The Influence of Personality Characteristics - Term Paper Example

 «THE INFLUENCE OF PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS» Every organization would want to hire such personnel who would give the organization maximum productivity and ensure that its efficiency level is at its optimum. Organizations appoint specialized staff who can help in the productivity of an office or workplace. This specialized staff comprises of organizational psychologists. Various assessments have been used to predict workplace performance. Personality tests which are based on personality traits are used to determine whether an individual has personality problems or some serious emotional disturbances, which might have an adverse effect on his work\ performance. The Big Five model is a well structure, comprehensive, data-driven research finding. It is used to identify the traits and the structure of the human psychology. According to Dig man (1990), the five personality factors, were discovered by different researchers. The researchers first zeroed down on the basic known personality traits and then various factors that analyzed hundreds of measures of these traits. They used self reports, questionnaire data, peer ratings and objective measures from experimental settings to do this. Following were the big five traits that they identified: 1. Openness 2. Conscientiousness 3. Extraversion 4. Agreeableness 5. Neuroticism. These traits are tied to successful performance in the job an individual has applied to. Some of the most common traits which are tested for include agreeableness, openness, extraversion, neuroticism and conscientiousness. Agreeableness basically shows how one does react to others’ opinions. If he agrees easily than he is considered to be agreeable. The Five Factor Model (FFM) considers such a person an excellent team member, who strives to bring harmony amongst the team, is appeasing, and who can ignore his own needs for others. However, if a person does not agree with others’ opinions, then he is considered to be un-cooperative and his lust for power can turn him to be an autocrat. Openness to change shows how much a person is ready to accept new ideas, thoughts and changes. Such a person can enjoy complexities and handle new systems, such as technologies and tools with great ease. However, one who avoids new experiments and changes can often land up in a disadvantaged position since he accepts change only when there is no other way out. Openness to Experience was found to have a significant relationship with individual engagement to share knowledge in organizations (Cabrera, Collins & Salgado, 2006). In other studies it’s also associated with training proficiency, and the capacity to better cope with change (Barrick & Mount, 1991). Extraversion, as its name suggests, is the state of being concerned primarily with things outside the self, with the external environment rather than with one’s own thoughts and feelings. An extravert can do many tasks successfully at a time, lead others, and rely upon others without knowing them very well. Extraversion has been found to be related to job performance in occupations where interactions with others are a significant portion of the job (Ashton, 1998). Furthermore, if working in a team, higher scores on extraversion would be expected to be related to more effective teamwork (Barrick & Mount, 1991). It also seemed to have a positive effect on performance levels in knowledge sharing and performance in training (Cabrera, Collins & Salgado, 2006). Neuroticism on the other hand too plays a vital role in an individual’s training proficiency. If an individual will be neurotic, which means if he is emotionally unstable, or has the tendency to experience unpleasant emotions such as anger, anxiety, depression or vulnerability easily, than he wouldn’t be as efficient as others. It is y believed that conscientious individual faces lower levels of trouble and achieves higher levels of success through focused planning and determination. However unconscientious individuals experience many short lived pleasures and can be highly criticized for their unreliability. Hence these personality traits test whether the individual has the ability to be successful in jobs where good performance demands a great deal of interpersonal interaction. The relative importance of each personality factor or trait depends upon the nature of the job. Depending on the subject of the job, some traits are more desirable than others. An accountant needs to be an extravert. A person working for the directors of board of a company needs to be an introvert. Apart from personality characteristics, other traits are also taken into account when judging an individual’s training proficiency. These include the truthfulness and trustworthiness of an individual. Our personality is formulated due to various factors. Environment is one of the many factors that exert pressure on personality formation. Depends upon what culture do we belong to, what norms are we surrounded with and, the way we are bought. An individual’s whole potential will be determined by how well he adjusts to the changing environment. Studies have shown that during young adulthood a person’s ratings on the Five Factor Model might change, but after the age of 30, stability is the general rule, and there is rarely any degree of change. Both cross-sectional data, which compare personality levels among different age groups, and longitudinal date, which correlates people test score over time does not change and is stagnant in the adulthood. There are innate gender differences in personality as well. Men and women show different scores in the Five Factor Model, across cultures. Women mostly score higher on traits of neuroticism and agreeableness. Frank J.Sulloway is of the view that birth order is correlated with personality traits. According to him, kids who are born first are more conscientious, more socially dominant, less agreeable, and less open to new ideas compared to those who are born later. A known criticism is that the Big Five Factor Model does not show all personality traits. The model neglects other traits such as those of