Personality

Dr P C Gita
• Personality- Concept; Nature; Types and
Theories on Personality; Shaping Personality,
Attitude and Job Satisfaction.
 Determinants of Individual behaviour
• Personality Perception
• Attitudes, values and ethics
• Motivation Stress & well being
• Team skills & leadership skills
• Communication Decision Making
• Conflict management
• Personality: Enduring characteristics that describe
an individual’s behavior

For psychologists, personality includes:

1. External appearances and behaviour
2. The inner awareness of self as a permanent
organising force, and
3. The organization of measurable traits, both inner
and outer.
 Personality
• Allport said personality is “the dynamic
organization within the individual of those
psychophysical systems that determine his
unique adjustments to his environment.

• The sum total of ways in which an individual

reacts to and interacts with others
• It is described in terms of the measurable traits
a person exhibits
 Personality Determinants
Where does your personality come from?
• Heredity – so we’re born to be “just the way
we are”?
• Environment – oh, so it’s the environment
instead?
• Situation – or is it the situation that determines
our personality??

• So – what determines your personality???

The determinants of personality can perhaps best
be grouped in five broad categories:
• biological,
• cultural,
• family,
• social and
• situational.
 Biological
• Heredity
• Brain
• Bio feedback
• Physical features
 Cultural factors
• Each culture expects, and trains, its members
to behave in ways that are acceptable to the
group
• The culture largely determines attitudes
towards independence, aggression,
competition, cooperation and a host of other
human responses
 Family factors
• Family, and later the social group selects,
interprets and dispenses the culture.
• Family probably has the most significant
impact on early personality development.
• Empirical evidence indicates that the overall
home environment created by the parents, in
addition to their direct influence, is critical to
personality development
 Social factors
• the role of other relevant persons, groups and especially organisations, which greatly influence an individual's
personality.
•

This is commonly called the socialization process.

 Situational factors
• Situation exerts an important press on the
individual.
• It exercises constraints and may provide push.
• In certain circumstances, it is not so much the
kind of person a man is, as the kind of
situation in which he is placed that determines
his actions
• We should therefore not look at personality
patterns in isolation.
THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 Classification of Personality theories
1. Intrapsychic Theory
2. Type Theories
3. Trait Theories, and
4. Self-Theory
 Intrapsychic Theory
• Based on the work of Sigmund Freud,
Intrapsychic theory emphasizes the
unconscious determinants of behaviour.
• Freud saw personality as the interaction
between three elements of personality:
• the id,
• ego, and
• superego
 The elements of personality

• The id is the most primitive element, a primordial

source of drives and impulses that operates in an
uncensored manner.
• The superego, similar to what we know as conscience,
contains values and the "shoulds and should nots" of
the personality.
• There is an ongoing conflict between the id and the
superego.
• The ego serves to manage the conflict between the id
and the superego.
• In this, role, the ego compromises, and the result is the
individual's use of defence mechanisms such as denial
of reality
 Elements in detail - Id

