LESSON 3 - PERSONALITY

When we talk of personality, we don’t mean that a person has charm, a positive attitude toward life, a smiling face, or is a finalist for
“Happiest and friendliest”. When psychologists talk of personality, they mean a dynamic concept describing the growth and
development of a person’s whole psychological system.

It is most often described in terms of measurable traits. The most frequently used definition of personality was produced by Gordon
Allport more than 60 years ago. He said personality is "the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems
that determine his unique adjustments to his environment. Personality is the sum total of ways in which an individual reacts and
interacts with other people.

DTERMINANTS OF PERSONALITY

1. Biological Factors
2. Cultural Factors
3. Family Factors
4. Social Factors
5. Situational Factors
Are personality Traits cause by genes?

PERSONALITY DETERMINANTS An early argument in personality research was whether an individual's personality was the result of
heredity or of environment. Was the personality predetermined at birth, or was it the result of the individual's interaction with his or her
environment? Clearly, there is no simple answer. Personality appears to be a result of both influences. In addition, today we recognize
a third factor-the situation. Thus, an adult's personality is now generally considered to be made up of both hereditary and
environmental factors, moderated by situational conditions.

Heredity
• Refers to those factors that were determined at conception. Physical stature, facial attractiveness, gender, temperament, muscle
composition and reflexes, energy level, and biological rhythms are characteristics that are generally considered to be either
completely or substantially influenced by who your parents were, that is, by their biological, physiological, and inherent
psychological makeup.
• The heredity approach argues that the ultimate explanation of an individual's personality is the molecular structure of the genes,
located in the chromosomes

Three different streams of research lend some credibility to the argument that heredity plays an important part in determining
an individual's personality.
1. The first looks at the genetic underpinnings of human behavior and temperament among young children.
2. The second addresses the study of twins who were separated at birth.
3. The third examines the consistency in job satisfaction over time and across situations.

Recent studies of young children lend strong support to the power of heredity. Evidence demonstrates that traits such as shyness, fear,
and distress are most likely caused by inherited genetic characteristics. This finding suggests that some personality traits may be built
into the same genetic code that affects factors such as height and hair color.

Researchers have studied more than 100 sets of identical twins who were separated at birth and raised separately. If heredity played
little or no part in determining personality, you would expect to find few similarities between the separated twins. But the researchers
found a lot in common. For almost every behavioral trait, a significant part of the variation between the twins turned out to be
associated with genetic factors.
For instance, one set of twins who had been separated for 39 years and raised 45 miles apart were found to drive the same model and
color car, chain-smoked the same brand of cigarette, owned dogs with the same name, and regularly vacationed within three blocks of
each other in a beach community 1,500 miles away. Researchers have found that genetics accounts for about 50 percent of the
personality differences and more than 30 per cunt of the variation in occupational and leisure interests.

Further support for the importance of heredity can be found in studies of individual job satisfaction, which we discussed in
the previous chapter. Individual job satisfaction is found to be remarkably stable over time. This result is consistent with what
you would expect if satisfaction is determined by something inherent in the person rather than by external environmental factors, if
personality characteristics were completely dictated by heredity, they would be fixed at birth and no amount of experience could alter
them. If you were relaxed and easygoing as a child, for example that would be the result of your genes, and it would not be possible for
you to change those characteristics.

Environment
Among the factors that exert pressures on our personality formation are the culture in which we are raised, our early conditioning, the
norms among our family, friends, and social groups, and other influences that we experience. The environment to which we are
exposed plays a substantial role in shaping our personalities.

For example, culture establishes the norms, attitudes, and values that are passed along from one generation to the next and create
consistencies over time. An ideology that is intensely fostered in one culture may have only moderate influence in another. For
instance, North Americans have had the themes of industriousness, success, competition, independence, and the Protestant work ethic
constantly instilled in them through books, the school system, family, and friends.

Situation: A third factor, the situation, influences the effects of heredity and environment on personality. An individual's personality,
although generally stable and consistent, does change in different situations. The varying demands of different situations call forth
different aspects of one's personality.

It seems only logical to suppose that situations will influence an individual's personality, but a neat classification scheme that would tell
us the Impact of various types of situations has so far eluded us. "Apparently we are not yet close to developing a system for clarifying
situations so that they might be systematically studied. However, we do know that certain situations are more relevant than others in
influencing personality,

What is of interest taxonomically is that situations seem to differ substantially in the constraints they impose on behavior. Some
situations (e.g., church, an employment interview) constrain many behaviors; other situations (e.g., a picnic in a public park) constrain
relatively few.

