PERSONALITY

INTRODUCTION
DEFINITION OF PERSONALITY
Gordon Allport – “Personality is the dynamic
organization within the individual of those psycho-
physical systems that determine his unique
adjustment to the environment.”

Personality can be defined as the sum total of

ways in which an individual reacts to and
interacts with others.
It is most often described I terms of the
measurable traits a person exhibits.
DETERMINANTS OF PERSONALITY
1. Heredity Factors
 Brain

 Temperament

 Interest

 Motives

 Physical Traits

 Family factors

2. Environment
3. Situational
 PERSONALITY TRAITS
 Enduring characteristics that describe an
individual’s behavior.

 A personality trait can be defined as “an enduring

attribute of a person that appears constantly in a
variety of situations”.
 Two approaches have become popular for
identifying & classifying traits:
1. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
2. The Big Five Model

1. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

It is the most widely used personality assessment
instrument in the world. It is essentially a 100-
question personality test that asks people how
they usually feel or act in particular situations.
 On the basis of the answers individuals give to
the test, they are classified as:
1. Extraverted or Introverted ( E or I )
2. Sensing or Intuitive ( S or N )
3. Thinking or Feeling ( T or F )
4. Judging or Perceiving ( J or P )

On the basis of these four characteristics, people

are classified into 1 to 16 personality types.
 Extraverted or Introverted
 Extraverted individuals are outgoing, sociable
and assertive.
 Introverts are quiet and shy.

Sensing or Intuitive
 Sensing types are practical and prefer routine
and order.
 They focus on details.
 Intuitives rely on unconscious processes and look
at the “big picture”.
 Judging or Perceiving
 Judging types want control and prefer their world
to be ordered and structured.
 Perceiving types are flexible and spontaneous.

Thinking versus Feeling

 Thinking types use reason and logic to handle

problems.
 Feeling types rely on their personal values and

emotions.
These classifications together describe 16
personality types. For e.g. INTJs are visionaries.
They usually have original minds and great drive
for their own ideas and purposes.
 THE BIG FIVE MODEL
 Some researchers support that five basic
dimensions underlie all others and encompass
most of the significant variation in human
personality. The big five factors are :
 Extraversion
 Agreeableness
 Conscientiousness
 Emotional Stability
 Openness to experience
Extraversion
 Extraverts tend to be gregarious, assertive
and sociable.
 Introverts tend to reserved, timid and quiet.

Agreeableness
 It refers to an individual’s propensity to defer

to others.
 Highly agreeable people are cooperative,

warm & trusting.

Conscientiousness
 It is a measure of reliability.
 A highly conscientious person is responsible,

organized, dependable and persistent.

 Low scorers are easily distracted, disorganized

and unreliable.
Emotional Stability
 It taps a person’s ability to withstand stress.

 Positive emotional stability- calm, self-confident

and secure.
 High negative emotional stability- nervous,

anxious, depressed and insecure.

Openness to Experience

 It addresses range of interests and

fascinations with novelty.
 Extremely open people are creative, curious
and artistically sensitive.
 Others are conventional and find comfort in
familiar.
 https://www.16personalities.com/free-
personality-test
 Personality Attributes Relevant to
Organizational Behavior
1. Core Self-Evaluation
2. Self-Monitoring
3. Proactive Personality

 Locus of Control  
 Risk Taking
 Type A Personality
 The Dark Triad

 Machiavellianism
 Narcissism
 Psychopathy
 Core Self-Evaluation
 Bottom-line conclusions individuals have
about their capabilities, competence, and
worth as a person.
 People with positive core self-evaluations
perform better than others because they set
more ambitious goals, are more committed to
their goals, and persist longer in attempting to
reach these goals.
 Self-Monitoring
 Self-monitoring refers to the ability of an individual
to adapt his behavior to the demands of the
situation.
 High self-monitors are capable of changing their
behavior according to the situation. They can play
multiple and even contradictory roles.They make
successful managers and tend to get promoted
faster than others.
 low self-monitors find it difficult to disguise their
true feelings, emotions and reactions and cannot
adapt quickly to situations.
 Proactive Personality
 Those with a proactive personality identify
opportunities, show initiative, take action, and
persevere until meaningful change occurs,
compared to others who passively react to
situations.