• The id is the only part of the personality that is present

at birth. It is inherited, primitive, inaccessible and
completely unconscious. The id contains:
• (a) The life instincts, which are sexual instincts and the
biological urges such as hunger and thirst, and
• (b) The death instinct, which accounts for our
aggressive and destructive impulses The id operates
according to the pleasure principle, that is, to seek
pleasure, avoid pain Notes and gain immediate
gratification of its wishes. The id is the source of the
libido, the psychic energy that fuels the entire
personality. Yet the id cannot act on its own; it can only
wish, image, fantasize, and demand
 Ego
• The ego is the logical, rational, realistic part of the
personality.
• The ego evolves from the id and draws its energy
from the id.
• One of the functions of the ego is to satisfy the id's
urges.
• But the ego, which is mostly conscious, acts
according to the reality principle.
• It must consider the constraints of the real world
in determining appropriate times, places, and
object for gratification of the id's wishes.
 Superego
• When the child is age 5 or 6 the superego – the
moral component of the personality – is formed.
The superego has two parts:
• (a) The "conscience", consisting of all the
behaviours for which we have been punished and
about which we feel guilty;
• (b) The "ego ideal", containing the behaviours for
which we have been praised and rewarded and
about which we feel pride and satisfaction.
• In its quest for moral perfection, the superego, a
moral guide, sets up signposts that define and limit
the flexibility of ego
Freud’s concept of personality
• Freud saw personality as the interaction
between three elements of personality: the id,
ego, and superego
• He proposed a new conception of the
personality, one that contains three systems –
the id, the ego, and the superego.
• These systems do not exist physically; they are
only concepts, or ways of looking at
personality
 Defense mechanism
• technique used to defend against anxiety and
to maintain self-esteem, but it involves self-
deception and the distortion of reality.
• We use defense mechanisms to protect
ourselves from failure and from guilt arousing
desires or actions.
• All of us use defence mechanisms to some
degree; it is only their overuse that is
considered abnormal.
 Types of defense mechanism
• Repression
• Projection
• Denial
• Rationalization
• Regression
• Reaction formation
• Displacement
• Sublimation
 Personality type theories
• The type theories represent an attempt to put
some degree of order into the chaos of
personality theory.
• The type theory represents an attempt to
scientifically describe personality by
classifying individuals into convenient
categories.
• Sheldon’s Physiognomy theory
• Carl Jung’s Extrovert – Introvert Theory
 Sheldon’s Physiognomy theory
• A unique body type temperamental model
• Links between features and personality
• a) Endomorph: He is bulky and beloved. Sheldon's endomorph to
be rather fat, thick in proportion to his height. His personality
temperament is viscertonic (the person seeks comfort, loves fine
food, eats too much, is jovial, affectionate and liked by all).
• (b) Mesomorph: He is basically strong, athletic and tough. All
appreciate his physique. In fact, it is this personality all other
"morphs" wish for. According to Sheldon, he will tend to be
somatotonic (he is fond of muscular activity; he tends to be highly
aggressive, and self-assertive). Sheldon contends that most
physiques are mixture of three components.
• (c) Ectomorph: These people are thin, long and poorly developed
physically. Though physically weak, he leads the league in the
intelligent department. His temperament is cerebrotonic (excessive
inhibition, restraint, and avoidance of social contact). He is
labelled as absent-minded, shy, but brilliant university professor
stereotype.
Carl Jung's Extrovert-introvert Theory
• Jung typology turns out to be more in the nature of
a continuum than discrete, separate types.
• Carl Jung proposed his own two-part theory of
personality. These two types are:
• (a) Extrovert: They are optimistic, outgoing,
gregarious and sociable. Extroverts are basically
objective, reality-oriented individuals who are
more doers than thinkers.
• (b) Introverts: By contrast, introverts are more
inward-directed people. They are less sociable,
withdrawn and absorbed in inner life. They tend to
be guided by their own ideas and philosophy
• Few people are complete introverts or extroverts,
but the mixture of these two ingredients
determines the kind of overall personality of an
individual.
• At the base of Jung's theory, lies the explanation
that the personality has four dimensions:
(a) Thinking:
(b) Feeling
(c) Sensation:
(d) Intuition:
(a) Thinking: It includes logical reasoning (rational,
analytic)
(b) Feeling: It refers to the interpretation of a thing
or event on a subjective scale (emotional, effect)
(c) Sensation: It deals with perception of things in a
general sense (factual and concrete)
(d) Intuition: It is based on unconscious inner
perception of the potentialities of events or things
(associative or gestalt)
Carl Jung's functions can be thought of as sitting at
the ends of orthogonal axes
Diagram
 Personality types based on Carl Jung Theory
• Type I: Person is a sensation – thinking individual,
is basically analytic, oriented toward the present.
He/she is primarily interested in facts, and
extremely practical in outlook and approach.
• Type II: Persons are intuition – thinking. He/she is
rational, analytic, takes a broad view, and is
sociable.
• Type III: Person is sensation – feeling. He/she is
factual, wishes to grasp tangible things, but is
emotional and