PERSONALITY TRAITS
The early work in the structure of personality revolved around attempts to identity and label enduring characteristics that describe an
individual's behavior Popular characteristics include shyness, aggressiveness, submissiveness, laziness ambition, loyalty, and timidity.
These characteristics, when they are exhibited in a large number of situations, are called personality traits. The more consistent the
characteristic and the more frequently it occurs in diverse situations, the more important that trait is in describing the individual.

Early Search for Primary Traits Efforts to isolate traits have been hindered because there are so many of them. In one study, 17,953
individual traits were identified. It is virtually impossible to predict behavior when such a large number of traits must be taken into
account. As a result, attention has been directed toward reducing these thousands to a more manageable number.

Myers-Briggs Sixteen Primary Traits

1. Reserved vs. Outgoing

2. Less intelligent vs. More intelligent
3. Affected by feelings vs. Emotionally stable
4. Submissive vs. Dominant
5. Serious vs. Happy-go-lucky
 6. Expedient vs. Conscientious
7. Timid vs. Venturesome
8. Tough-minded vs. Sensitive
9. Trusting vs. Suspicious
10. Practical vs. Imaginative
11. Forthright vs. Shrewd
12. Self-assured vs. Apprehensive
13. Conservative vs. Experimenting
14. Group dependent vs. Self-sufficient
15. Uncontrolled vs. Controlled
16. Relaxed vs. Tense
The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become. -
Heraclitus

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

A personality test that taps four characteristics and classifies people into 1 to 16 personality types.

Personality Types:
• Extroverted vs. Introverted (E or I)
• Sensing vs. Intuitive (S or N)
• Thinking vs. Feeling (T or F)
• Judging vs Perceiving (P or J)
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator One of the most widely used personality Frameworks is called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(MBTI)." It is essentially a 100-question personality test that asks people how they usually feel or act in particular situations.

These types are different from the 16 primary traits, let's take several examples INT ally have original minds and great drive for their
own ideas and purposes are visionaries.

They are characterized as skeptical, critical, independent, determined and often stubborn ESTIs are organizers. They are
realistic logical, analytical, decisive, and have a natural head for business or mechanics.

They like to organize and run activities. The INTP type is a conceptualizer. He or she is innovative individualistic versatile, and
attracted to entrepreneurial ideas.

The Big Five Model MBTI may lack valid supporting evidence, but that can't be said for the five-factor model of personality --more
typically called the Big Five." In recent years, an impressive body of research supports that five basic di bensons underlies all others
and encompass most of the significant variation in human personality.

The Big Five factors

1. Extraversion. This dimension captures one's comfort level with relationships. Extraverts tend to be gregarious assertive, and
sociable. Introverts tend to be reserved, timid, and quiet.

2. Agreeableness. This dimension refers to an individual's propensity to defer to others. Highly agreeable people are cooperative,
warm, and trusting. People who score low on agreeableness are cold, disagreeable, and antagonistic.

3. Conscientiousness. This dimension is a measure of reliability. A highly corc entious person is responsible organized, dependable
and persistent. Those who Score low on this dimension are easily distracted, disorganized, and unreliable.

4. Emotional stability. This dimension taps a person's ability to withstand stress. People with positive emotional stability tend to be
calm, self-confident, and secure those with highly negative scores tend to be nervous, anxious, depressed, and insecure.

5. Openness to experience. The final dimension addresses an individual's range of interests and fascinations with novelty
Extremely open people are Creative, curious and artistically sensitive. Those at the other end of the openness category are
conventional and find comfort in the familiar.

For the other personality dimensions, predictability depended upon both the performance criterion and the occupational group. For
stance, extraversion predicted performance in managerial and sales positions. This finding makes sense since these occupations
involve high social interaction. Similarly, openness to experience was found to be important in predicting training proficiency, which, too,
seems logical. What wasn't so clear was why positive emotional stability wasn't related to job performance.
Bill Gates co-founder and chairman of Microsoft would score high on the conscientiousness dimension of the Big Five model. His
success stems from his personality an intense drive to succeed, persistence, personality, brilliant intellect and competitiveness. Gates’s
personality has influenced the cultured success of Microsoft and made him the most famous business celebrity in the world.

MAJOR PERSONALITY ATTRIBUTES INFLUENCING OB

In this section, we want to evaluate more carefully specific personality attribute that have been found to be powerful predictors of
behavior in organizations. The first is related to where a person perceives the locus of control to be in his or life. The others are
Machiavellianism, self-esteem, self-monitoring, propensity for risk taking, and Type A personality. In this section, we shall briefly
introduced these attributes and summarize what we know about their ability to explain and predict employee behavior.

Locus of control
• The degree to which people believe they are masters of their own life.
• Internals - Individuals who believe that they control what happens to them.
• Externals - Individuals who believe that what happens to them is controlled by outside forces such as luck or chance.

