Individual behavior

Unit 2

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Foundations of individual behavior
• Ability
– An individual’s capacity to perform the various task in a job.

Basically there are two types of abilities:

1. Intellectual ability
2. Physical ability

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 Ability
• Intellectual ability
The capacity to do mental activities- thinking, reasoning, and problem
solving.

• Physical ability
The capacity to do the tasks that demands stamina, dexterity, strength,
and similar characteristics.

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Ability

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Ability

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 Biographical characteristics
• Biographical characteristics:
Personal characteristics- such as age, gender, race, and length of tenure-
that are objective and easily obtained from personnel records.
• Age
– Older workers bring experience, judgment, a strong work ethic, and
commitment to quality. But older workers are also perceived as lacking
flexibility and as being resistant to new technology.
• Gender
– Few differences between men and women that affect job
performance. Example ; working mother needs flexibility in working
hour. Some jobs require different capacity to perform which really
matters to differences in gender.

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 Biographical characteristics
• Race (the biological heritage used to identify oneself)
– Contentious issue: differences exist, but could be more culture-based
than race-based.

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 Other Biographical Characteristics
• Tenure
– People with job tenure (seniority at a job) are more productive, absent
less frequently, have lower turnover, and are more satisfied.

• Religion
– Islam is especially problematic in the workplace in this post-9/11
world.

• Sexual Orientation &Gender Identity

– Difference in sexual orientation
– Relatively new issue – transgendered employees.

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 Personality
• Personality:
– the sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts
with others.
or
– the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's
distinctive character.

When Psychologist 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.

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 What determines Personality?
The topic can be understood as “factors determining
personality”.

Personality is a result of the combination of four factors;

1. Biological factors
2. Cultural factors
3. Social factors
4. Situational factors

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 What determines Personality?
1. Biological factors
a. Brain
Brain is one of the most important factor of personality
determinant. It is generally believed that the father and the child
adopt almost the same type of brain stimulation and later
difference are the result of the environment in which the child has
been grown up.

b. Physical factor
It is believed that this factor plays a vital role in determining ones
behavior in any organization. Physical features may involve height of
the person (short or tall), his color(white or black), his health
status(fat or skinny) and his looks (handsome or not).
These factors are involved when interacting with any other person
and thus contributes in the personality development in many ways.
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 What determines Personality?
c. Heredity factors
it is the one that are determined at the time of conception.
These factors not only affect the physical features of a person,
but the intelligence level, attentiveness, gender, temperament,
various inherited diseases and energy level, all gets affected by
them.
Example: many children behave exactly how their parents do.
Similarly, twin siblings also have a lot of things in common.

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 What determines Personality?

2. Social factors
The things that revolve and evolve around us on a regular basis
determine our personality. The society that we live in, the
cultural environment that we face daily, the community that we
get interacted to, all are included in this factor. The relationship,
coordination, cooperation, interaction, environment in the
family, organization, workplace, communities, societies all
contribute in a way or another as personality determinants.

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3. Cultural and religious factor
The culture in which one lives in, that may involve traditional
practices, norms, customs, procedures, rules and regulations,
precedents and values, all are important determinants of
personality. More over, the creed, religion and believes are also
very important factors of personality determinants.

4. Situational factors
It alters a person’s behavior and response from time to time. The
situational factor can be commonly observed when a person
behaves contrastingly and exhibits different traits and
characteristics. Eg. A person’s behavior will be totally different
when he is in his office, in front of his boss when compared to his
hangout with his old friends in a bar. In this way situational factors
impact a personality in a significant way. They often brings out the
traits of a person that are not commonly seen.
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Popular personality frameworks

• The Big Five Personality Model

• Myer Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

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 The Big five personality model
• The "big five" are broad categories of personality traits. While
there is a significant body of literature supporting this five-
factor model of personality, researchers don't always agree on
the exact labels for each dimension. However, these five
categories are usually described as follows:

• Extraversion
• Agreeableness
• Conscientiousness
• Neuroticism/emotional stability
• Openness

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 The Big five personality model
• Extraversion : This trait includes characteristics such as excitability,
sociability, talkativeness, assertiveness and high amounts of emotional
expressiveness. Introverts/introversion can be reverse like timid, quiet,
etc.,

• Agreeableness: This personality dimension includes attributes such as

trust, kindness, affection, warm and cooperative. Dis-agreeableness can
be reverse.