 Proactives create positive change in their

environment, regardless of, or even in spite of,
constraints or obstacles.
 The Dark Triad
Machiavellianism
Machiavellianism (Mach) refers to the degree to

which an individual is practical in his approach,

maintains an emotional distance from others, and
believes that ends justify the means.
Research has revealed that individuals who

score high on Mach are good at manipulating

others and try to win by any means.
They are especially productive in jobs that

require the use of bargaining (persuasion) skills

and in jobs that offer substantial rewards for the
achievement of goals.
 The personality characteristic of
Machiavellia (often abbreviated Mach ) is
named after Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote
in the sixteenth century on how to gain and
use power.
 Narcissism
 The term is from the Greek myth of Narcissus, a
man so vain and proud he fell in love with his own
image.
 In psychology, narcissism describes a person
who has a grandiose sense of self-importance,
requires excessive admiration, has a sense of
entitlement, and is arrogant.
 Evidence suggests that narcissists are more
charismatic and thus more likely to emerge as
leaders, and they may even display better
psychological health (at least as they self-report).
 Despite having some advantages, most
evidence suggests that narcissism is
undesirable. A study found that while narcissists
thought they were better leaders than their
colleagues, their supervisors actually rated them
as worse.

 An Oracle executive described that company’s

CEO Larry Ellison as follows: “The difference
between God and Larry is that God does not
believe he is Larry.”
 Psychopathy
 The tendency for a lack of concern for others
and a lack of guilt or remorse when their
actions cause harm.
 Locus of Control
 The locus of control refers to an individual’s perception of
what controls his or her fate.
 It refers to the degree to which people believe that they
can control their fate or any situation.

a. INTERNAL LOCUS OF CONTROL

 Some people believe that they are masters of their own

fate, these are known as internals, attribute an internal
locus of control to organizational outcomes.

b. EXTERNAL LOCUS OF CONTROL

 Some believe that their fate is controlled by luck,

chance or external forces. The are known as
externals, attribute an external locus of control to
organizational outcomes.
 Research conducted on internals and externals
revealed some interesting facts. It was found that
externals were dissatisfied with their jobs, showed
little commitment to work and were frequently absent
from work. Internals, however, were committed to
their work, had a low rate of absenteeism, and were
highly satisfied with their job.
 Risk Taking
 This refers to the extent to which an individual is
prepared to take risks.
 People who are highly risk-taking in their behavior
make decisions quickly without searching for much
information.
 Risk-averse people do not make decisions in a
hurry and gather a lot of information before making
any decision.
 However, research has indicated that the accuracy
of decisions made by both risk-taking and risk-
averse people is almost the same.
 Type A Personality
 Individuals who strive continuously to achieve more things
in less time, even in the face of opposition, are said to
have a Type A personality. Some of the characteristics of
people with Type A personalities are given below:
 They try to be fast in everything they do, whether it is
eating, talking, walking, etc.
 The pace at which things generally happen upsets them.
 They try to be involved in more than one thing at a time.
 They are always busy and find themselves unable to cope
with leisure time.
  They emphasize numbers and quantity and measure their
success in quantitative terms (e.g. amount of output
produced, number of products sold, etc.) 
 Type B Personality
 The characteristics of Type B personalities are
described below:
 They do not experience a sense of urgency when
carrying out tasks and do not get upset or
impatient if the tasks are not accomplished within
the specified time.
 They do not consider it necessary to reveal or
discuss their achievements unless the situation
demands it.
 They try to make the best use of their leisure time
and relax without any feeling of guilt.
 Since Type A individuals are hardworking by
nature, they are suitable for jobs that call for
continuous hard work and struggle such as the job
of a salesperson or a business development
executive.
 Type B individuals, however, are suitable for the
top management positions in an organization since
they tend to be wise, tactful and creative in making
decisions.
THANK YOU