Other people see themselves as pawns of fate, believing that what happens to them in their lives is due to luck or chance. The first
type, those who believe that they control their destinies, have been labelled internals, whereas the latter, who see their lives as being
controlled by outside forces, have been called externals. A person's perception of the source of his or her fate is termed locus of
control. A large amount of research comparing internals with externals has consistently shown that individuals who have high scores in
externality are less satisfied with their jobs, have higher absenteeism rates, are more alienated from the work setting, and are less
involved on their jobs than are internals.

Why are externals more dissatisfied? The answer is probably because they perceive themselves as having little control over those
organizational outcomes that are important to them. Internals, facing the same situation, attribute organizational outcomes to their own
actions. If the situation is unattractive, they be believe that they have no one else to blame but themselves. Also, the dissatisfied
internal is more likely to quit a dissatisfying job.

The impact of locus of control on absence is an interesting one. Internals believe that health is substantially under their own control
through proper habits, so they take more responsibility for their health and have better health habits. Consequently, their incidences of
sickness and, hence, of absenteeism are lower.

We shouldn't expect any clear relationship between locus of control and turnover because there are opposing forces at work. "On the
one hand, internals tend to take action and thus might be expected to quit jobs more readily. On the other hand, they tend to be more
successful on the job and more satisfied, factors associated with less individual turnover.
Machiavellianism
 • A personality trait that us characterized with the use of manipulation to achieve power.
• The personality characteristic of Machiavellianism (Mach) Named after Niccolò
• Machiavelli, who wrote in the sixteenth century on how to gain and use power.
• An individual high in Machiavellianism is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes that ends can justify means. "If
it works, use it is consistent with a high-Mach perspective.
• Machiavelli, who wrote in the sixteenth century on how to gain and use power. An individual high in Machiavellianism is
pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes that ends can justify means. "If it works, use it is consistent with a high-
Mach perspective

A considerable amount of research has been directed toward relating high and low Mach personalities to certain behavioral outcomes."
High Machs manipulate more, win more, are persuaded less, and persuade others more than do low Machs. Yet these high-Mach
outcomes are moderated by situational factors. It has been found that high Machs flourish (1) when they interact face-to-face with
others rather than indirectly; (2) when the situation has a minimum number of rules and regulations, thus allowing latitude for
improvisation; and (3) when emotional involvements with details irrelevant to winning distract low Machs.

Should we conclude that high Machs make good employees? That answer depends on the type of job and whether you consider
ethical implications in evaluating performance. In jobs that require bargaining skills (such as labor negotiation) or that offer substantial
rewards for winning (as in commissioned sales), high Machs will be productive. But if ends can't justify the means, if there are absolute
standards of behavior, or if the three situational factors noted in the preceding paragraph are not in evidence, our ability to predict a
high Mach's performance will be severely curtailed.

Self-Esteem. People differ in the degree to which they like or dislike themselves. This trait is called self-esteem. The research on self-
esteem (SE) offers some interesting insights into organizational behavior. For example, self-esteem is directly related to expectations
for success. High SEs believe that they possess the ability they need in order to succeed at work.
Individuals with high self-esteem will take more risks in job selection and are more likely choose unconventional jobs than people with
low-esteem.
Not surprisingly, self-esteem has also been found to be related to job satisfaction. A number of studies confirm that high SEs are more
satisfied with their jobs than are low SES.

Self-Monitoring
• A personality trait that has recently received increased attention is called self-monitoring. It refers to an individual's ability to adjust
his or her behavior to external, situational factors.
• Individuals high in self-monitoring show considerable adaptability in adjusting their behavior to external situational factors. They are
highly sensitive external cues and can behave differently in different situations. High self monitors are capable of presenting striking
contradictions between their public persona and their private self. Low self-monitors can't disguise themselves in that way. They
tend to display their true dispositions and attitudes in every situation; hence, there is high behavioral consistency between who they
are and what they do.
• A personality trait that measures an individual's ability to adjust his or her behavior to external, situational factors.

The research on self- monitoring is in its infancy, so predictions must be guarded. However, preliminary evidence suggests that high
selfmonitors tend to pay closer attention to the behavior of others and are more capable of conforming than are low self-
monitors. In addition, high self-monitoring managers tend to be more mobile in their careers and receive more promotions (both
internal and crossorganizational)." We might also hypothesize that high self-monitors will be more successful in managerial positions
in which individuals are required to play multiple, and even contradicting, roles. The high self-monitor is capable of putting on different
"faces" for different audiences.

