Understanding the Concept of Personality

Introduction
When we talk of personality, we don't mean a person has charm, a positive attitude toward life, a smiling face, or has won the "miss world" context. When psychologists talk of personality, they mean a dynamic concept describing the growth and development of a person's whole psychological system. The word personality has an interesting derivation. It can be traced to the Latin words "per sonare" which translates as "to speak through". The Latin term was used to denote the masks worn by actors in ancient Greece and Rome. This Latin meaning is particularly relevant to the contemporary analysis of personality. Personality traditionally refers to how people influence others through their external appearances and actions. But for the psychologists personality includes Eternal appearances and behavior The inner awareness of self as a permanent organizing force, and The particular organization of measurable traits, both inner and outer. Personality is an individual difference that lends consistency to a person's behavior. Personality is defined as a relatively stable set of characteristics that influence an Individuals behavior. For our purposes, we should think of personality as the sum total of ways in which an individual reacts and interacts with others. This is most often described in terms of measurable personality traits that a person exhibits.

Definition of personality
Though psychologists and social scientists unanimously agree to the importance of personality, they are unable to come out with a unanimous definition. Floyd L Ruch states that: "the human personality includes: i. External appearance and behavior or social stimulus value ii. Inner awareness of self as a permanent organizing force iii. The particular pattern or organization of measurable traits, both "inner and "outer"." Gordon Allport gave the most frequently used definition of personality nearly 70 years ago. He said personality is "the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment". J.B Kolasa defines personality as - "Personality is a broad, amorphous designation relating to fundamental approaches of persons to others and themselves. To most
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psychologists and students of behavior, this term refers to the study of the characteristic traits of an individual, relationships between these traits and the way in which a person adjusts to other people and situations". According to Gluck - "Personality is a pattern of stable states and characteristics of a person that influences his or her behavior toward goal achievement. Each person has unique ways of protecting these states".

Major determinants of personality

People are enormously complex; their abilities and interests and attitudes are diverse. The major factors are as follows: Biological Factors The study of the biological contributions to personality may be studied under three heads: (a) Heredity: Heredity refers to those factors that were determined at conception. (b) Brain: There seem to be definite pleasurable and painful areas in the human brain. This being true, it may be possible physically to manipulate personality through ESB. (c) Biofeedback: From this biofeedback the person can learn to control the body process in question. More research is needed on biofeedback before any definitive conclusions can be drawn. But its potential impact could be extremely interesting for the future. (d) Physical features: A vital ingredient of the personality, an individual's external appearance, is biologically determined. The fact that a person is tall or short, fat or skinny, black or white will influence the person's effect on others and this in turn, will affect the self-concept. Cultural Factors Among the factors that exert pressures on our personality formation are the culture. Traditionally, cultural factors are usually considered to make a more significant contribution to personality than biological factors. The culture largely determines attributes toward independence, aggression, competition and cooperation. Family Factors Whereas the culture generally prescribes and limits what a person can be taught, it is the family, and later the social group, which selects, interprets and dispenses the culture. Thus, the family probably has the most significant impact on early personality development. A substantial amount of 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

There is increasing recognition given to the role of other relevant persons, groups and especially organizations, which greatly influence an individual's personality. This is commonly called the socialization process. Socialization involves the process by which a person acquires, from the enormously wide range of behavioral potentialities that are open to him or her. Socialization starts with the initial contact between a mother and her new infant. After infancy, other members of the immediate family father, brothers, sisters and close relatives or friends, then the social group peers, school friends and members of the work group, play influential roles. Socialization process is especially relevant to organizational behavior because the process is not confined to early childhood, taking place rather throughout one's life. In particular, evidence is accumulating that socialization may be one of the best explanations for why employees behave the way they do in today's organizations. Situational Factors Human personality is also influenced by situational factors. The effect of environment is quite strong. Knowledge, skill and language are obviously acquired and represent important modifications of behavior. An individual's personality, while generally stable and consistent, does change in different situations. The different demands of different situations call forth different aspects of one's personality.

Personality characteristics in Organizations

Managers should learn as much as possible about personality in order to understand their employees. Hundreds of personality characteristics have been identified. We have eight characteristics that have particular influences on individual behavior in organizations. They are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Locus of Control Machiavellianism Personality Self-esteem Self-efficacy Self-monitoring Positive/Negative affect Risk Taking Type A Personality,

Measuring personality
Several methods can be used to assess personality. These include projective tests, behavioral measures and self-report questionnaires. These measures of personality are explained below: 1. The Projective Tests: In these tests, individuals are shown a picture, abstract image, or photo and are asked to describe what they see or to tell a story about what they see. 2. Behavioral Measures: Using an observational technique known as behavioral assessment, psychologist can count and record the frequency of particular behaviors.

3. Self-Report Questionnaire: The most common method of assessing personality is the self-report questionnaire. Individuals respond to a series of questions, usually in an agree/disagree or true/false format. The widely recognized self-report questionnaires are (a) Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): The MMPI is comprehensive and assesses a variety of traits, as well as various neurotic or psychotic disorders. Used extensively in psychological counseling to identify disorders, the MMPI is a long questionnaire. 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. Katharine Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, developed the MyersBriggs Type Indicator to put Jung's type theory into practical use. The MBT is used extensively in organizations as a basis for understanding individual differences.

