9: CHAPTER PERSONALITY, CULTURAL VALUES AND
ABILITY.
Personality the structures and propensities inside a person that explain his or her
characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behaviour; personality reflects what
people are like and creates their social reputation.
Traits recurring trends in peoples responses to their environment.
Cultural Values shared beliefs about desirable end states or modes of conduct in a
given culture that influences the expression of traits.
Ability relatively stable capabilities of people for performing a particular range or
related activities.
BIG 5 TAXONAMY:
Conscientiousness dimension of personality reflecting traits like being dependable,
organized, reliable, ambitious, hardworking, and preserving. Conscientiousness has the
biggest influence on job performance.
Agreeableness dimension of personality reflecting traits like being kind, cooperative,
sympathetic, helpful, courteous, and warm. Agreeable people prioritize communication
striving, which reflects a strong desire to obtain acceptance in personal relationships as a
means of expressing personality
Extraversion dimension of personality reflecting traits like being talkative, sociable,
passionate, assertive, bold, and dominant. These people prioritize status striving, which
reflects a strong desire to obtain power and influence within a social structure as a means
of expressing personality.
Neuroticism dimension of personality reflecting traits like being nervous, moody,
emotional, insecure, jealous, and unstable. These people experience negative affectivity
a dispositional tendency to experience unpleasant moods such as hostility, nervousness,
and annoyance.
Openness to Experience dimension of personality reflecting traits like being curious,
imaginative, creative, complex, refined, and sophisticated. Excel in learning and training
environments, because their curiosity gives them a built-in desire to learn new things.
CULTURAL VALUES
Individualism-collectivism the degree to which a culture has a loosely knit social
framework (individualism) or a tight social framework (collectivism)
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.
Masculinity-Femininity the degree to which a culture values stereotypically male
traits or stereotypically female traits.
Short-Term vs. Long-Term Orientation degree to which a culture stresses values that
are past- and present- oriented or future-oriented.
COGNITIVE ABILITIES
Cognitive Abilities capabilities related to the use of knowledge to make decisions and
solve problems.
Verbal Ability:
Oral Comprehension the ability to understand spoken words sentences
and Written Comprehension the ability to understand written sentences
Oral Expression ability to communicate ideas by speaking.
Written Expression the ability to communicate ideas in writing.
Quantitative Ability:
Number Facility the capability to do simple math operations such as adding
and subtracting.
Mathematical Reasoning the ability to choose and apply formulas to solve
problems that involves numbers.
Reasoning Ability:
Problem Sensitivity the ability to sense that there is or will be a problem.
Deductive Reasoning the ability to solve problems by applying general rules.
Inductive Reasoning the ability to consider several pieces of information and
then reach a more general conclusion regarding how those pieces are related.
Originality the ability to develop clever and novel ways to solve problems.
Spatial Ability:
Spatial Orientation a good understanding of where one is relative to other
things in the environment.
Visualization the ability to imagine how separate things will look if they were
put together in a particular way.
Perceptual Ability:
Speed and Flexibility of Closure the ability tt pick out a pattern of information
quickly in the presence of distractions, even without all the information present.
Perceptual Speed the ability to examine and compare numbers, letters, and
objects quickly.
General Ability the general level of cognitive ability that plays an important role in
determining the more narrow cognitive abilities.
EMOTIONAL ABILITY
Emotional Intelligence a set of abilities related to the understanding and use of
emotions that affect social functioning.
Self-Awareness the ability to recognize and understand the emotions in oneself, as well
as the ability to express them in a natural manner.
Other Awareness the ability to recognize and understand that other people are feeling.
Emotion Regulation the ability to recover quickly from emotional experiences.
Use of Emotions the degree to which people can harness emotions and employee them
to improve their chances of being successful in whatever they are seeking to do
HOW IMPORTANT ARE THESE PERSONAL QUALITIES?
Conscientiousness has the strongest effect on task performance, partly because
conscientious employees have higher levels of motivation than other employees. They are
more self-confident, perceive a clearer linkage between their effort and their
performance, and are more likely to set goals and commit to them.
Conscientiousness Moderate Correlation Job Performance
Conscientiousness Moderate Correlation Organizational Commitment
Across all jobs, smarter employees fulfill the requirements of their job descriptions more
effectively than do less smart employees.
Cognitive Ability Strong Correlation Job Performance
Cognitive Ability Weak Correlation Organizational Commitment