familiar.

In addition to providing a unifying personality framework, research on the Big Five also has found important relationships between these personality dimensions and job performance. broad spectrum of occupations were looked at: professionals (including engineers, architects accountants, attorneys), police, managers, salespeople, and semiskilled and skilled employees. Job Performance was defined in terms of performance ratings, training proficiency (performance during training programs), and personnel data such as salary level. The results showed that conscien. tiousness predicted job performance for all occupational groups. The preponderance of evidence shows that individuals who are dependable, reliable, careful, thorough, able to plan, organized. hardworking, persistent, and achievement-oriented tend to have higher job performance in most if not all occupations.” In addition, employees who score higher in conscientiousness develop higher levels of job knowledge, probably because highly conscientious people exert greater levels of effort on their jobs. The higher levels of job knowledge then contribute to higher levels of job per formance. Consistent with these findings, evidence also finds a relatively strong and consistent relationship between conscientiousness and organizational citizenship behavior. This, however, seems to be the only personality dimension that predicts OCB,

For the other personality dimensions, predictability depended on both the performance criterion and the occupational group. For instance, extroversion predicted performance in managerial and sales positions. This finding makes sense because those occupations involve high social interaction, Similarly, openness to experience was found to be important in predicting training proficiency, which, too, seems logical. What wasn’t so clear was why positive emotional stability wasn’t related to job performance. Intuitively, it would seem that people who are calm and secure would do better on almost all jobs than people who are anxious and insecure. The answer might be that only people who score fairly high on emotional stability retain their jobs. So the range on this dimension among those people studied, all of whom were employed, would tend to be quite small.

Personality and Emotions

Thomas Profiling utilizes predictive ability and aims to match behavior to jobs. It can also be used to map the existing work behavior of an individual. so as to assess the individual’s behavioral aptitude. The gap between behavior and the company’s requirements can be bridged by retraining and redefining individual’s skill sets and processes

FIRO-B defines leadership style in relation to interpersonal relationships by measuring: Inclusion-How much you generally include other people in your life and how much attention, contact, and recognition you want from others; Control – How much influence and responsibility you need and how much you want others to lead and establish procedures and policies: Affection-How close and warm you are with others and to what extent you want others to show warmth and support to you. FIRO is not a theory of inherent, immutable personality traits. Rather, it provides material for development efforts

Belbin Team Role Profiling assesses nine team roles: action-oriented roles (shaper, implementer, and completer or finisher): people-oriented roles (coordinator, team worker or resource investigator): cerebral roles (plant, monitor, evaluator, and specialist). Belbin team roles describe a pattern of behavior that characterizes one person’s behavior in relation to another in facilitating the progress of a team.

PAPI (PA Preference Inventory) Job Profile a personality assessment tool used, both, at the beginning of the recruitment process, when devising a job profile, and later on at the interview stage. when assessing a candidate’s personality. It gives companies an objective way of measuring how closely the interviewee’s personality matches the personality required by the job profile.

Personality and Emotions

Major Personality Attributes Influencing OB

In this section, we want to more carefully evaluate specific personality attributes that have been found to be powerful predictors of behavior in organizations. The first is related to where one perceives the locus of control in one’s life. The others are Machiavellianism, self-esteem, self-monitor ing, propensity for risk taking, and the Type A and proactive personalities.

Locus of Control Some people believe that they are masters of their own fate. Other people believe that what happens to them is due to luck or chance. The first type, those who believe that they control their destinies, have been labeled internals, whereas the latter, who see their lives as being con trolled by outside forces, have been called externals. A person’s perception of the source of his or her fate is termed locus of control.

A large amount of research comparing internals with externals has consistently shown that individuals who rate high in externality are less satisfied with their jobs, have higher absenteeism rates. are more alienated from the work setting, and are less involved on their jobs than are internals. Externals are also less likely to initially get a job. Why? In contrast to externals, internals exhibit more motivation and willingness to take action in their initial interviews, which has been shown to relate to significantly more second interviews.20

Why are externals more dissatisfied? The answer is probably that they perceive themselves as having little control over the organizational outcomes that are important to them. Internals, facing the same situation, attribute organizational outcomes to their own actions. If the situation is unattractive, they believe that they have no one to blame but themselves. Also, the dissatisfied internal is more likely to quit a dissatisfying job.

The impact of locus of control on absence is an interesting one. Internals believe that health is substantially under their own control through proper habits, so they take more responsibility for their health and have better health habits. Consequently, their incidences of sickness and, hence, of absenteeism, are lower

We shouldn’t expect any clear relationship between locus of control and turnover because there are opposing forces at work, “On the one hand, internals tend to take action and thus might be expected to quit jobs more readily. On the other hand, they tend to be more successful on the job and more satisfied, factors associated with less individual turnover. 22

The overall evidence indicates that internals generally perform better on their jobs, but that conclusion should be moderated to reflect differences in jobs. Internals search more actively for information before making a decision, are more motivated to achieve, and make a greater attempt to control their environment. Externals, however, are more compliant and willing to follow directions. Therefore, internals do well on sophisticated tasks which include most managerial and professional jobs that require complex information processing and learning. In addition, internals are more suited to jobs that require initiative and independence of action. Almost all successful salespeople, for instance, are internals. Why? Because it’s pretty difficult to succeed in sales if you don’t believe you can effectively influence outcomes. In contrast, externals should do well on jobs that are well structured and routine and in which success depends heavily on complying with the direction of others.