(b)

Matching personalities and jobs

Obviously, individual personalities differ. So, too do jobs. Following this logic, efforts have been made to match the proper personalities with the proper jobs. John Holland's "personality-job fit theory" is concerned with matching the job requirements with personality characteristics. The personality-job fit theory identifies 6 personality types and proposes that the fit between personality type and occupational environment determines satisfaction and turnover. Holland has developed a Vocational Preference Inventory Questionnaire that contains 160 occupational titles. Respondents indicate which of these occupations they like or dislike, and these answers are used to form personality profiles. Six major personality types have been identified. What do all these mean? The theory argues that satisfaction is highest and
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turnover lowest where personality and occupation are in agreement. The key points of this model are that: 1. There do appear to be intrinsic personality differences among individuals; 2. There are different types of jobs; and 3. People in job environments congruent with their personality type should be more satisfied and less likely to resign voluntarily than people in incongruent jobs.

The Big Five Personality Traits

Although personality traits, long-term predispositions for behavior, have been generally downplayed and even totally discounted, in recent years there is now considerable support for a five-factor trait-based theory of personality. Many years ago no less than 18,000 words were found to describe personality. Even after combining words with similar meanings, there still remained 171 personality traits. Obviously, such a huge number of personality traits is

practically unusable, so further reduction analysis found five core personality traits. Called the Five-Factor Model (FFM) or in the field of organizational behavior and human resource management, the Big Five, these traits have held up as accounting for personality in many analyses over the years and even across cultures.

Personality Theories
The study of personality is based on the essential insight that all people are similar in some ways, yet different in others. For example, all people learn, yet people learn different things and to different extents. There have been many different definitions of personality proposed. Most contemporary psychologists though would agree on the following definition:

Personality is that pattern of characteristic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that distinguishes one person from another and that persists over time and situations.

1. Trait theories: According to the Diagnostic and social manual of the American Psychiatric association, personality traits are "enduring patterns of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and oneself that are exhibited in a wide range of social and personal contexts." Theorists generally assume a) traits are relatively stable over time, b) traits differ among individuals (for instance, some people are outgoing while others are reserved), and c) traits influence behavior. When people are describing a person, they constantly talk about traits to help define the person as a whole. Traits are relatively constant; they do not usually change. Traits are also bipolar; they vary along a continuum between one extreme and the other (ex: friendly vs. unfriendly) 2. Type theories: Personality type refers to the psychological classification of different types of people. Personality types are distinguished from personality traits, which come in different levels or degrees. For example, according to type theories, there are two types of people, introverts and extroverts. Type A and Type B personality theory: During the 1950s, Meyer Friedman and his co-workers defined what they called Type A and Type B behavior patterns. They theorized that intense, harddriving Type A personalities had a higher risk of coronary disease because they are "stress junkies." Type B people, on the other hand, tended to be relaxed, less competitive, and lower in risk. There was also a Type AB mixed profile.

3. Psychoanalytic theories: Psychoanalytic theories explain human behavior in terms of the interaction of various components of personality. Sigmund Freud was the founder of this school. Freud drew on the physics of his day (thermodynamics) to coin the term psycho-dynamics. Based on the idea of converting heat into mechanical energy, he proposed psychic energy could be converted into behavior. Freud divides human personality into three significant components: the id, ego, and super-ego. 4. Behaviorist theories: Behaviorists explain personality in terms of the effects external stimuli have on behavior. B. F. Skinner emphasized the mutual interaction of the person or "the organism" with its environment. Skinner believed children do bad
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things because the behavior obtains attention that serves as a reinforcer. For example: a child cries because the child's crying in the past has led to attention. 5. Social cognitive theories: In cognitive theory, behavior is explained as guided by cognitions (e.g. expectations) about the world, especially those about other people. Cognitive theories are theories of personality that emphasize cognitive processes such as thinking and judging. 6. Humanistic theories: In humanistic psychology it is emphasized people have free will and they play an active role in determining how they behave. Accordingly, humanistic psychology focuses on subjective experiences of persons as opposed to forced, definitive factors that determine behavior. 7. Biopsychological theories: Some of the earliest thinking about possible biological bases of personality grew out of the case of Phineas Gage. In an 1848 accident, a large iron rod was driven through Gage's head, and his personality apparently changed as a result, although descriptions of these psychological changes are usually exaggerated.

Understanding the Concept of Attitude

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Introduction
Attitudes are individuals' general affective, cognitive and intentional responses toward objects, other people, themselves, or social issues. Attitudes are evaluative statements either favorable or unfavorable - concerning objects, people or events. They reflect how one feels about something. As individuals, we respond favorably or unfavorably towards many things: co-workers, bosses, our own appearances etc. The importance of attitudes lies in their link to behavior. When an employee says, "I like my job" he or she is expressing their attitude about work.