Risk Taking Donald Trump stands out for his willingness to take risks. He started with almost nothing in the 1960s. By the mid-1980s,
he had made a fortune by betting on a resurgent New York City real estate market. Then, trying to capitalize on his previous
successes, Trump overextended himself. By 1994, he had a negative net worth of $850 million. Never fearful of taking chances, "The
Donald" leveraged the few assets he had left on several New York, New Jersey, and Caribbean real estate ventures. He hit it big again.
By 1999, FoRbes estimated his net worth at over $2 billion.

People differ in their willingness to take chances. This propensity to assume or avoid risk has been shown to have an impact on how
long it takes managers to make a decision and how much information they require before making their choice. For instance, 79
managers worked on simulated personnel exercises that required them to make hiring decisions.
While it is generally correct to conclude that managers in organizations are risk averse, there are still individual differences on this
dimension. For instance, a high risk-taking propensity may lead to more effective performance for a stock trader in a brokerage firm
because that type of job demands rapid decision making.
LESSON 4 – EMOTIONS

On one recent Friday, a 37-year-old U.S. postal worker in Milwaukee walked into his place of work. He pulled out a gun
and shot and killed a co-worker with whom he had argued, wounded a supervisor who had scolded him, and injured
another worker. He then killed himself." For this worker, anger had led to violence.
Going on a shooting rampage at work is an extreme example but it does dramatically illustrate the theme of this
section: Emotions are a critical factor in employee behavior.
Given the obvious role that emotions play in our everyday life, it might surprise you to learn that, until very recently, the
topic of emotions had been given little or no attention within the field of OB. How could this be?

We can offer two possible explanations. The first is the myth of rationality. Since the late nineteenth century and the
rise of scientific management, organizations have been specifically designed with the objective of trying to control
emotions. A well-run organization was one that successfully eliminated frustration, fear, anger, love, hate, joy, grief,
and similar feelings. Such emotions were the antithesis of rationality.
So while researchers and managers knew that emotions were an inseparable part of everyday life, they tried to create
organizations that were emotion free. The second factor that acted to keep emotions out of OB was the belief that
emotions of any kind were disruptive. When emotions were considered, Emotions were rarely viewed as being
constructive or able to stimulate performance-enhancing behaviors.

Certainly some emotions, particularly when exhibited at the wrong time, can reduce employee performance. But this
doesn't change the reality that employees bring an emotional component with them to work every day and that no
study of OB could be comprehensive without considering the role of emotions in workplace behavior.
"People work hard, but they have a good time. We are allowed to let our personalities show," says Mary Ann Adams,
project director at Southwest Airlines. Southwest uses the person-organization fit during its selective hiring process.
During interviews, applicants must prove that they have a sense of humor.

WHAT ARE EMOTIONS?

Although we don't want to obsess analysis, we need to clarity three terms that are closely intertwined. These are affect,
emotions, and moods.

Affect is a generic term that covers a broad range of feelings that people experience. It's an umbrella concept that
encompasses both emotions and moods.
Emotions are intense feelings that are directed at someone or something.
Moods are feelings that tend to be less intense than emotions and that lack a contextual stimulus.

Emotions are reactions to an object, not a trait. They're object specific. You show your emotions when you're happy
about something. angry at someone afraid of something. Moods, on the other hand, aren't directed at an object.
Emotions can turn into moods when you lose focus on the contextual object. So when a work colleague criticizes you for
the way you spoke to a client, you might become angry at him. That is you show emotion (anger) toward a specific object
dispirited. You can't attribute this feeling to any single event: you're just not your normal, upbeat self. This affective state
describes a mood.
A related behavior term that is gaining increasing importance in organizational be is emotional labor. Every employee
expends physical and mental labor when they put their bodies and cognitive capabilities, respectively, into their job. But
most jobs also require emotional labor. This is when an employee expresses organizationally desired emotions during
interpersonal transactions." The concept of emotional labor originally developed in relation to service jobs Airline flight
attendants, for instance, are expected to be cheerful, funeral coin selors sad, and doctors emotionally neutral But today
the concept of emotional labor seems relevant to almost every job You're expected, for example, to be courteous and
not hostile in interactions with co-workers.

FELT VERSUS DISPLAYED EMOTIONS

Felt Emotions
- The individual’s actual emotions
Displayed Emotions

- The learned emotions that the organization requires workers to show and considers appropriate in a given job
o Surface acting – hiding one’s true emotions

o Deep acting – trying to change one’s feelings based on display rules

Emotional labor creates dilemmas for employees when their job requires them to exhibit emotions that are incongruous
with their actual feelings Not surprisingly, this is a frequent occurrence.

There are people at work with whom you find it very difficult to be friendly: Maybe you consider their personality
abrasive. Maybe you know they've said negative things about you behind your back.