Machiavellianism Amar is a young bank manager in Madhya Pradesh. He’s had three promotions in the past four years. Amar makes no apologies for the aggressive tactics he’s used to propel his career upward. “I’m prepared to do whatever I have to do to get ahead,” he says. Amar would prop erly be called Machiavellian. Ashwini led her U.K-based company last year in sales performance. She’s assertive and persuasive, and she’s effective at manipulating customers to buy her product line. Many of her colleagues, including her boss, also consider Ashbin as Individual high in Machiavellianism is maintains emotional distance, and believes that ends can justify means. “If it works, use it is consist tent with a high-Mach perspective.

A considerable amount of research has been directed toward relating high- and low-Mach per sodalities to certain behavioral outcomes. High Machs manipulate more, win more, are persuaded less, and persuade others more than do low Machs. Yet these high Mach outcomes are moderated by situational factors. It has been found that high Machs flourish (1) when they interact face to face with others rather than indirectly: (2) when the situation has a minimum number of rules and regulations, thus allowing latitude for improvisation; and (3) when emotional involvement with details irrelevant to winning distracts low Machs.25

Should we conclude that high Machs make good employees? That answer depends on the type of job and whether you consider ethical implications in evaluating performance. In jobs that require bargaining skills (such as labor negotiation) or that offer substantial rewards for winning (as in commissioned sales), high Machs will be productive. But if ends can’t justify the means, if there are absolute standards of behavior, or if the three situational factors noted in the preceding paragraph are not in evidence, our ability to predict a bigh Mach’s performance will be severely curtailed. Self-Esteem People differ in the degree to which they like or dislike themselves. This trait is called self-esteem 26 The research on sell-esteem (SE) offers some interesting insights into organizational behavior. For example, self-esteem is directly related to expectations for success. High SEs believe that they possess the ability they need to succeed at work,

Individuals with high self-esteem will take more risks in job selection and are more likely to choose unconventional jobs than people with low self-esteem.

The most generalizable finding on self-esteem is that low SEs are more susceptible to external influences than are high SEs. Low SEs are dependent on the receipt of positive evaluations from others. As a result, they are more likely to seek approval from others and more prone to conform to the beliefs and behaviors of those they respect than are high SEs. In managerial positions, low SEs will tend to be concerned with pleasing others and, therefore, are less likely to take unpopular stands than are high SES

Personality and Emotions

Not surprisingly, self-esteem has also been found to be related to job satisfaction. A number of studies confirm that high SEs are more satisfied with their jobs than are low

SES Self-Monitoring Sushmita is always in trouble at work. While she’s competent, hardworking, and productive, her performance reviews tend to rate her no better than average and she seems to have made a career of irritating bosses. Sushmita’s problem is that she’s politically inept. She’s unable to adjust her behavior to fit changing situations. As she puts it, “I’m true to myself. I don’t remake myself to please others.” We would be correct to describe Sushmita as a low self-monitor.

Self-monitoring refers to an individual’s ability to adjust his or her behavior to external, situational factors. Individuals high in self-monitoring show considerable adaptability in adjusting their behavior to external situational factors. They are highly sensitive to external cues and can behave differently in different situations. High self Real estate developer Donald Trump monitors are capable of presenting striking contradictions between their public per is willing to take chances. His risk- sona and their private self. Low self-monitors, like Joyce, can’t disguise themselves in taking personality enables him to that way. They tend to display their true dispositions and attitudes in every situation, thrive in situations that others find hence, there is high behavioral consistency between who they are and what they do. perilous and stressful. Trump is

The evidence indicates that high self-monitors tend to pay closer attention to the shown here opening his Trump International Hotel in New York behavior of others and are more capable of conforming than are low self-monitors City, a venture that helped him They also receive better performance ratings, are more likely to emerge as leaders. recover from his negative net worth and show less commitment to their organizations. In addition, high self-monitoring and resurge as a billionaire. managers tend to be more mobile in their careers, receive more promotions (both internal and cross-organizational), and are more likely to occupy central positions in an organization. We might also hypothesize that high self-monitors will be more successful in managerial positions in which individuals are required to play multiple, and even contradicting roles. The high self-monitor is capable of putting on different “faces” for different audiences Risk-Taking Donald Trump stands out for his willingness to take risks. He started with almost nothmg in the 1960s. By the mid-1980s, he had made a fortune by betting on a resurgent New York City real estate market. Then, trying to capitalize on his previous successes, Trump overextended himself. By 1994, he had a negative net worth of $850 million. Never fearful of taking chances, “The Donald” leveraged the few assets he had left on several New York, New Jersey, and Caribbean real estate ventures. He hit it big again. In 2003, Forbes estimated his net worth at $2 billion.