• Type IV: Persons are intuition – feeling. He/she is
emotional, sociable, takes a broad view, and is
more prone than others to hypothesizing.
 Trait theories
• Some early personality researchers believed that to
understand individuals, we must break down
behaviour patterns into a series of observable
traits.
• According to trait theory, combining these traits
into a group forms an individual's personality.
• A personality trait can be defined as an "enduring
attribute of a person that appears consistently in a
variety of situations".
• In combination, such traits (relatively stable and
consistent) distinguish one personality from
another
 Gordon Allport’s personality traits
• Allport identified two main categories of traits:
(a) Common Traits: Common traits are those we share or hold in
common with most others in our own culture.
(b) Individual Traits: According to Allport, there are three individual
traits: cardinal, central and secondary traits.
(i) Cardinal Traits: A cardinal trait is "so pervasive and
outstanding in a life that almost every act seems traceable to its
influence". It is so strong a part of a person's personality that he
may become identified with or known for that trait.
(ii) Central Traits: According to Allport, are those that we
would "mention in writing a careful letter of recommendation".
(iii) Secondary Traits: The secondary traits are less obvious,
less consistent and not as critical in defining our personality as
the cardinal and central traits. We have many more secondary
traits than cardinal or central traits. Examples of secondary traits
are food and music preferences.
 Raymond Cattell's 16 Personality Factors
Cattell identified two types:
(a) Surface Traits: Observable qualities of a person like
honest, helpful, kind, generous etc., Cattell called these
"surface traits".
(b) Source Traits: Make up the most basic personality
structure and, cause behaviour.
Even though we all possess the same source traits, we do
not all possess them in the same degree.
Intelligence is a source trait, and every person has a
certain amount of it but, obviously not exactly the same
amount or the same kind.
Cattell found 23 source traits in normal individuals, 16 of
which he studied in great detail.
Cattell's sixteen-personality factors questionnaire,
commonly called the "16 P.F Test", yields a personality
profile.
The Cattell personality profile can be used to provide a
better understanding of a single individual or to compare
an individual's personality profile with that of others.
The trait approach has been the subject of considerable
criticism.
Some theorists argue that simply identifying traits is not
enough; instead, personality is dynamic and not
completely static.
Further, trait theorists tended to ignore the influence of
situations.
 Theories of personality
• Psychoanalytics
• Socio- psychological
• Trait theories
• Behavioural and socio cognitive theories
• Humanistic theories
• Self theory
• The psychoanalytic, type and trait theories
represent the more traditional approach to
explaining the complex human personality.
• Of the many other theories, the two that have
received the most recent emphasis and that are
probably most relevant to the study of
organisational behaviour are the self and social
theories of personality
• Self-theory rejects both psychoanalytic and
behaviouristic conceptions of human nature as too
mechanistic, portraying people as creatures
helplessly buffeted about by internal instincts or
external stimuli.
 Self theory
• Carl Rogers is most closely associated with his
approach of self-theory.
• Rogers and his associates have developed this
personality theory that places emphasis on the
individual as an initiating, creating, influential
determinant of behaviour within the
environmental framework.
• Carl Rogers developed his theory of personality
through insights gained from his patients in
therapy sessions.
• Rogers viewed human nature as basically good. If
left to develop naturally, he thought, people would
be happy and psychologically healthy
• According to Rogers, we each live in our own subjective
reality, which he called the phenomenological field.
• It is in this personal, subjective field that we act and think
and feel. In other words, the way we see is the way it is – for
us.
• Gradually, a part of the phenomenological field becomes
differentiated as the self.
• The self-concept emerges as a result of repeated experiences
involving such terms as "I", "me" and "myself".
• With the emerging self comes the need for positive regard.
• We need such things as warmth, love, acceptance, sympathy
and respect from the people who are significant in our lives.
• But there are usually strings attached to positive regard from
others.
 Conditions of Worth
• People around us set up conditions of worth –
conditions on which their positive regard hinges.
• Conditions of worth force us to live and act
according to someone else's values rather than our
own.
• In our effort to gain positive regard, we deny our
true self by inhibiting some of our behaviour,
denying, distorting some of our perceptions and
closing ourselves to parts of our experience.
• In doing so, we experience stress and anxiety and
our whole self-structure may be threatened.
 Unconditional Positive Regard
• According to Rogers, a major goal of
psychotherapy is to enable people to open
themselves up to experiences and begin to live
according to their own values rather than the
values of others in order to gain positive regard.
• He calls his therapy "personcentred therapy".
• Unconditional positive regard is designed to
reduce threat, eliminate conditions of worth, and
bring the person back in tune with his true self.
 Personality characteristics in organisations

