1. What Makes Me… Be Me?
Personality
&
Emotions

2. What is Personality?

3. What is Personality?
• Combination of psychological traits we use to
classify a person.
• What is a trait?
– Traits refer to broad, relatively regular dimensions
of individual behavior
• Pervin, L.A., (2002), Current Controversies and Issues
in Personality, 3rd ed., Wiley, New York

4. EE
• MBTI
• Strengths
• Big 5 Model

5. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(MBTI)
• Most widely used personality assessment
• 100 question personality test
• Classified in 4 dichotomous dimensions

6. Dimensions of MBTI
• Extroverted (E) or Introverted (I)
– How the individual interacts socially
• Sensing (S) or Intuitive (N)
– How people prefer to collect information
• Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)
– How people evaluate information
• Judging (J) or Perceiving (P)
– How people like to make decisions

7. • Extroverted: outgoing, social, assertive
• Introverted: quiet, shy
• Sensing: practical, prefer routine and order
• iNtuitive: unconscious processes, big picture
• Thinking: reason, logic
• Feeling: rely on personal values and emotions
• Judging: want control, order, structure
• Perceiving: flexible, spontaneous

8. So, does MBTI work?

9. So, does MBTI work?
• Used a lot
• We combine the variables and describe what
they are like

10. Is MBTI a valid measure of personality?

11. Is MBTI a valid measure of personality?
• Evidence is mixed
• Valuable tool for self awareness
• Useful in career guidance
• MBTI results tend to be UNRELATED to job
performance
• Should not be used as a selection tool

12. Strengths
• Marcus Buckhaming
• Gallup
• An Inventory
– To Find Your 5 greatest strengths
– Will not tell you any others
• A year
• Some training

13. What can be used ?
• 5 Factor Model of Personality
– Impressive body of research supports 5
dimensions
• Extroversion:
– Comfort level with relationships

14. • Extroversion: Comfort level with relationships
• Extroverts: gregarious, assertive, sociable
• Introverts: reserved, timid, quiet
• Agreeableness: propensity to defer to others
• High agreeable: cooperative, warm, trusting
• Low agreeable: cold, disagreeable antagonistic
• Conscientiousness: measure of reliability
• High conscientious: responsible, organized dependable, persistent
• Low conscientious: easily distracted, disorganized, unreliable
• Emotional Stability: ability to withstand stress
• Positive scores: calm, self-confident, secure
• Negative scores: nervous, anxious, depressed, insecure
• Openness to Experience: range of interests & fascination
with novelty
• Open People: creative, curious, artistically sensitive
• Closed People: conventional, comfort in the familiar

15. Quick Results
• Conscientiousness
– Only one that was predictive of job performance
• All others predictive ability is dependent upon
– Performance criterion
– Occupational group

16. Other important Personality
Dimensions
• Locus of Control?
• Machiavellianism?
• Self-Esteem?
• Self-Monitoring?
• Risk Propensity?
• Type “A” Personality?

17. Do these frameworks transfer to other
cultures?

18. Do these frameworks transfer to other
cultures?
• Yes
• No common personality types for a given
country
• Country’s history and attitudes impact the
percentages of certain personality types
• Where materialism is less revered – less proportion of
type “A”s

19. Can you match jobs and personality
types?

21. Are Traits a good OB?
• Many relationships between traits and
behavior are moderate, at best
• Labeling people according to their personality
profile or type can result in self-fulfilling
prophecy
• Knowing a person’s score on a test can impact
how others’ perceive that individual

22. Interactionist Models
• Hypothesize personality is important factor in
behavior
• Argue situational factors can powerfully shape
behavior

23. Conditional Reasoning Approach
• Individuals interpret what happens in
environment based on their mental maps
• How they
– Frame the world
– Motives
– Assumptions they make regarding events
• Create different justification mechanisms to adjust to
environment

24. Cognitive-Affective Processing System
(CAPS)
• Personality -- mental representations of:
• people and situations,
• goals,
• expectancies,
• memories,
• feelings
• Difference in content --how accessible they are
• How they related to one another
• Affected by array of factors
• Genetic,
• cultural,
• societal,
• developmental

25. Why is this important?
• Because the mix of people in an organization
make a difference. (Read Tipping Point by
Malcomb Gladwell to view the difference one
or two of the right people can make.)
• Having some insight into others – provides us
with opportunities to influence.
• If we understand ourselves we can make
better decisions for ourselves.