They're not Innate: they're learned "The ritual look of delight on the face of the font runner-up as the new Miss America
is announced is a product of the display rule that losers should mask their sadness with an expression of 10 for the
winners
Effective managers have learned to be serious when giving an employee a negative performance evaluation and to
cover up their anger when they've been passed over for promotion. And the salesperson who hasn't learned to smile
and appear friendly, regardless of his or her true feelings at the moment, isn't typically going to last long on most sales
jobs.

The key point here is that I felt and displayed emotions are often different. In fact, many people have problems working
with others simply because they naively assume that the emotions they see others display is what those others actually
feel.

EMOTION DIMENSIONS

How many emotions are there? In what ways do they vary? We'll answer these questions in this section.

1. Variety There have been numerous efforts to limit and define the fundamental or basic set of emotions.
Research had identified six universal emotions:

1. Anger
2. Fear
3. Sadness
4. Happiness
5. Disgust
6. Surprise
We might be the master of own thoughts, still we are the slaves of our own emotions.
One factor that has strongly shaped what is and isn't listed in this basic set is the manner in which emotions were
identified. Researchers tended to look for universally identified facial expressions and then convert them into categories.
Emotions that couldn't be readily identified by others through facial expressions, or which were considered a subset of
one of the basic six, were not selected.
The closer any two emotions are to each other on this $7 continuum, the more people are likely to confuse them. For
instance, happiness and surprise are frequently mistaken for each other, while happiness and disgust are rarely
confused.
Do these six basic emotions surface in the workplace? Absolutely. I get angry after receiving a poor performance
appraisal. I fear that I could be laid off as result of a company cutback. I'm sad about one of my co-workers leaving to
take new job in another city. I'm happy after being selected as employee-of the month.

2. Intensity People give different responses to identical emotion-provoking stimuli. In some cases this can be attributed
to the individual's personality. People vary in their inherent ability to express intensity. You undoubtedly know
individuals who almost never show their feelings. They rarely get angry They never show rage. In contrast, you
probably also know people who seem to be on an emotional roller coaster. When they're happy, their ecstatic. When
they're sad, they're deeply depressed.

Jobs make different intensity demands in terms of emotional labor. For instance, air traffic controllers and trial
judges are expected to be calm and controlled, even in stressful situations.

3. Frequency and Duration. How often does an emotion need to be exhibited? And for how long?
Sean Wolfson is basically a quiet and reserved person. He loves his job as financial planner. He doesn't enjoy, however,
having to give occasional speeches in order to increase his visibility and to promote his programs. "If I had to speak to
large audiences every day, I'd quit this business," he says. "I think this works for me because I can fake excitement and
enthusiasm for an hour, a couple of times a month."

Emotional labor that requires high frequency or long durations is more demanding and requires more exertion by
employees. So whether an employee ca successfully meet the emotional demands of a given job depends not only which
emotions need to be displayed and their intensity, but also how frequently and for how long the effort has to be made.

CAN PEOPLE BE EMOTIONLESS?

Are people who seem outwardly calm or apathetic in situations, in which other are clearly emotionally charged, without
feeling? Can people be emotionless?
Some people have severe difficulty in expressing their emotions and understanding the emotions of others.
Psychologists call this alexithymia (which is Greek for "lack of emotion"). People who suffer from alexithymia rarely cry
and are often seen by others as bland and cold. Their own feelings make them discomfort able, and they're not able to
discriminate among their different emotions.
Does this inability to express emotions and read others mean that people who suffer from alexithymia are poor work
performers? Not necessarily. Consistent with our discussion on matching personality types with appropriate jobs, people
who lack emotion need to be in jobs that require little or no emotional labor. These people are not well suited to sales
and managerial positions.
Lesson 5 – GENDER AND EMOTIONS
GENDER AND EMOTIONS
It's widely assumed that women are more "in touch" with their feelings than men-that they react more emotionally
and are better able to read emotions in others. Is there any truth to these assumptions?
The evidence does confirm differences between men and women when it comes to emotional reactions and ability
to read others. In contrasting the genders, women show greater emotional expression than men; they experience
emotions more intensely, and they display more frequent expressions of both positive and negative emotions, except
anger. In contrast to men, women also report more comfort in expressing emotions. Finally, women are better at
nonverbal and paralinguistic cues than are men.
One explanation is the different ways men and women have been socialized. Men are taught to be tough and
brave; and showing emotion is inconsistent with this image. Women, on the other hand are friendlier than men. For
instance, women are expected to express more positive emotions on the job (shown by smiling) than men, and they do. A
second explanation is that women may have more innate ability to read others and present their emotions than do men.
Third, women may have a greater need for social approval and, thus, a higher propensity to show positive emotions such
as happiness.
Reading Emotions
Understanding another person's felt emotions is a very difficult task. But we can learn to read others displayed
emotions. We do this by focusing on verbal, nonverbal, and paralinguistic cues.
The easiest way to find out what someone’s feeling is to ask them. Saying something as simple as "Are you OK!
What's the problem?" can frequently provide you with the information to assess an individual's emotional state but relying
on a verbal response has two drawbacks:
First, almost all of us conceal our emotions to some extent for privacy and reflect to social expectations. So we
might be unwilling to share our true feelings. Second, if we want to verbally convey our feelings, we may be unable to do
so.
As we've noted previously, some people have difficulty understanding their own emotions and hence, are un- able
to verbally express them. So, at best, verbal responses provide only partial information.
You're talking with a co-worker. Does the fact that his back is rigid, his teeth clenched, and his facial muscles
ought tell you something about his emotional State? It probably should, facial expressions, gestures, body movements,
and physical distance are nonverbal cues that can provide additional insights into what a person is feeling. Notice the
difference in facial features the height of the cheeks, the raising or lowering of the brow, the turn of the mouth, the
positioning of the lips. and the configuration of the muscles around the eyes. Even something as subtle as the distance
someone chooses to position himself or herself from you can convey their feelings, or lack thereof, of intimacy, ag
aggressiveness, repugnance, or withdrawal.
Women show greater emotional expression than men and experience emotions more intensely.