• Locus of Control (Internal & External)

• Machiavellianism
• Self esteem
• Self Efficacy
• Self-monitoring
• Positive/Negative Affect
• Risk-taking
• Some people believe they are masters of their own fate. Other
people see themselves as pawns of fate.
• An individual's generalized belief about internal (self) versus
external (situation or others) control is called locus of control.
• (a) Internals: Those who believe they control their destinies have
been labelled internals. Internals have higher job satisfaction, more
likely to assume managerial positions, and prefer participative
management styles. They display higher work motivation, hold
stronger beliefs that effort leads to performance, receive higher
salaries and display less anxiety than externals
• (b) Externals: Externals are those individuals who believe that
what happens to them is controlled by outside forces such as luck
or chance. Externals prefer a more structured work setting and they
may be more reluctant to participate in decision-making. They are
more compliant and willing to follow directions.
• Implications for organisations. Individuals who rate high 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 internals.
High-Machs believe that any means justify the desired ends.
They believe that manipulations of others are fine if it helps
achieve a goal. Thus, high-Machs are likely to justify their
manipulative behaviour as ethical. They are emotionally
detached from other people and are oriented towards objective
aspects of situations.
R. Christie and F.L. Geis, have found that high-Machs flourish
(a) When they interact fact-to-face with others rather than
indirectly.
(b) When the situation has a minimum number of rules and
regulations, thus allowing latitude for improvisation, and
(c) When emotional involvement with details irrelevant to
winning distracts low Machs.
 Characteristics of High Machs
• A high-Mach individual behaves in accordance
with Machiavelli's ideas, which include the notion
that it is better to be feared than loved.
• High-Machs tend to use deceit in relationships,
have a cynical view of human nature and have
little concern for conventional notions of right and
wrong.
• They are skilled manipulators of other people,
relying on their persuasive abilities.
• High-Machs are suitable in jobs that require
bargaining skills or where there are substantial
rewards for winning (example: commissioned
sales).
 Self esteem
• Self-esteem is an individual's general feeling of self-
worth.
• Individuals with high self-esteem have positive
feelings about themselves, perceive themselves to have
strength as well as weaknesses, and believe their
strengths are more important than their weaknesses.
• Individuals with low self-esteem view themselves
negatively.
• They are more strongly affected by what other people
think of them, and they compliment individuals who
give them positive feedback while cutting down people
who give them negative feedback
 Research on Self Esteem