People differ in their willingness to take chances. This propensity to assume or avoid risk has been shown to have an impact on how long it takes managers to make a decision and how much information they require before making their choice. For instance, 79 managers worked on simulated personnel exercises that required them to make hiring decisions. High-risk-taking managers made more rapid decisions and used less information in making their choices than did the low-risk-taking managers. Interestingly, the decision accuracy was the same for both groups.

In general, managers in large organizations tend to be risk-averse, especially in contrast to growth-oriented entrepreneurs who actively manage small businesses. For the work population as a whole, there are also differences in risk propensity. As a result, it makes sense to recognize these differences and even to consider aligning risk-taking propensity with specific job demands. For instance, a high risk-taking propensity may lead to more effective performance for a stock trader in a brokerage firm because that type of job demands rapid decision-making. On the other hand, a willingness to take risks might prove a major obstacle to an accountant who performs auditing activities. The latter job might be better filled by someone with a low risk-taking propensity.

Type A Personality Do you know people who are excessively competitive and always seem to be experiencing a sense of time urgency? If you do, it’s a good bet that those people have a Type A per sodality. A person with a Type A personality is “aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time, and, if required to do so, against the opposing efforts of other things or other persons. 185

Type A’s

1 are always moving, walking, and eating rapidly:

2. feel impatient with the rate at which most events take place;

3. strive to think or do two or more things at once;

4. cannot cope with leisure time;

5. are obsessed with numbers, measuring their success in terms of how many or how much of everything they acquire.

In contrast to the Type, A personality is the Type B, who is exactly the opposite. Type B’s are rarely harried by the desire to obtain a wildly increasing number of things or participate in an endless growing series of events in an ever-decreasing amount of time.”

Personality and Emotions

Type B’s

1 never suffer from a sense of time urgency with its accompanying impatience:

2. feel no need to display or discuss either their achievements or accomplishments unless such exposure is demanded by the situation;

3. play for fun and relaxation, rather than to exhibit their superiority at any cost;

4. can relax without guilt.

Type A’s operate under moderate to high levels of stress. They subject themselves to more or less continuous time pressure, creating for themselves a life of deadlines. These characteristics result in some rather specific behavioral outcomes. For example, Type A’s are fast workers, because they emphasize quantity over quality. In managerial positions, Type A’s demonstrate their competitive ness by working long hours and not infrequently, making poor decisions because they make them too fast. Type A’s are also rarely creative. Because of their concern with quantity and speed, they rely on past experiences when faced with problems. They will not allocate the time necessary to develop unique solutions to new problems. They rarely vary in their responses to specific challenges in their milieu; hence, their behavior is easier to predict than that of Type B’s.

Do Type A’s differ from Type B’s in their ability to get hired? The answer appears to be “yes.” Type A’s do better in job interviews because they are more likely to be judged as having desirable traits such as high drive, competence, aggressiveness, and success motivation.

Proactive Personality Did you ever notice that some people actively take the initiative to improve their current circumstances or create new ones while others sit by passively reacting to situations? The former individuals have been described as having a proactive personality.

Proactive identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere until meaningful change occurs. They create positive change in their environment, regardless or even in spite of constraints or obstacles. Not surprisingly, proactives have many desirable behaviors that organizations covet. For instance, the evidence indicates that proactives are more likely to be seen as leaders and more likely to act as change agents within the organization. Other actions of proactives can be pos itive or negative, depending on the organization and the situation. For example, proactives are more likely to challenge the status quo or voice their displeasure when situations aren’t to their liking. an organization requires people with entrepreneurial initiative, proactives make good candidates: however, these are people that are also more likely to leave an organization to start their own busi ness. As individuals, proactives are more likely to achieve career success. This is because they select, create, and influence work situations in their favor. Proactives are more likely to seek out job! and organizational information, develop contacts in high places, engage in career planning and demonstrate persistence in the face of career obstacles.

Personality and Emotions

Personality and National Culture

Do personality frameworks, like the Big-Five model, transfer across cultures? Are dimensions like locus of control and the Type A personality relhe five personality factors identified in the Big- evant in all cultures? Let’s try to answer these questions. Five model appear in almost all cross-cultural The five personality factors identified in the Big Five model appear in almost all cross-cultural studies. This includes a wide variety of diverse studies.

cultures such as China, Israel, Germany, Japan, Spain, Nigeria Norway Pakistan, and the United States. Differences tend to surface by the emphasis on dimensions and whether countries are predominantly individualistic or collectivist. Chinese, for example, use the category of conscientiousness more often and use the category of agreeableness less often than do Americans. And the Big Five appear to predict a bit better in individualistic cultures than in collectivist. 16 But there is a surprisingly high amount of agreement, especially among individuals from developed countries. As a case in point, a comprehensive review of studies covering people from the 15-nation European Community found that conscientiousness was a valid predictor of performance across jobs and occupational groups.

There are no common personality types for a given country. You can, for instance, find high and low risk.takers in almost any culture. Yet a country’s culture influences the dominant personality char acteristics of its population. We can see this by looking at locus of control and the Type A personality.