• Conscientiousness: Common features of this dimension include high levels

of thoughtfulness, with good impulse control and goal-directed behaviors.
Those high in conscientiousness tend to be organized, dependable and
mindful of details.

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 The Big five personality model
• Neuroticism/emotional stability: people with emotional stability tends to
be calm, self-confident, and secure. Individuals with high negative scores
in this trait tend to experience anxiety, moodiness, irritability, and
sadness.

• Openness: Extremely open people are creative, curious, imaginative and

artistically sensitive.

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 Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
Overview - History
The Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator is a self-report inventory.
Designed to identify a person’s personality type, strengths and
preferences. The questionnaire was developed by Isabel Myers and her
mother Katharine Briggs based on their work with Carl Jung’s theory of
personality type.

The overview of the test

Base on the answers to the questions on the inventory, people are
identified as having one of 16 personality types.
The goal of MBTI is to allow respondents to further explore and
understand their own personalities including their likes, dislikes,
strength, weakness, possible career preferences, and compatibility.
No one personality type is “best” or “better” than any other one. It is
not a tool designed to look for dysfunction or abnormality. Instead, its
goal is simply to help you learn more about yourself.
The questionnaire itself is made up of four different scales.

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How we are going to do it? (MBTI process at a
glance)

Introduction of MBTI (overview)

Exposure to the four scale

Conducting the MBTI test (Online)

Checking the result (16 personality type)

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Extroverted: Introverted:
Quiet and shy
Outgoing, sociable and
assertive
Sensing: Intuitive:
Rely on unconscious processes
Practical, detail oriented and
and look at the “big picture”
prefer routine and order
Thinking: Feeling:
Rely on personal values and
Uses reason and logic
emotions
Judging: Perceiving:
Flexible and spontaneous
Desires control and prefer order
and structure
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(MBTI) – Extraversion (E)

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(MBTI) – Introversion (I)

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(MBTI) – Sensing (S)

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(MBTI) – Intuition (N)

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(MBTI) – Thinking (T)

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(MBTI) – Feeling (F)

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(MBTI) – Judging (J)

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(MBTI) – Perceiving (P)

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 Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
CLASS ACTIVITY?
MBTI - Online test
 Follow the link to conduct the MBTI online test:WWW.ONLINE
PERSONALITIES.COM

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Think of a word that describes the
following picture

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 Emotions
Intense feeling that are directed at someone
or something

Reactions to a person or an event

Moods

Feelings that tend to be less intense than

emotions and often arise without a specific
event acting as a stimulus
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AFFECT

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 Basic Moods: Positive and Negative
Affect
• Positive affect:
• Mood dimensions consisting of positive emotions like
excitement, alertness and elation, contentment and
calmness
• Negative affect:
• Mood dimensions consisting of negative emotions like
nervousness, stress, anxiety, boredom, depression and
fatigue
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• Do emotions make us unethical?

• Sympathy for others’ sufferings

• Guilt about one’s immoral behavior

• Anger about injustice

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 Sources of Emotions
 Personality

 Affect intensity  Social activities

 Time of the day  Sleep

 Day of the week  Exercise

 Weather  Age

 Stress  Gender

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• Emotional Labor(concept emerged from study of service job)

• A situation in which an employee expresses

organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal
transactions.eg Airlines expect flight attendants,for
instance, to be cheerful.

• Emotional Dissonance
• A situation in which an employee must project one
emotion while simultaneously feeling another. This
disparity is E.D & thus, heavy troll on employes.left
untreated, bottled up feelings of angers & lead to
emotional exhaustion.