religiosity, Machiavellianism, honesty, thriftiness, conservativeness, masculinity/femininity, and snobbishness, sense of humor, identity and motivation. However McCre (1996) has found correlations between these and the FFM traits, such as the inverse relation between political conservatism and openness. The relationship between personality and actual performance at work has been of great importance. The major developments of meta-analysis and the FFM model have brought new insights in the research. Proficiency is having expertise in a certain skill, knowledge or domain. It allows a degree or mastery in a specific field, and allows one to function independently in a specific field. An individual’s training proficiency can also be affected by the attitude one possesses. Individuals, who have a tendency to experience aversive emotional states, tend to be distressed, agitated, pessimistic, and dissatisfied. Whereas people who are low on negativity, tend to feel more secured and satisfied with their environments. On the other hand people who show positive affectivity are seen to have higher levels of energy, enthusiastic, excited, and view their environment as a secure place. Wars (1996) believed that people who get high scores in negative dispositions are highly expected to experience negativity and low job satisfaction in working environments. Whereas people who gets a low score are expected to excel and learn better techniques and feel secure in the working environment. According to Nowak.K.M (1991) in the training assessment, a training need should be differentiated from a training want. A training need may exist when a specific job knowledge, skills and abilities are important in a position, and the employee’s competence or proficiency level is mod irately low. A training want on the other hand may arise when the knowledge, skills and abilities are of lower importance to the job, and so is the employee’s proficiency level. Importance and Proficiency are two main domains on the assessment of training. Importance refers to the knowledge, skills and abilities in a job to ensure effective performance. Proficiency on the other hand refers to the employee’s current level of skills and abilities at each of the competencies identified as being at all relevant to the position. Buss and his colleagues (Buss, 1992; Buss.et.al, 1987) studied that the individual strategies is related to individual differences in a personality. They studied that the personality scores can relate to and influence certain strategies over other. In addition to this, social behavior can manipulate a personality. However they carried out a research in which they used the influence of social strategies among coworkers in a business setting. They examined the relation between personality and reported use of influence strategies provides additional insights about the specific personality variables. Their second research was about identifying the kind of influence strategies used with coworkers and their relation with personality and other variables. Eyesenck (1967.1997) shows 3 traits of personality namely, neuroticism, extraversion-introversion, and neuroticism. According to him, a typical extravert is one who is sociable, takes chances, not reliable and one who can at times lose his temper. A person who is an introvert is more of a bookworm, prefers to spend time alone, is not sociable, is serious, reliable and has high ethical standards. A high neuroticism scorer is often depressed, has a lot of worries has bad sleep and psychosomatic disorders. Unlike a high neuroticism scorer, a low neuroticism scorer comes back quickly after depression and is generally calm and unworried. Studies have shown that there are two types of personality. Type a personality and Type B personality. People who fall under type a category are usually more punctual about their work, and finances and money mean a lot to them. These sorts of people prioritize their work and relationship. Time is valued to the extent, that they have an urge to do something productive all the time, otherwise they feel guilty about the time which has been wasted. A positive aspect about such people is that, they succeed in whatever venture they get themselves into, even if they do not know anything about it. This shows that such people are challenging and competitive. A bad quality in being achievement oriented is that these people can’t take things easy and have trouble relaxing because of which they are aggressive and short tempered. Type B personality people are the opposites of type a personality. They are calm and easy going people. They often show a laid back attitude when it comes to deadlines and they might delay them. They like socializing. They would rather look for a comfort more than success while working. And they wouldn’t stress themselves up even if they reach the deadlines. However, some people possess both types of personalities. A type a personality individual would be more efficient in terms of training and proficiency, as he values time and his duty. A type B personality individual is most likely to be in comfort zone all the time, and wouldn’t work for success and excellence. Another trait about personality as studied by many psychologists was the abrasive personality disorder. A person going through this disarray may be very ambitious in nature, and a good worker. Such a person pushes himself over the bridge in achieving his ambition, and is unable to do it which leaves him in an over controllably frustrated position. This is when he starts listening to himself and believes that whatever he thinks is right, whereas other people are incorrect. They start blaming others and they don’t realize the fact that their attitude may create problems in developing interpersonal relationships. INTJ is another personality trait which an individual can possess. The characteristics of such people are; skeptical, dominating, focused, innovative, strategist, trustworthy, and intelligent. Like other personality traits, these people possess positive and negative attributes. This personality type is hard to ignore, since they possess an aura of self confidence. They have excellent managerial and strategic