High-SEs: People with High Low-SEs: People with low

SEs SEs
(i) Believe they possess more (i) Are more susceptible to
of the ability they need in order external influence.
to succeed at work. (ii) They depend on the receipt
(ii) Individuals with high SE of positive evaluations from
will take more risks in job others.
selection and are more likely to (iii) They tend to be concerned
choose unconventional jobs. with pleasing others and
(iii) They are more satisfied therefore, are less likely to take
with their jobs. unpopular stands.
(iv) They are less satisfied with
their jobs.
 Organisational implications
• Self-esteem may be strongly affected by
situations.
• Success tends to raise self-esteem, whereas
failure tends to lower it.
• Given that high self-esteem is generally a
positive characteristic, managers should
encourage employees to raise their self-esteem
by giving them appropriate challenges and
opportunities for success.
 Self efficacy
• Self-efficacy refers to an individual's belief that he or she is
capable of performing a task.
• The higher the self-efficacy, the more confidence in the
ability to succeed in a task.
• So, in difficult situations, people with low self efficacy are
more likely to slacken their effort or give up altogether,
whereas those with high self-efficacy will try harder to
master the challenge.
• In addition, individuals high in self-efficacy seem to
respond to negative feedback with increased effort and
motivation; those low in self-efficacy are likely to reduce
their effort when given negative feedback.
• Individuals with high self-efficacy believe that they have the
ability to get things done, that they are capable of putting
forth the effort to accomplish the task, and that they can
overcome any obstacles to their success.
• There are four sources of self-efficacy:
• (a) Prior experiences
• (b) Behaviour models – witnessing the success of others
• (c) Persuasion from other people and
• (d) Assessment of current physical and emotional
capabilities
• Believing in one's own capability to get something done is
an important facilitator of one’s success.
• There is strong evidence that self-efficacy leads to high
performance on a wide variety of physical and mental tasks.
• Managers can help employees develop their selfefficacy.
• This can be done by providing avenues for showing
performance, and rewarding an employee's achievements.
 Self-monitoring
• A characteristic with great potential for affecting behaviour in
organizations is self-monitoring.
• Self-monitoring refers to an individual's ability to adjust his or her
behavior to external situational factors.
• High self-monitors pay attention to what is appropriate in
particular situations and to the behaviour of other people, and they
behave accordingly.
• Low self-monitors, in contrast, are not as vigilant to situational
cues, and act from internal states rather than paying attention to the
situation.
• As a result, the behaviour of low self-monitors is consistent across
situations.
• High self-monitors, because their behaviour varies with the
situation, appears to be more unpredictable and less consistent.
• High self-monitors are capable of presenting striking
contradictions between their public persona and their private self.
• Low self-monitors can't disguise themselves this way.
• High self-monitors pay • Low self-monitors, in contrast,
attention to what is appropriate are not as vigilant to situational
in particular situations and to cues, and act from internal
the behaviour of other people, states rather than paying
and they behave accordingly. attention to the situation.
• High self-monitors, because • As a result, the behaviour of
their behaviour varies with the low self-monitors is consistent
situation, appears to be more across situations.
unpredictable and less
consistent. • Low self-monitors can't
• High self-monitors are capable disguise themselves this way.
of presenting striking
contradictions between their
public persona and their private
self.
 Positive/Negative Affect

Positive Affect Negative Affect

• Individuals who focus on the • Those who accentuate the
positive aspects of themselves, negative in themselves, others,
other people, and the world in
general are said to have and the world are said to
positive affect. possess negative affect.
• Employees with positive affect • Individuals with negative
are absent from work less affect report more work stress.
often.
• Managers can promote • Negative individual affect
positive affect, by including produces negative group affect
allowing participative decision and this leads to less
making and providing pleasant cooperative behaviour in the
working conditions.
work group.
 Risk-taking
• 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.
• High-risktaking managers make more rapid
decisions and use less information in making
their choices than low-risk-taking managers.
 Type A Personality
• Type A behaviour pattern is a complex of
personality and behavioural characteristics,
including competitiveness, time urgency,
social status, insecurity, aggression, hostility
and a quest for achievements.
• Type A personality individual is "aggressively
involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to
achieve more and more in less and less time,
and if required to do so, against the opposing
efforts of other things or other persons"
 Characteristics – Type A personality
(a) Are always moving, walking, and eating
rapidly;
(b) Feel impatient with the rate at which most
events take place;
(c) Strive to think or do two or more things
simultaneously;
(d) Cannot cope with leisure time; and
(e) Are obsessed with numbers, measuring their
success in terms of how much of everything they
acquire.
 Type B Personality
• People with Type B personalities are relatively
free of the Type A behaviours and
characteristics.
• Type B personalities are "rarely harried by the
desire to obtain a wildly increasing number of
things or participate in an endless growing
series of events in an ever decreasing amount
of time"
 Characteristics – Type B personality
(a) Never suffer from a sense of time urgency
with its accompanying impatience;
(b) Feel no need to display or discuss either their
achievements or accomplishments unless such
exposure is demanded by the situation;
(c) Play for fun and relaxation, rather than to
exhibit their superiority at any cost; and
(d) Can relax without guilt. Organisations can
also be characterized as Type A or Type B
organisations
• Type A individuals in Type B organisations
and Type B individuals in Type A
organisations experience stress related to a
misfit between their personality type and the
predominant type of the organisation.
Shaping personality