Individual Behaviour - Personality

Personality

A relatively personal stable set of characteristics that influence an individual’s behavior is known as personality.

Personality Characteristics in Organization:

• Core Self Evaluation: A broad set of personality traits that refers to self-concept
• Locus of Control: An individual’s generalized belief about internal (self) versus external (situation or others) control. Internals believe they control what happens to them and don’t react well to close supervision whereas externals may appreciate a more structured work setting and prefer not to participate in decision making.
• Self-Efficacy: A person’s overall view of himself/herself as being able to perform effectively in a wide variety of situations
•  Self-Esteem: An individual’s general feeling of self-worth.
• Self-Monitoring: The extent to which people base their behavior on cues from other people and situations
• Positive/Negative Affect: An individual’s tendency to accentuate the positive/negative aspects of themselves, other people, and the world in general

Personality Theories:

Psycho-dynamic Theories:

1. Sigmund’s works about the effects of unconscious mind and childhood experiences on personality influenced the formation of psycho-dynamic theories. The personality theory of Freud is also called the Tripartite Theory because of the three components. According to Freud, three components of personality were:

• Id – The instinctive and primitive component of personality that is responsive for all urges and needs is referred as id. It operates on pleasure principle, which suggests that every wishful impulse should be satisfied regardless of the consequence.
• Ego – It’s the decision-making component that works according to the reality principle. It mediates the demands of the id, superego and reality.
• Superego – This component of personality is responsible for the morals and values of the society.

2. Erikson came up with his own psychodynamic theory in which he suggested that personality has to overcome variety of conflicts at various stages.

Humanist Theories:

Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers are among the top human theorists to deal with the importance of self- actualization and individual experience, which helps in development of personality and motivates behavior.

Carl Rogers – Self Theory: This theory emphasizes on the totality of inter-relatedness of behavior. The four basic concepts of this theory are as follows:

• Self - Image: The way one sees himself
• Ideal Self: The way one would like to be
• Looking Glass-Self: Perception of a person how others are perceiving his qualities and characteristics
• Real Self: The person really who he is

Trait Theories:

    In order to understand individuals, the behavior patterns must be broken down into a series of observable traits. These trait forms are unique from one individual to another. According to trait theory, combining these traits into a group forms an individual’s personality. Gordon Allport believes that consistency in traits leads to behavior and have identifies thousands of traits. Raymond Cattell described traits in bipolar adjective combinations that formed the basis for differences in individual behavior.

Big Five Personality Model: One popular personality classification is the Big Five. The “Big Five” traits include extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience.

Extraversion	The person is gregarious, assertive, and sociable
Agreeableness	The person is cooperative, warm, and agreeable
Conscientiousness	The person is hardworking, organized and dependable
Emotional stability	The person is calm, self-confident and cool
Openness to experience	The person is creative, curious and cultured

Integrative Approach Theory: This theory describes personality as a composite of the individual’s psychological processes. This focuses on both person (dispositions) and situational variables as combined predictors of behavior. Personality dispositions include emotions, cognition, attitudes, expectancy, and fantasies.

Type Theories of Personality:

1. Type theory of personality was first proposed by a Greek physician, Hippocrates. He grouped the people in four temperament types: (Due to four types of humors – liquid substance within the body).

• Sanguine: Cheerful, optimistic due to high amount of blood in body
• Melancholic: Depressed, sad, morose due to black bile
• Choleric: hot tempered due to yellow bile
• Phlegmatic: Slow moving, calm, in-excitable due to phlegm

2. Sheldon was another type theorist. He described the major structural components of human body (physique) and related temperaments. He classified people into three different categories based on the human body structure.

• Endomorphy (Spherical appearance, round body): Traits of relaxation, love of comfort, pleasure in digestion, dependence in social approval, deep sleep, need of people when troubled.
• Mesomorphy (rectangular body with predominance bone and muscle): Assertive posture, energetic character, directness of manner, need of exercise, unrestrained voice, need of action when troubled.
• Ectomorphy (Linear, thin, light muscled): Overly fast reaction, socio-phobia, resistant to habit, inhibited social address, poor sleep habit, youthful intentness, solitude when in trouble.

3. Carl Jung established a theory, which saw universal types in human personality. But, certain types are predominant over the normal mode of organizing our experience. There are four scale dichotomies in type theory with possible choices for each scale. The Myer-Briggs Type Instrument was developed to measure Jung’s ideas about individual differences.

Extraversion	Energized by interaction with other people
Introversion	Energized by time alone
Sensing	Pays attention to information gathered through the five senses
iNtuition	Pays attention to sixth senses
Thinking	Makes decisions in a logical, objective fashion
Feeling	Makes decisions in a personal, value-oriented way
Judging	Preferring closure and completion in making decisions
Perceiving	Preferring to explore many alternatives and flexibility

 

The MBTI instrument has been used in career counseling, team building, conflict management, and understanding management styles, which has been found to have good reliability and validity as a measurement instrument for identifying type.

4. Type A and Type B Personality theories: One of the most popular Typology in personality is Type A and Type B personality developed by Friedman and Rosenman in 1974. 

Major Symptoms of Type A personality are:

• Free Floating Hostility
• Impatience and Time Urgency
• Competitive Drive

     The second typology, Type B, is completely opposite of the Type A personality in terms of behavioral characteristics. Major systems of Type B personality are:

•      Relaxed
•      One thing at a time
•      Express feelings

Common Personality Measurement tools:

• Projective test: A personality test that elicits an individual’s response to abstract stimuli –Rorschach ink blot test
• Behavioral measures: Personality assessments that involve observing an individual’s behavior in a controlled situation
• Self Report Questionnaire: A common personality assessment that involves an individual’s responses to a series of questions

-Minnesota Multiphase Personality Questionnaire (MMPI) – assess a variety of traits

- NEO Personality Inventory – measures Big Five Traits