skills. They can convey their message clearly to the audience, and are competitive in performance. With the negative aspect, such people tend to have poor interpersonal skills, and are not socialists. They would get defensive if anyone tries to negate their opinion or stance. Optimism and pessimism are traits opposite to each other. People, who are optimistic, are people who succeed. Because the way they frame their path, has no flaw in it, and they are perfectionist in whatever they step in. However, a pessimist would never hear his inner voice, and would be easily manipulated by the things happening around him. This leaves him in a disadvantaged position. Rationalists want to understand and gain power over nature, to understand, control, predict, and explain realities, to be seen as competent, and to have most of all, the competencies, capabilities, abilities, capacities, skills, and ingenuity, to be able to do things well under different circumstances. It helps one constantly improve, and be free from errors, to increase their store of knowledge, to learn as much as they can, to rearrange the environment, either through constructing physical edifices or building institutional systems, to speculate about the possible motivations and thoughts of those they are with, trying to fit their experiences into some systems. Meta-analytic studies conducted by researchers in the USA (e.g. Barrick and Mount 1991; Hurtz and Donovan, 2000; Tett Jackson, and Rothstein, 1991 and Europe (e.g. Salgado, 1997, 2003) have consistently demonstrated the criterion-related validity obtained by the organizing personality according to a Five Factor Model. The relative uniformity of these results have led Barrick, Mount and Judge (2001) to call for a moratorium on primary studies looking at the criterion-related validity of the Five Factor Model. Accordingly, the current primary study focuses on relationships between personality and performance not addressed in past meta-analytic reviews. More specifically, the possibility of both liner and curvilinear relationships between broadly and narrowly defined personality scaled and training performances are examined. Conclusively, it is apparent that the credit goes to the Tett et al. (1991) study. The reason behind this is that they have considered a number of moderators, which never have been used before, in any meta-analysis relationship between job performance and personality. Nevertheless, the moderator meta-analyses have raised questions regarding the interpretation of the findings. Nonetheless it is disappointing that the technical errors in the moderator meta-analysis have raised serious questions about the interpretation of the findings. Ironically, the study does not accomplish its intended purpose, because of the technical errors and inadequate Big Five analyses. Conclusion: The big five factor model is related to the level of job satisfaction experienced by employees at work. Generally, satisfied employees are more likely to continue being positive and to avoid absence than the dies-satisfied ones. Preliminary research conducted by psychologists indicated that neuroticism had a negative correlation with job satisfaction whereas conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness are all positively co-related with job-experience. On the other hand, open-nests to experience do not have any effect on job satisfaction. The big five model can be used to avoid work place deviance at work. Work place deviance takes place when an employee seeks to pursue a course of action that threatens the overall well being of the individual or the organization. Work place deviance has a relation with the big five personality model too. Interpersonal deviance has been projected to be negatively correlated with agreeableness while organizational deviance negatively with conscientiousness. Another major factor is the employee perception of the place he is working in. If the employees have a positive perception about the work place, then the work outcome is likely to be more productive. Thus according to research conducted, personality is a very important moderating and motivating factor to drive productivity home from the employees. Companies, using this model can truly benefit from it, if they implement it from fully. It will give them an idea, of the kind of work atmosphere conducive to each employee, what is he striving for, and in what best way can they make the most out of their human resources. References Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The big five personality dimensions and job performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 44, 1-26.  Buss, D. M. and Shackelford, T. K. (1997). Personality and mate preferences: Five factors in mate selection and marital satisfaction. Journal of Personality, 65: 107-136 Cabrera, A., Collins, W., & Salgado, J. (2006). Determinants of individual engagement in knowledge sharing. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 17(2), 245-264. Hurtz, G. M., & Donovan, J. J. (2000). Personality and job performance: The Big Five revisited. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85, 869—879. Judge, T. A., & Bono, J. E. (2001). Relationship of core self-evaluations traits— self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, locus of control, and emotional stability—with job satisfaction and job performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 80—92. McCrae, R. R. (1996). Social consequences of experiential openness. Psychological Bulletin, 120, 323-337 Salgado, J. F. (1999, May). Predicting job performance using personality measures based explicitly on the five-factor model. Paper presented at the fourteenth annual meeting of the Society for Industrial— Organizational Psychology, Inc., Atlanta, GA Tett, R. P., Jackson, D. N., & Rothstein, M. (1991). Personality measures as predictors of job performance: A meta-analytic review. Personnel Psychology, 44, 703—742. Warr, P., & Conner, M. (1992). Job competencies and cognition. In L. Cummings& A. Staub (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior (Vol. 14, pp. 91—1 27)New York: JAI Press.s (Keirsey, 1984, pp. 47-57; cf., Heineman (NT)). Read More