There is evidence that cultures differ in terms of people’s relationship to their environment.” In some cultures, such as those in North America, people believe that they can dominate their environment. People in other societies, such as Middle Eastern countries, believe that life is essentially preordained. Note the close parallel to internal and external locus of control.18 We should expect. therefore, a larger proportion of internals in the American and Canadian workforce than in the Saudi Arabian or Iranian workforce.

The prevalence of Type A personalities will be somewhat influenced by the culture in which a person grows up. There are Type A’s in every country, but there will be more in capitalistic countries, where achievement and material success are highly valued. For instance, it is estimated that about 50 percent of the North American population is Type A.” This percentage shouldn’t be too surprising. The United States and Canada both have a high emphasis on time management and efficiency. Both have cultures that stress accomplishments and the acquisition of money and material goods. In cultures such as Sweden and France, where materialism is less revered, we would predict a smaller proportion of Type A personalities.

Personality and Emotions

Achieving Personality

Fit Twenty-five years ago, organizations were concerned with personality primarily because they wanted to match individuals to specific jobs. That concern still exists. But, in recent years, interest has expanded to include the individual-organization fit. Why? Because managers today are less interested in an applications ability to perform a specific job than with his or her flexibility to meet changing situations

Personality and Emotions

The Person-Job Fit In the discussion of personality attributes, our conclusions were often qualified to recognize that the requirements of the job moderated the relationship between possession of the personality characteristic and job performance. This concern with matching the job requirements with personality characteristics is best articulated in John Holland’s personality-job fit the ory. The theory is based on the notion of fit between an individual’s personality characteristics and his or her occupational environment. Holland presents six personality types and proposes that satis faction and the propensity to leave a job depend on the degree to which individuals successfully match their personalities to an occupational environment.

Each one of the six personality types has a congruent occupational environment. Exhibit 4-3 describes the six types and their personality characteristics and gives examples of congruent occupations.

Holland has developed a Vocational Preference Inventory questionnaire that contains 160 occupational titles. Respondents indicate which of these occupations they like or dislike, and their answers are used to form personality profiles. Using this procedure, research strongly supports the hexagonal diagram shown in Exhibit H. This figure shows that the closer two fields or orienta tions are in the hexagon, the more compatible they are. Adjacent categories are quite similar, whereas those diagonally opposite are highly dissimilar.

What does all this mean? The theory argues that satisfaction is highest and turnover lowest when personality and occupation are in agreement Social individuals should be in social jobs, conventional people in conventional jobs, and so forth. A realistic person in a realistic job is in a more congruent situation than is a realistic person in an investigative job. A realistic person in a social job is in the most incongruent situation possible. The key points of this model are that (1) there do appear to be intrinsic differences in personality among individuals, (2) there are different types of jobs, and

(3) people in job environments congruent with their personality types should be more satisfied and less likely to voluntarily resign than should people in incongruent jobs.

The person-organization Fit As previously noted, attention in recent years has expanded to include matching people to organizations as well as jobs. To the degree that an organization faces a dynamic and changing environment and requires employees who are able to readily change tasks and move fluidly between teams. it’s probably more important that employees’ personalities fit with the overall organization’s culture than with the characteristics of any specific job.

The person-organization fit essentially argues that people leave organizations that are not compatible with their personalities. Using the Big Five terminology, for instance, we could expect that people high on extroversion fit better with aggressive and team-oriented cultures, that people high on agreeableness will match up better with a supportive organizational climate than one that focuses on aggressiveness, and that people high on openness to experience fit better into organizations that emphasize innovation rather than standardization. Following these guidelines at the time of hiring should lead to selecting new employees who fit better with the organization’s culture, which in turn. should result in higher employee satisfaction and reduced turnover.

Personality and Emotions

Emotions

For 11 years, Kumar Mangal worked as a network administrator at Rajdhani Engineering. Kumar builds measurement and instrumentation devices for the defense forces. In the last couple of years of his tenure, Kumar’s performance reviews had turned negative. He could see the inevitable coming and he was angry. So he concocted a revenge plot to sabotage the network he helped create. Just before the company fired him, Kumar put a software time bomb in the computer and stole the only backup tape. A week after he was fired, the time bomb went off. The company’s server crashed and destroyed all of the critical tooling and manufacturing programs. Kumar’s anger and resulting sabotage caused Rs 100 million in damages, dislodged Rajdhani Engineering’s footing in its industry, and eventually led to the layoff of 80 employees.

Computer sabotage is an extreme example but it does dramatically illustrate the theme of this section: Emotions are a critical factor in employee behavior.

Given the obvious role that emotions play in our everyday life, it might surprise you to learn that, until recently, the topic of emotions had been given little or no attention within the field of OB.) How could this be? We can offer two possible explanations. The first is the myth of rationality. Since the late nineteenth century and the rise of scientific management, organizations have been specifically designed with the objective of trying to control emotions. A well-run organization was one that successfully eliminated frustration, fear, anger, love, hate, joy, grief, and similar feelings. Such emotions were the antithesis of rationality. So, although researchers and managers knew that emotions were an inseparable part of everyday life, they tried to create organizations that were emotion-free. That, of course, wasn’t possible. The second factor that acted to keep emotions out of OB was the belief that emotions of any kind were disruptive. When emotions were considered, the discussion focused on strong negative emotions especially anger-that interfered with an employee’s ability to do his or her job effectively. Emotions were rarely viewed as being constructive or able to stimulate performance-enhancing behaviors. o study of OB could be comprehensive without Certainly some emotions, particularly when exhibited at the wrong time, can reduce employee performance. But this doesn’t change the reality considering the role of emotions in the workplace it that employees bring an emotional component with them to work every behavior. day and that no study of OB could be comprehensive without considering the role of emotions in workplace behavior.