EXTERNAL CONSTRAINTS ON EMOTIONS

An emotion that is acceptable on the athletic playing field is acceptable when exhibited at the workplace. Similarly,
what's appropriate in a country is often inappropriate in another. These facts illustrate the role that internal constraints play
shaping displayed emotions. Every organization defines boundaries that identify what emotions are acceptable and the
degree to which they can be expressed. The same applies in the different cultures. In this section, we look at
organizational and cultural influences on emotions:
The foregoing examples illustrate the need to consider cultural factors as inti fencing what is or isn't considered as
emotionally appropriate. What's acceptable in one culture may seem extremely unusual or even dysfunctional in another.
A cultures differ in terms of the interpretation they give to emotions.
 There tends to be high agreement on what emotions mean within cultures but not between. For instance, one
study asked Americans to match facial expressions with the six basic emotions. The range of agreement was between 86
and 98 percent. When a group of Japanese was given the same task, they correctly la beled only surprise (with 97
percent agreement). On the other five emotions, their accuracy ranged from only 27 to 70 percent. In addition, studies
indicate that some cultures lack words for such standard emotions as anxiety, depression, or guilt. Tahitians, as a case in
point, don't have a word directly equivalent to sad ness, When Tahitians are sad their peers typically attribute their state to
a physical illness.
OB APPLICATIONS
We conclude our discussion of emotions by considering their application to several topics in OB. In this section,
we assess how a knowledge of emotions can help you to better understand the selection process in organizations,
decision making, motivation, leadership, interpersonal conflict, and deviant workplace behaviors.
Ability and Selection
People who know their own emotions and are good at reading others' emotions may be more effective in their
jobs. That, in essence, is the theme underlying recent research on emotional intelligence."
Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to an assortment of non-cognitive skills, capabilities, and competencies that
Influence a person's ability to succeed in coping with environmental demands and pressures. It's composed of
five dimensions:

1. Self-awareness – The ability to be aware of what you’re feeling.

2. Self-management – The ability to manage one’s own emotions and impulses
3. Self-motivation – The ability to persist in the face of setbacks and failures.
4. Empathy – The ability to sense how others are feeling.
5. Social skills – The ability to handle the emotions of othes.
Several studies suggest El may play an important role in job performance. For instance, one study looked at the
characteristics of Bell Lab engineers who were rated as stars by their peers. The scientists concluded that stars were
better at relating to others. That is, it was EI, not academic IQ, that characterized high performers. A second study of Air
Force recruiters generated similar findings. Top performing recruiters exhibited high levels of El. Using these findings, the
Air Force revamped its selection criteria. A follow-up investigation found that future hires who had high El scores were 2.6
times more successful than those who didn't. A recent poll of human resource managers asked: How important is it for
your workers to demonstrate EI to move up the corporate ladder? Forty percent replied "very important." Another 16
percent said "moderately important."
 The implications from the initial evidence on El is that employers should consider it as a factor in selection,
especially in jobs that demand a high degree of social interaction.
Decision Making
As you'll see in our next weekly lessons, traditional approach to the study of decision making in organizations
have emphasized rationality. They have downplayed, or even ignored, the role of anxiety, fear, frustration, doubt,
happiness, excitement, and similar emotions. Yet it's naive to assume that decision choices aren't influenced by one's
feelings at a particular moment. Given the same objective data, we should expect that people may make different choices
when they're angry and stressed out than when they're calm and collected.
Negative emotions can result in a limited search for new alternatives and a less vigilant use of information. On the
other hand, positive emotions can increase problem solving and facilitate the integration of information." You can improve
your understanding of decision making by considering "the heart" as well as the head." People use emotions as well as
rational and intuitive processes in making decisions. Failure to incorporate emotions into the study of decision processes
will result in an incomplete (and often inaccurate) view of the process.
Emotional Intelligence - an assortment of non-cognitive skills, capabilities, and competencies that influence a person's
ability to succeed in coping with environmental demands and pressures.
Motivation
We'll discuss motivation thoroughly in the next chapters. At this point, we want to merely introduce the idea that,
like decision making, the dominant approaches to the study of motivation reflect an over rationalized view of individuals.
Motivation theories basically propose that individuals are motivated to the extent that their behavior is expected to
lead to desired outcomes. The image is that of rational exchange: the employee essentially trades effort for pay, security,
promotions, and so forth. But people aren't cold, unfeeling machines. Their perceptions and calculations of situations are
filled with emotional content that significantly influences how much effort they exert. Moreover, when you see people who
are highly motivated in their jobs, they're emotionally committed. People who are engaged in their work become
physically, cognitively, and emotionally immersed in the experience of activity, in the pursuit of a goal.
Are all people emotionally engaged in their work? No! But many are. And if we focus only on rational calculations of
inducements and contributions, we fail to be able to explain behaviors such as the individual who forgets to have dinner
and works late into the night, lost in the thrill of her work.
LEADERSHIP-The ability to lead others is a fundamental quality sought by organizations. For this module, we briefly
introduce how emotions can be an integral part of leadership.
Effective leaders almost all rely on the expression of feelings to help convey their messages. In fact, the
expression of emotions in speeches is often the critical clement that results in individuals accepting or rejecting a leader's
message. "When leaders feel excited, enthusiastic, and active, they may be more likely to energize their subordinates and
convey a sense of efficacy, competence, optimism, and enjoyment. Politicians, as a case in point, have learned to show
enthusiasm when talking about their chances for winning an election, even when polls suggest otherwise.
Corporate executives know that emotional content is critical if employees are to buy into their vision of their company's
future and accept change. When new visions are offered, especially when contain distant or vague goals, change is often
difficult to accept. So when effective leaders want to implement significant changes, they rely on the evocation, framing,
and mobilization of notions." By arousing emotions and linking them to an appealing vision, leaders increase the likelihood
that managers and employees alike will accept change.
INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT
Few issues are more intertwined with emotions than the topic of interpersonal conflict. Whenever conflicts arise, you can
be fairly certain that emotions are also surfacing. A manager's success in trying to resolve conflicts, in fact, is often largely
due to his or her ability to identify the emotional elements in the conflict and to get the conflicting parties to work through
their emotions. And the manager who ignores the emotional elements in conflicts, focusing singularly on rational and task
concerns, is unlikely to be very effective in resolving the conflicts.
DEVIANT WORKPLACE BEHAVIORS
Negative emotions can lead to a number of deviant workplace behaviors. Anyone who has spent much time in an
organization realizes that people often engage in voluntary actions that violate established norms and that threaten the
organization, its members, or both. These actions are called employee deviance.
EMPLOYEE DEVIANCE
Voluntary actions that violate established norms and that threaten the organization, its members, or both. This fall into
categories such as production (e.g., leaving early, intentionally working slowly); property (c.8., stealing, sabotage); political
(eg. gossiping, blaming co-workers); and personal aggression (e.g., sexual harass- mem, verbal abuse). Many of these
deviant behaviors can be traced to negative emotions. For instance, envy
Envy - an emotion that occurs when you resent someone for loving something that you don't, which you strongly desire. It
can lead to mall serious deviant behaviors. Envy, for example, has been found to be associated with hostility,
"backstabbing" and other forms of political behavior, negatively distort others’ successes, and positively distorting one's
own accomplishments.
SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGERS
PERSONALITY
A review of the personality literature offers general guidelines effective job performance. As such, it can improve
hiring, transfer, and promotion decisions. Because personality characteristics create the parameters for people
behavior, they give us a framework for predicting behavior. For example, individuals who are shy, introverted,
and uncomfortable in social situations would probably be ill-suited as salespeople. Individuals who are
submissive and conforming might not be effective as advertising "idea" people.
Can we predict which high performers in sales, research, can lead people to work on the basis of their personality
characteristics alone? The answer is No. Personality assessment should be used in conjunction with other in formation as
skills, abilities, and experience. But a knowledge of an individual's personality can aid in reducing mismatches, which in
turn, can lead to reduced turnover and higher job satisfaction.
We can look at certain personality characteristics that tend to be related to job success, test for those traits, and use the
data to make selection more effective. A person who accepts rules, conformity, and dependence and rates high
authoritarianism is likely to feel more comfortable in, say, a structured assembly line job, as an admittance clerk in a
hospital, or as an administrator in a large public agency than as a researcher or an employee whose job requires a high
degree of creativity.
EMOTIONS
Can managers control the emotions of their colleagues and employees? No. Emotions are a natural part of an
individual's makeup. Managers err if they ignore the emotional elements in organizational behavior and assess
individual behavior if it were completely rational. As one consultant aptly put it, "You can't divorce emotions from
the workplace because you can't divorce emotions from people. Managers who understand the role of emotions
will significantly improve their ability to explain and predict individual behavior.
Do emotions affect job performance? Yes. They can hinder performance, especially negative emotions. That's probably
why organizations, for the most part try to extract emotions out of the workplace. But emotions can also enhance
performance. How? Two ways:

First, emotions can increase arousal levels, thus acting as motivations to higher performance. Second, emotional
labor recognized that feelings can be part of a job’s required behavior.
So, for instance, the ability to effectively manage emotions in leadership and sales positions may be critical to success in
those positions.
What differentiates functional from dysfunctional emotions at work? While there is no precise answer to this, it's been
suggested that the critical moderating variable is the complexity of the individual's task. The more complex a task, the
lower the level of arousal that can be tolerated without interfering with performance. While a certain minimal level
of arousal is probably necessary for good performance, very high levels Interfere with the ability to function, especially the
job requires calculative and detailed cognitive processes. Given that the trend is toward jobs becoming more complex,
you can see why organizations are like to go to considerable efforts to discourage the overt display of emotions-especially
intense ones-In the workplace.
Traits are Powerful Predictors of Behavior
The essence of trait approaches in OB is that employee possesses stable personality characteristics that
significantly influence their attitudes toward, and behavioral reactions to, organizational settings. People with particular
traits tend to be relatively consistent in their attitudes and behavior over time and across situations. Of course, trait
theorists recognize that all traits are not equally powerful. They tend to put them into one of three categories:
 • Cardinal traits – strong and generalized that they influence every act a person peforms
• Primary traits – generally consistent influences on behavior, but they may not show un up in all situations
• Secondary traits – attributes that do not form a vital part of the personality but come into play only in particular
situations. For the most part, trait theories have focused on the power of primary traits to predict employee
behavior.
Trait theorists do a fairly good job of meeting the average person's face-validity test. Think of friends relatives, and
acquaintances you have known for a number of years. Do they have traits that have remained essentially stable over
time? Most of us would answer that question in the affirmative. If Cousin Anne was shy and nervous when we last saw her
10 years ago, we would be surprised to find her outgoing and relaxed now. Managers seem to have a strong belief in the
power of traits to predict behavior. If managers be lied that situations determined behavior, they would hire people almost
at random and structure the situation properly, But the employee selection process in most organizations places a great
deal of emphasis on how applicants perform in interviews and on tests. Assume you're an interviewer and ask yourself:
What am I looking for in job candidates? If you answered with terms such as conscientious, hardworking persistent,
confident and dependable, you're a trait theorist!
Few people would dispute that there are some stable individual attributes that affect react to the workplace But trait
theorists go beyond that generosity and argue that individual behavior consistencies are widespread and account for
much of the differences in behavior among. There are two important problems with using traits to explain large proportion
of behavior in organizations:

• First, organizational settings are strong situations that have a large impact on employee behavior.
• Second, individuals are highly adaptive and personality traits change in response to organizational situations.
It has been well known for some time that the effects of traits are likely to be strongest in relatively weak situations and
weakest in relatively strong situations. Organizational settings tend to be strongest because they have rules and other
formal regulations that define acceptable behavior and punish deviant behavior; and they have informal norms that dictate
appropriate behaviors. These formal and informal constraints minimize the effects of personality traits. By arguing that
employees possess stable traits that lead to cross-situational consistency in behaviors, trait theorists are implying that
individuals don't really adapt to different situations. But there is a growing body of evidence that an individual's traits are
changed by the organizations in which that individual participates. If the individual's personality changes as a result of
exposure to organizational settings, in what sense can that individual be said to have traits that persistently and
consistently affect his or her reactions to these very settings? Moreover, people typically belong to multiple organizations
that often include very different kinds of members, and they adapt to those different situations. Instead of being the
prisoners of a rigid and stable personality framework, as trait theorists propose, people regularly adjust their behavior to
reflect the requirements of various situations.