HRM 360 Ch 9: Personality & Cultural Values

Personality

The structures and propensities inside people that explain their characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior. Personality reflects what people are like and creates their social reputation.

Traits

Recurring regularities or trends in people’s responses to their environment

Cultural Values

Shared beliefs about desirable end states or modes of conduct in a given culture that influence the expression of traits

What are the Big Five (OCEAN)

1. Openness to experience

2. Conscientiousness 

3. Extraversion

4. Agreeableness 

5. Neuroticism

Openness to experience

Reflecting traits like being curious, imaginative, creative, complex, refined, and sophisticated 

Conscientiousness

Traits like being dependable, organized, reliable, ambitious, hardworking, and perserving

Extraversion (extrovert)

Traits like talkative, sociable, passionate, bold, and assertive

Agreeableness

Traits like kind, cooperative, helpful, courteous, sympathetic

Neuroticism

Traits like nervous, moody, emotional, insecure, jealous, unstable

Accomplishment striving

A desire to accomplish task-related goals as a means of expressing personality

Communion striving

A desire to obtain acceptance in personal relationships as a means of expressing personality

Zero acquaintance

Situations in which 2 people have just met

Status striving

A desire to obtain power and influence within a social structure

Positive affectivity

A dispositional tendency to experience pleasant, engaging moods such as enthusiasm, excitement, and elation

Negative affectivity 

A dispositional tendency to experience unpleasant moods such as hostility, nervousness, and annoyance

Differential Exposure

Being more likely to appraise day-to-day situations as stressful, thereby feeling that stressors are encountered more frequently

Differential reactivity

Being less likely to believe that they can cope with the stressors experienced on a daily basis

Locus of control

Whether people believe that events that occur around them are self-driven or driven by the external environment

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

A personality framework that evaluates people on the basis of four types or preferences: extraversion vs introversion, sensing vs intuition, thinking vs feeling, and judging vs perceiving

Interests

Expressions of personality that influence behavior through preferences for certain environments and activities

RIASEC Model

1. Realistic

2. Investigative

3. Artistic

4. Social

5. Enterprising 

6. Conventional

Culture

Shared values, beliefs, motives, identities, and interpretations that result from the common experiences of members of a society and are transmitted across generations

Individual-collectivism

The degree to which a culture has a loosely knit social framework (individualism) or a tight social framework (collectivism)
individualistic - people take care of themselves and their immediate family

collectivism - people take care of the members of a broader ingroup and act loyal to it

Power Distance

The degree to which a culture prefers equal power distribution (low power distance) or an unequal power distribution (high power distance).

Uncertainty Avoidance

The degree to which a culture tolerates ambiguous situations or feels threatened by them
Low uncertainty avoidance - tolerates uncertainty

High uncertainty avoidance - feels threatened

Motivation toward achievement / success

The degree to which a culture values competition and excellence as a definition of success (decisive) or consensus and quality of life as a definition of success (consensus)

Short-term vs. long-term orientation

Short-term: culture tends to stress values that are more past and present-oriented

Long-term: culture tends to stress values that are more future-oriented

Indulgence vs. Restraint

Indulgence - cultures values the expression of desires related to freedom, leisure, and activity

Restraint - cultures value stricter norms, with a focus on order and regulation

Ethnocentrism

To view one’s own cultural values as “right” and those of other cultures as “wrong”

Cultural Mosaic

Multiple cultural influences that can shape an individual’s values

Typical Performance

performance in the routine conditions that surround daily job tasks

Maximum Performance

Performance in brief, special circumstances that demand a person’s best effort

Situation Strenth

The degree to which situations have clear behavioral expectations, incentives, or instructions that make differences between individuals less important

Trait Activation

The degree to which situations provide cues that trigger the expression of a given personality trait

Integrity Test

Personality tests that focus specifically on a predisposition to engage in theft and other counterproductive behaviors (sometimes also called “honesty tests”)

Clear Purpose test

Integrity tests that ask about attitudes toward dishonesty, beliefs about the frequency of dishonesty, desire to punish dishonesty, and confession of past dishonesty

Veiled pupose tests

Integrity tests that do not directly ask about dishonesty, instead assessing more general personality traits associated with dishonest acts

Faking

Exaggerating responses to a personality test in a socially desirable fashion