Personality and Emotions

What Are Emotions?

Although we don’t want to obsess on definitions before we can proceed with our analysis, we need to clarify three terms that are closely intertwined: affect, emotions, and moods.

Affect is a generic term that covers a broad range of feelings that people experience. It’s an umbrella concept that encompasses both emotions and moods. Emotions are intense feelings that are directed at someone or something. Finally, moods are feelings that tend to be less intense than emotions and that lack a contextual stimulus. Emotions are reactions to an object, not a trait. They’re object-specific. You show your emotions something, angry at someone, afraid of something, Moods on the other hand, aren’t directed at an object. Emotions can turn into moods when you lose focus on the contextual object. So when a work colleague criticizes you for the way you spoke to a client, you might become angry at him. That is, you show emotion (anger) toward a specific object your colleague). But later in the day, you might find yourself just generally dispirited. You can’t attribute this feeling to any single event: you’re just not your normal, upbeat sell. This affect state describes a mood

Personality and Emotions

Emotional Labor

If you ever had a job working in retail sales or waiting on tables in a restaurant, you know the importance of projecting a friendly demeanor and a smile. Even though there were days when you didn’t feel very cheerful, you knew management expected you to be upbeat when dealing with customers. So you faked it. And in so doing, you expressed emotional labor.

Every employee expends physical and mental labor when they put their bodies and cognitive capabilities, respectively, into their job. But jobs also require emotional labor. This is when an employee expresses organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions.

The concept of emotional labor originally developed in relation to service jobs. Airline flights for instance, are expected to be cheerful, funeral counselors sad, and doctors emotionally neutral. But today, the concept of emotional labor is relevant to almost every job. You’re expected, for example, to be courteous and not hostile in interactions with coworkers. The true challenge is when employees have to project one emotion while simultaneously feeling another. This creates emotional dissonance, which can take a heavy toll on employees. Left untreated, bottled up feelings of frustration, anger, and resentment can eventually lead to emotional exhaustion and burnout

As we proceed in this section, you’ll see that it’s because of the increasing importance of emotional labor as a key component of effective job performance that an understanding of emotion has gained heightened relevance within the field of OB.

Personality and Emotions

Felt Versus Displayed Emotions

Emotional labor creates dilemmas for employees when their job requires them to exhibit emotions that are incongruous with their actual feelings. Not surprisingly, this is a frequent occurrence. There are people with whom you have to work toward whom you find it very difficult to be friendly. Maybe you consider their personality abrasive. Maybe you know they’ve said negative things about you behind your back. Regardless, your job requires you to interact with these people on a regular basis. So you’re forced to feign friendliness.

It can help you to better understand emotions if you separate them into felt versus displayed. Felt emotions are an individual’s actual emotions. In contrast, displayed emotions are those that are organizationally required and considered appropriate in a given job. They’re not innate; they’re earned. “The ritual look of delight on the face of the first runner-up as the new Miss Americais announced is a product of the display rule that losers should mask their sadness with an expression

Joy for the winner Similarly, most of us know that we’re expected to act sad at funerals regard less of whether we consider the person’s death to be a loss and to pretend to be happy at weddings even if we don’t feel like celebrating 17 Elfective managers have learned to be serious when giving an employee a negative performance evaluation and to cover up their anger when they’ve been passed over for promotion. And the salesperson who hasn’t learned to smile and appear friendly, regardless of his or her true feelings at the moment, isn’t going to last long on most sales jobs.

The key point here is that felt and displayed emotions are often different. In fact, many people have problems working with others simply because they naively assume that the emotions they see others display is what those others actually feel. This is particularly true in organizations, where role demands and situations often require people to exhibit emotional behaviors that mask their true feelings. In addition, jobs today increasingly require employees to interact with customers. And customers aren’t always easy to deal with. They often complain, behave rudely, and make unrealistic demands. In such instances, an employee’s felt emotions may need to be disguised. Employees who aren’t able to project a friendly and helpful demeanor in such situations are likely to alienate customers and are unlikely to be effective in their jobs.

Personality and Emotions

Emotion Dimensions

How many emotions are there? In what ways do they vary? We’ll answer these questions in this section.

Variety There are literally dozens of emotions. They include anger, contempt, enthusiasm, envy, fear, frustration, disappointment, embarrassment, disgust, happiness, hate, hope, jealousy, joy, love, pride, surprise, and sadness. One way to classify them is by whether they are positive or negative. Positive emotions like happiness and hope express a favorable evaluation or feeling. Negative emotions like anger or hate express the opposite. And keep in mind that emotions can’t be neutral. Being neutral is nonemotional. Importantly, negative emotions seem to have a greater effect on individuals. People reflect on and think about events inducing strong negative emotions five times as long as they do about events inducing strong positive ones. So we should expect people to recall negative experiences more readily than positive ones.