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 Displayed versus Felt Emotions
1.Felt Emotions-An individual’s actual emotions

Deep Acting-Trying to modify one’s true inner feelings based on

display rules.eg health trying to genuinely feel more empathy for her
patients is deep acting.

2. Displayed Emotions-Emotions that are organizationally required

and considered appropriate in a given job

Surface acting-Hiding inner feelings and hidings emotional

expressions in response to display rule .eg wen worker smiles at
customer even he doesn’t feel like it.

Which is more stressful to employes?.........because it entails feigning

ones true emotion.
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 How does moods and emotions influence our job performance and job satisfaction?

• Affective Events Theory (AET)-A model which suggest

Workplace events cause emotional reactions on the part of
employees; which influence workplace attitudes and behavior.

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 Emotional Intelligence
• The ability to detect and manage emotional cue and
information.
• People who know their own emotions & are good at
reading others emotion are effective.
• EI composed of 5 dimensions
• 1. self-awareness-being aware of what you doing
• 2.Self –management-ability to manage your own
emotion & impulse
• 3 self motivation-ability to persist in face of failures
• 4 Empathy- ability to sense how others are feelings
• Social skills-ability to handle the emotion of others

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 Perception
• What is perception?
• A perception is a process by which individuals organize and interpret their
sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment. –how
ever, what we perceive can be substantially different from objective reality.

Example: all employees in a firm may view it as a great place to work-

favorable working conditions, interesting job assignments, good pay,
excellent benefits, understanding and responsible management BUT , as
most of us know, its very unusual to find such agreement.

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 Factors influencing Perception
Factors in the perceiver
- Attitudes and motives
- Interests
- Experience
- Expectations

Factors in the target

Factors in the situation - Novelty & Motion
- Time - Sounds & size
Background
- Work setting
Perception - Proximity
- Social setting
- Similarity

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 Factors influencing perception
• How do we explain the fact that individuals may look at the same thing yet
perceive it differently? A number of factors operate to shape and
sometimes distort perception.
• These factors can reside in perceiver, in the object, or target, being
perceived.

i) In the perceiver
ii) In the Object or target being perceived or
iii) In the context of the situation in which the
perception is made.

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 1. The Perceiver:
Several characteristics of the perceiver can affect perception. When an individual
looks at a target and attempts to interpret what he or she stands for, that
interpretation is heavily influenced by personal characteristics of the individual
perceiver. The major characteristics of the perceiver influencing perception are:

a. Attitudes:
The perceiver's attitudes affect perception. For example, Mr. X is interviewing
candidates for a very important position in his organization - a position that
requires negotiating contracts with suppliers, most of whom are male. Mr. X may
feel that women are not capable of holding their own in tough negotiations. This
attitude with doubtless affect his perceptions of the female candidates he
interviews.

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 1. The Perceiver:
b. Moods:
Moods can have a strong influence on the way we perceive someone. We
think differently when we are happy than we do when we are depressed. In
addition, we remember information that is consistent with our mood state
better than information that is inconsistent with our mood state. When in a
positive mood, we form more positive impressions of other. When in a
negative mood, we tend to evaluate others unfavorably.

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 1. The Perceiver:
c) Motives:
Unsatisfied needs or motives stimulate individuals and may exert a
strong influence on their perceptions. For example, in an
organizational context, a boss who is insecure perceives a sub
ordinate's efforts to do an outstanding job as a threat to his or her own
position. Personal insecurity can be translated into the perception that others
are out to "get my job", regardless of the intention of the subordinates.

d) Self - Concept:
Another factor that can affect social perception is the perceivers self-concept.
An individual with a positive self-concept tends to notice positive attributes in
another person. In contrast, a negative self-concept can lead a perceiver to
pick out negative traits in another person. Greater understanding of self
allows us to have more accurate perceptions of others.

