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Foundations of Individual Behavior Chapt
Foundations of Individual Behavior Chapt
Chapter Two
4. There is a widespread belief that productivity declines with age and that
individual skills decay over time.
Reviews of the research find that age and job performance are unrelated.
This seems to be true for almost all types of jobs, professional and
nonprofessional.
Problem-solving
Analytical skills
Competitive drive
Motivation
Sociability
Learning ability
2. There is no significant difference in job productivity between men and women.
3. Women are more willing to conform to authority, and men are more aggressive
and more likely than women to have expectations of success, but those
differences are minor.
4. There is a difference between men and women in terms of preference for work
schedules.
D. Ability
1. We were not all created equal; most of us are to the left of the median on some
normally distributed ability curve.
2. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses in terms of ability in performing
certain tasks or activities; the issue is knowing how people differ in abilities and
using that knowledge to increase performance.
3. Ability refers to an individuals capacity to perform the various tasks in a job. It
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4. Individual overall abilities are made up of two sets of factors: intellectual and
physical.
E. Intellectual Abilities
1. Intellectual abilities are those needed to perform mental activities.
2. IQ tests are designed to ascertain ones general intellectual abilities. Examples
of such tests are popular college admission tests such as the SAT, GMAT, and
LSAT.
The seven most frequently cited dimensions making up intellectual abilities are:
number aptitude, verbal comprehension, perceptual speed, inductive
reasoning, deductive reasoning, spatial visualization, and memory. (See
Exhibit 2-1).
3. Jobs differ in the demands they place on incumbents to use their intellectual
abilities. For example, the more information-processing demands that exist in a
job, the more general intelligence and verbal abilities will be necessary to
perform the job successfully.
4. A careful review of the evidence demonstrates that tests that assess verbal,
numerical, spatial, and perceptual abilities are valid predictors of job
proficiency at all levels of jobs.
5. The major dilemma faced by employers who use mental ability tests is that
they may have a negative impact on racial and ethnic groups.
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6. Abilities significantly above those required can also reduce the employees job
satisfaction when the employees desire to use his or her abilities is particularly
strong and is frustrated by the limitations of the job.
Learning
H.
Definition of Learning
I. Theories of Learning
There are three theoriesclassical conditioning, operant conditioning, and social
learning.
Classical Conditioning
1. Classical conditioning grew out of experiments conducted at the turn of the
century by a Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov, to teach dogs to salivate in
response to the ringing of a bell.
2. Key concepts in classical conditioning [Pavlovs experiment]
The meat was an unconditioned stimulus; it invariably caused the dog to
react in a specific way.
The bell was an artificial stimulus, or what we call the conditioned stimulus.
The conditioned response. This describes the behavior of the dog; it
salivated in reaction to the bell alone.
1. Learning a conditioned response involves building up an association between
a conditioned stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus.
2. When the stimuli, one compelling and the other one neutral, are paired, the
neutral one becomes a conditioned stimulus and, hence, takes on the
properties of the unconditioned stimulus.
3. Classical conditioning is passivesomething happens, and we react in a
specific way. It is elicited in response to a specific, identifiable event. It is
voluntary rather than reflexive.
Operant Conditioning
1. Operant conditioning argues that behavior is a function of its consequences.
People learn to behave to get something they want or to avoid something they
do not want.
2. The tendency to repeat such behavior is influenced by reinforcement or lack of
reinforcement.
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Behavior is learned.
People are likely to engage in desired behaviors if they are positively
reinforced for doing so.
Rewards are most effective if they immediately follow the desired
response.
Any situation in which it is either explicitly stated or implicitly suggested
that reinforcements are contingent on some action on your part involves
the use of operant learning.
Social Learning
1. Individuals can also learn by observing what happens to other people, by being
told about something, as well as by direct experiences.
2. Learning by observing is an extension of operant conditioning; it also
acknowledges the existence of observational learning and the importance of
perception in learning.
3. The influence of models is central to social learning.
4. Four processes determine the influence that a model will have on an individual.
3.
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Pop quizzes
A series of randomly timed unannounced visits to a company office by the
corporate audit staff
13. When the reward varies relative to the behavior of the individual, he or she is
said to be reinforced on a variable-ratio schedule.
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Salespeople on commission
Continuous reinforcers are appropriate for newly emitted, unstable, or lowfrequency responses.
L. Behavior Modification
1. A classic study was conducted at Emery Air Freight (now part of Federal
Express):
Organizations with paid sick leave programs experience almost twice the
absenteeism of organizations without such programs.
2. Employee discipline
Every manager will, at some time, have to deal with problem behaviors.
Managers will respond with disciplinary actions such as oral reprimands,
written warnings, and temporary suspensions.
The use of discipline carries costs. It may provide only a short-term
solution and result in serious side effects.
Disciplining employees for undesirable behaviors tells them only what not
to do. It does not tell them what alternative behaviors are preferred.
Discipline does have a place in organizations.
In practice, it tends to be popular because of its ability to produce fast
results in the short run.
4. Self-management
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