There have been numerous research efforts to limit and define the dozens of emotions into a fundamental or basic set of emotions. It appears that there are essentially six universal emotions anger, fear, sadness, happiness, disgust, and surprise and that almost all other emotions can be subsumed under one of these six categories. This young man serving customers.

Personality and Emotions

Exhibit 4-5 illustrates that these six emotions can be conceptualized as existing along a continuum. The closer any two emotions are to each other on this continuum, the more people are likely to confuse them. For instance, happiness and surprise are frequently mistaken for each other, while happiness and disgust are rarely confused. In addition, as we’ll elaborate later in this section, cultural factors can also influence interpretations.

Intensity People give different responses to identical emotion-provoking stimuli. In some cases, this can be attributed to the individual’s personality. Other times it is a result of the job requirements.

People vary in their inherent ability to express intensity. You undoubtedly know individuals who almost never show their feelings. They rarely get angry. They never show rage. In contrast, you probably also know people who seem to be on an emotional roller coaster. When they’re happy, they’re ecstatic. When they’re sad, they’re deeply depressed. And two ped same situation-one showing excitement and joy, the other remaining calm and collected.

Jobs make different intensity demands in terms of emotional labor. For instance, air traffic controllers and trial judges are expected to be calm and controlled, even in stressful situations. Conversely, the effectiveness of television evangelists, public-address announcers at sporting events, and lawyers can depend on their ability to alter their displayed emotional intensity as the need arises.

Frequency and Duration Sandeep is basically a quiet and reserved person. He loves his job as a financial planner. He doesn’t enjoy, however, having to give speeches in order to increase his visibility and to promote his programs. But he still has to give speeches occasionally. “If I had to speak to large audiences every day, I’d quit this business,” he says. “I think this works for me because I can fake excitement and enthusiasm for an hour, a couple of times a month.”

Emotional labor that requires high frequency or long durations is more demanding and requires more exertion by employees. So whether an employee can successfully meet the emotional demands of a given job depends not only on what emotions need to be displayed and their intensity but also on how frequently and for how long the effort has to be made.

Personality and Emotions

Gender and Emotions

It’s widely assumed that women are more “in touch with their feelings than men-that they react more emotionally and are better able to read emotions in others. Is there any truth to these assumptions?

The evidence does confirm differences between men and women when it comes to emotional reactions and the ability to read others. In contrasting the genders, women show greater emotional expression than men? 4, they experience emotions more intensely; and they display more frequent expressions of both positive and negative emotions, except anger. In contrast to men, women also report more comfort in expressing emotions. Finally, women are better at reading nonverbal and paralinguistic cues than are men.76

What explains these differences? Three possible answers have been suggested. One explanation is the different ways men and women have been socialized.” Men are taught to be tough and brave, and showing emotion is inconsistent with this image. Women, on the other hand, are socialized to be nurturing. This may account for the perception that women are generally warmer and friendlier than men. For instance, women are expected to express more positive emotions on the job (shown by smiling) than men, and they do.” A second explanation is that women may have a more innate ability to read others and present their emotions than do men. Third, women may have a greater need for social approval and, thus, a higher propensity to show positive emotions, such as happiness

Personality and Emotions

External Constraints on Emotions

An emotion that is acceptable on the athletic playing field may be totally unacceptable when exhibited at the workplace. Similarly, what’s appropriate in one country is often inappropriate in another. These facts illustrate the role that external constraints play in shaping displayed emotions.

Every organization defines boundaries that identify which emotions are acceptable and the degree to which they can be expressed. The same applies in different cultures. In this section, we look at organizational and cultural influences on emotions.

Personality and Emotions

Organizational Influences If you can’t smile and appear happy, you’re unlikely to have much of a career working at a Disney amusement park. And a manual produced by McDonald’s states that its counter personnel “must display traits such as sincerity, enthusiasm, confidence, and a sense of humor”80

There is no single emotional “set” sought by all organizations. However, at least in the United States, the evidence indicates that there’s a bias against negative and intense emotions. Expressions of negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, and anger tend to be unacceptable except under fairly specific conditions. For instance, one such condition might be a high-status member of a group conveying impatience with a low-status member. Moreover, expressions of intense emotion, whether negative or positive, tend to be unacceptable because they’re seen as undermining routine task performance 85 Again, there are exceptional conditions in which this isn’t true–for example, a brief grieving over the sudden death of a company’s CEO or the celebration of a record year of profits. But for the most part, consistent with the myth of rationality, well-managed organizations are expected to be essentially emotion-free.