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 1. The Perceiver:
e) Interest:
The focus of our attention appears to be influenced by our interests. Because
our individual interests differ considerably, what one person notices in a
situation can differ from what other perceive. For example, the supervisor
who has just been reprimanded by his boss for coming late is more likely to
notice his colleagues coming late tomorrow than he did last week.

f) Cognitive structure: Cognitive structure, an individual's pattern of thinking,

also affects perception. Some people have a tendency to perceive physical
traits, such as height, weight, and appearance, more readily. Cognitive
complexity allows a person to perceive multiple characteristics of another
person rather than attending to just a few traits.

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 1. The Perceiver:
g) Expectations: Finally, expectations can distort your
perceptions in that you will see what you expect to see. The
research findings of the study conducted by Sheldon S Zalking
and Timothy W Costello on some specific characteristics of the
perceiver reveal
i) Knowing oneself makes it easier to see others accurately.
ii) One's own characteristics affect the characteristics one is likely to
see in other.
iii) People who accept themselves are more likely to be able to see
favorable aspects of other people.
iv) Accuracy in perceiving others is not a single skill.
These four characteristics greatly influence how a person
perceives other into the environmental situation.

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 2. The Target :
• Characteristics in the target that is being observed can affect what is
perceived. Physical appearance plays a big role in our perception of
others. Extremely attractive or unattractive individuals are more likely to
be noticed in a group than ordinary looking individuals. Motions, sound,
size and other attributes of a target shape the way we see it.
Verbal Communication from targets also affects our perception of them.
Nonverbal communication conveys a great deal of information about the
target. The perceiver deciphers eye contact, facial expressions, body
movements, and posture all in a attempt to form an impression of the
target.

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 3. The Situation:
• The situation in which the interaction between the perceiver and the
target takes place, has an influence on the perceiver's impression of the
target. The strength of the situational cues also affects social perception.
Some situations provide strong cues as to appropriate behavior. In this
situation, we assume that + i.e. individual's behaviors can be accounted
for by the situation, and that it may not reflect the individual's disposition

• Home work
• Impact of perception on behavior

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 Common shorts in judging others
• The shortcuts we use in judging others are frequently valuable: they allow
us to make accurate perceptions rapidly and provide valid data for making
predictions.
• However this thing is not foolproof, can get us into trouble because we
judge on a selective basis.
• the followings are the common shortcuts in judging others:

– Selective perception
– Halo effect
– Contrast Effect
– Stereotyping

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 Common shorts in judging others
Selective perception:
• “The tendency to selectively interpret what one sees on the basis of one’s
interests, background, experience, and attitude.”

• We cannot assimilate all that we observe, we take in bits and pieces. We

don’t choose randomly; rather, we select according to our interest,
background, experience, and attitude.

• Seeing what we want to see, we can draw un wanted conclusions from an

ambiguous situation.
Example: in a company the manager wants all the staffs to come up with
problems and issues of the company. Now 85 percent of them came out
with their own field of work related problems rather than the overall
problem of the company.

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 Common shorts in judging others
Halo Effect:
• We draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single
characteristic, such as intelligence, sociability, or appearance.

• If the observer likes one aspect of something, they will have a positive
predisposition toward everything about it or If the observer dislikes one
aspect of something, they will have a negative predisposition toward
everything about it.

• Example: a person applying for the post of marketing officer doesn’t know
how to wear a tie, manager of that company judges him of not being
capable of becoming a marketing executive in his company. (The manger
is with halo effect)

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 Common shorts in judging others
Contrast Effect:
• The evaluations of person’s characteristics that is affected by comparisons
with other people recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the
same characteristics.

• Example: The interviewers can make distortions in any given candidate’s

evaluation as a result of his or her place in the interview schedule. A
candidate is likely to receive more favorable evaluation if preceded by
average applicants and less favorable evaluation if preceded by strong
applicants. (contrast= vast differences)

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 Common shorts in judging others
Stereotyping:
• Judging someone on the basis of one’s perception of the group to which
that person belongs.

• Example:
“Men aren’t interested in child care”

“Older workers can’t learn new skills”

“Asian immigrants are hardworking and conscientious “

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