Personality and Emotions

Cultural Influences Cultural norms in the United States dictate that employees in service organizations should smile and act friendly when interacting with customers. But this norm doesn’t apply worldwide. In Israel, smiling by supermarket cashiers is seen as a sign of inexperience, so cashiers are encouraged to look somber. In Moslem cultures, smiling is frequently taken as a sign of sexual attraction, so women are socialized not to smile at men. Employees in France are likely to experience minimal degree of emotional dissonance because they make little effort to hide their te feelings. French retail clerks are infamous for being surly toward customers And found that its emphasis on emplovee friendliness, which has won them a loyal following shoppers, doesn’t work in Germany. Accustomed to a culture where the customer traditionally comes last, serious German shoppers have been turned out by Wal-Mart’s friendly greeters and helpful personnel

The above examples illustrate the need to consider cultural factors as influencing what is or in considered as emotionally appropriate. What’s acceptable in one culture may seem extreme unusual or even dysfunctional in another. And cultures differ in terms of the interpretation they give to emotions.

There tends to be high agreement on what emotions mean within cultures but not between. For instance, one study asked Americans to match facial expressions with the six basic emotions. The range of agreement was between 86 and 98 percent. When a group of Japanese were given the same task, they correctly labeled only surprise (with 97 percent agreement). On the other five emotions. their accuracy ranged from only 27 to 70 percent. In addition, studies indicate that some cultures lack words for standard emotions such as anxiety, depression, or guilt. Tahitians, as a case in point, don’t have a word directly equivalent to sadness. When Tahitians are sad, their peers typically attribute their state to a physical illness. 90

Personality and Emotions

Affective Events Theory

Understanding emotions at work has been significantly helped by a model called affective events theory (AET). AET demonstrates that employees react emotionally to things that happen to them at work and that this influences their job performance and satisfaction.

Exhibit 4-6 summarizes AET. The theory begins by recognizing that emotions are a response to an event in the individual work environment. The work environment includes everything surrounding the job characteristics of the job such as the variety of tasks and degree of autonomy, job demands, and requirements for expressing emotional labor. This environment creates work events that can be hassles, uplifts, or both. Examples of events that employees frequently see as hassles are colleagues who refuse to carry their share of work, conflicting directions by different managers excessive time pressures. Examples of uplifting events include meeting a goal, getting support from a colleague, and receiving recognition for an accomplishment. These work events trigger positive or negative emotional reactions. But the events-reaction relationship is moderated by the employee’s personality and mood. Personality predisposes people to respond with greater or lesser intensity to the event. For instance, people who score low on emotional stability are more likely to react strongly to negative events. And the individual’s mood introduces the reality that your general affect cycle creates fluctuations. So a person’s emotional response to a given event can change depending on his or her mood. Finally, emotions influence a number of performance and satisfaction variables such as organizational citizenship behavior, organizational commitment intentions to quit, and level of effort.

In addition, tests of the theory suggest that (1) an emotional episode is actually a series of emotional experiences precipitated by a single event. It reflects elements of both emotions and mood cycles. (2) Job satisfaction is influenced by current emotions at any given time along with the history of emotions surrounding the event. (3) Since moods and emotions fluctuate over time, their effect on performance also fluctuates. (4) emotion-driven behaviors are typically short in duration and of high variability. (5) Because emotions tend to be incompatible with behaviors required to do a job, they typically have a negative influence on job performance (even for positive emotions like happiness and joy).

An example might help better explain AET” You work as an aeronautical engineer for Boeing Because of the downturn in the demand for commercial jets, you’ve just learned that the company is considering laying off 10,000 employees. This could include you. This event is likely to elicit a negative because you’re prone to worry a lot and obsess about problems, your feelings of insecurity are increased This event also puts into place a series of subevents that create an episode: you talk with your boss and he assures you that your job is safe; you hear rumors that your department is high on the list to be eliminated; you run into a former colleague who was laid off six months ago and still hasn’t found work. These, in turn, create emotional ups and downs. One day you’re feeling more upbeat and that you’ll survive the cuts. The next day, you might be depressed and anxious, convinced that your department will be eliminated. These swings in your emotions take your attention away from your work and result in reduced job performance and satisfaction. Finally, your response is magnified because this is the fourth large layoff that Boeing has initiated in the past three years.

In summary, AET offers two important messages. First, emotions provide valuable insights into understanding employee behavior. The model demonstrates how daily hassles and uplifts influence employee performance and satisfaction. Second, emotions in organizations and the events that cause them shouldn’t be ignored, even when they appear to be minor. This is because they accumulate. It’s not the intensity of hassles and uplifts that lead to emotional reactions, but more the frequency with which they occur.

Personality and Emotions

OB Applications

We conclude our discussion of emotions by considering their specific application to several topics in OB. In this section, we assess how an understanding of emotions can improve our ability to explain and predict the selection process in organizations, decision making, motivation, leadership, interpersonal conflict, customer service, and deviant workplace behaviors.

Personality and Emotions

Ability and Selection Menasha’s awareness of her own and others’ emotions is almost nil. She’s moody and unable to generate much enthusiasm or interest in her employees. She doesn’t understand why employees get upset with her. She often overreacts to problems and chooses the most ineffectual responses to handle emotional situations. Menasha is someone with low emotional intelligence.

People who know their own emotions and are good at reading others’ emotions may be more effective in their jobs. That, in essence, is the theme underlying recent research on emotional intelligence 96

Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to one’s ability to detect and to manage emotional cues and information. It’s composed of five dimensions:

Self-awareness. Being aware of what you’re feeling.

Self-management. The ability to manage one’s own emotions and impulses.

Self-motivation. The ability to persist in the face of setbacks and failures.

Empathy. The ability to sense how others are feeling.

Social skills. The ability to handle the emotions of others.

Several studies suggest that El may play an important role in job performance. For instance, one study looked at the characteristics of Lucent Technologies’ engineers who were rated as stars by their peers. The researchers concluded that stars were better at relating to others. That is, it was El, not to that characterized high performers. A study of U.S. Air Force recruiters generated similar landings Top-performing recruiters exhibited high levels of EI. Using these findings, the Air Force revamped its selection criteria. A follow-up investigation found that future hires who had high El scores were 2.6 times more successful than those who didn’t. By using El in the selection, the Air Force was able to cut turnover among new recruiters in 1 year by more than 90 percent and save nearly S3 million in hiring and training costs. Another illuminating study looked at the successes and failures of ll American pres indents from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton. They were evaluated on six qualities communication, organization, political skill, vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence. It was found that the key quality that differentiated the successful (like Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Reagan) from the unsuccessful (like Johnson, Carter, and Nixon) was emotional intelligence.

The implications from the initial evidence on El is that employers should consider it as a factor in selection, especially in jobs that demand a high degree of social interaction.

Decision Making As you will see in Chapter 5, traditional approaches to the study of decision-making in organizations has emphasized rationality. They have downplayed or even ignored, the role of anxiety, fear, frustration, happiness, envy, and similar emotions. Yet it’s naive to assume that decision choices aren’t influenced by one’s feelings at a particular moment. Given the same objective data,

we should expect that people may make different choices when they’re angry and stressed out than when they’re calm and collected

Negative emotions can result in a limited search for new alternatives and less vigilant use of information. On the other hand, positive emotions can increase problem-solving skills and facilitate the integration of information.

You can improve your understanding of decision-making by considering the heart” as well as the head.” People use emotions as well as rational and intuitive processes in making decisions, Failure to incorporate emotions into the study of decision processes will result in an incomplete (and often inaccurate) view of the process.

Personality and Emotions

Motivation We’ll discuss motivation thoroughly in Chapters 6 and 7. At this point. we want merely to introduce the idea that, like decision making, the dominant approaches to the study of motivation reflect an over rationalized view of individuals.

Motivation theories basically propose that individuals “are motivated to the extent that their behavior is expected to lead to desired outcomes. The image is that of rational exchange: the employee essentially trades effort for pay, security, promotions, and so forth.”100 But as affective events theory demonstrated, people aren’t cold, unfeeling machines. Their perceptions and calculations of events are filled with emotional content that significantly influences how much effort they exert. Moreover, when you see people who are highly motivated in their jobs, they’re emotionally committed. People who are engaged in their work “become physically. cognitively. and emotionally immersed in the experience of acting in the pursuit of a goal.

Are all people emotionally engaged in their work? No. But many are. And if we Jamie Dimon was hired as CEO of focus only on rational calculations of inducements and contributions, we fail to be

Bank One to turn around the ability to explain behaviors such as the individual who forgets to have dinner and works financially troubled firm. During monthly meetings with systems late into the night, lost in the thrill of her work. 102 analysts, loan officers, and branch livered

Personality and Emotions

Leadership The ability to lead others is a fundamental quality sought by organized emotional messages that seditions. We’ll discuss the topic of leadership, in-depth, in Chapters 11 and 12. Here. motion dramatic changes to improve, however, we briefly introduce how emotions can be an integral part of leadership meant.”109 Politicians, as a case in point, have learned to show enthusiasm when talking about their chances for winning an election, even when polls suggest otherwise.

Corporate executives know that emotional content is critical if employees are to buy into their vision of their company’s future and accept change. When new visions are offered, especially when they contain distant or vague goals, change is often difficult to accept. So when effective leaders want to implement significant changes, they rely on the evocation, framing, and mobilization of emotions. By arousing emotions and linking them to an appealing vision, leaders increase the like LaHood that managers and employees alike will accept change.

Personality and Emotions

Interpersonal Conflict Few issues are more intertwined with emotions than the topic of interpersonal conflict. Whenever conflicts arise, you can be fairly certain that emotions are also surfacing. A manager’s success in trying to resolve conflicts, in fact, is often largely attributable to his or her ability to identify the emotional elements in the conflict and to get the conflicting parties to work through their emotions. And the manager who ignores the emotional elements in conflicts, focusing singularly on rational and task-focused concerns, is unlikely to be very effective in resolving those conflicts.

Customer Service In many jobs, an employee’s emotional state influences customer service, which, in turn, influences customers’ willingness to return to a place of business and levels of customer satisfaction. Quality customer service makes demands on employees, often creating emotional dissonance. Over time, this can lead to job burnout, declines in job performance, and lower job satisfaction.”

Studies indicate a matching effect between employee and customer emotions. Referred to as emotional contagion, people “catch” emotions from others. So when employees express positive emotions, customers tend to respond positively. And negative emotions tend to have negative effects on Customers.

Deviant Workplace Behaviors Negative emotions can lead to a number of deviant workplace behaviors.

Personality and Emotions