Meaning of attitude
Attitude is defined as a more or less stable set of predisposition of opinion, interest or purpose involving expectancy of a certain kind of experience and readiness with an appropriate response. Attitudes are also known as "frames of reference". They provide the background against which facts and events are viewed. It becomes necessary to know the attitudes of members of an organization because they have to perceive specific aspects like pay, hours of work, promotion etc., of their job life in the wider context of their generalized attitudes. An attitude is also a cognitive element; it always remains inside a person. Everyone's psychological world is limited and thus everyone has a limited number of attitudes. In business organization, employees have attitudes relating to world environment, job security etc. The individual's attitudes towards these factors are indicative of his apathy or enthusiasm towards the activities and objectives of the organization.

Characteristics of attitude
(i) (ii) An attitude is the predisposition of the individual to evaluate some objects in a favorable or an unfavorable manner. The most pervasive phenomenon is "attitude". People at work place have attitudes about lots of topics that are related to them. These attitudes are firmly embedded in a complex psychological structure of beliefs. Attitudes are different from values. Values are the ideals, whereas attitudes are narrow, they are our feelings, thoughts and behavioral tendencies toward a specific object or situation. Attitude is a predisposition to respond to a certain set of facts. Attitudes are evaluative statements - either favorable or unfavorable concerning the objects, people or events.

(iii)

(iv) (v)

An attitude is "a mental state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a specific influence upon a person's response to people, objects and situation with which it is related". Attitudes thus state one's predispositions towards given aspects of world. They also provide an emotional basis of one's interpersonal relations and identification with others. Managers in work organizations need to know and understand employee's attitudes in order to manage effectively. Attitudes do influence behavior of people and their performance in organizations.

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Functions of attitude
Attitudes are known to serve at least four important functions in an organization setting: 1. Attitudes determine meaning: Much of what is seem in the environment and in other people's behavior is determined by attitudes. If one has an overall favorable attitude towards a person, one tends to judge his activities as "good" or "superior". On the other hand, negative attitudes or prejudices generally prompt disagreement with the individual concerned or failure to appreciate the good work done by him. 2. Attitudes reconcile contradictions: It is not uncommon to come across people who hold contradictory opinions. With the proper attitude as a background, intelligent people can reconcile or rationalize the same actions, which to others are obvious contradictions. For example when a worker takes a little rest a superior considers it "idling". 3. Attitudes organize facts: As already seen, objective events can be differently perceived by different people because of different attitudes. Meanings can be concocted and falsely communicated to others by changing the attitudes of the recipients towards wider social issues. 4. Attitudes select facts: From the plethora of environmental facts and stimuli, one tends to select those, which are in consonance with one's cherished beliefs and attitudes. Attitudes, thus, act as a screen or filter.

Components of attitude
The three components of attitude are:

1. Cognitive Component: This component includes the beliefs an individual has about a certain person, object, or situation. The belief that "discrimination is wrong" is a value statement. Such an opinion is the cognitive component of an attitude. Learned beliefs, such as "you need to work long hours to get ahead in this job", lead to attitudes that have an impact on behavior in the workplace. The cognition component of an attitude reflects a persons perceptions or beliefs. Cognitive elements are evaluative beliefs and are measured by attitude scales or by asking about thoughts. The statement "I believe Japanese workers are industrious," reflect the cognitive component of an attitude. 2. Affective Component: This component refers to the person's feelings that result from his or her beliefs about a person, object or situation. A person who believes hard work earns promotions may feel anger or frustration when he or she works hard but is not promoted. The affective component becomes stronger as an individual has more frequent and direct experience with a focal object, person or situation. It refers to an individual's feeling about something or someone. Statements such as "I like this" or "I prefer that" reflect the affective component of an attitude. 3. Behavioral Component: This component refers to the individual's behaviour that occurs as a result of his or her feeling about the focal person, object or situation. An individual may complain, request a transfer, or be less productive because he or she feels dissatisfied with work. The behavioral component of an attitude refers to an intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something.

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Sources of attitudes
Attitudes are acquired from parents, teachers, and peer group members. We model our attitudes after those we admire, respect or fear. We observe the way family and friends behave, and we shape our attitudes and behavior to align with theirs. People also imitate the attitudes of popular individuals and those they admire and respect. Attitudes are an integral part of the world of work. It is important for managers to understand the antecedents to attitudes as well as their consequences. Managers also need to understand the different components of attitudes, how attitudes are formed, and the major attitudes that affect work behavior and how to use persuasion to change attitudes.

Types of attitudes
A person can have thousands of attitudes, but most of the research in OB has been concerned with three attitudes: 1. Job Satisfaction: Satisfaction results when a job fulfills or facilitates the attainment of individual values and standards and dissatisfaction occurs when the job is seen as blocking such attainment. This attitude has received extensive attention by researchers and practitioners because it was at one time believed to be the cause of improved job performance. The term "job satisfaction" refers to an individual's general attitude toward his or her job. A person with a high level of job satisfaction holds positive attitudes toward the job; a person who is dissatisfied with his or her job holds negative attitudes about the job. Now, because of managers' concern for creating a humane and high performance workplace, researchers continue to search for definite answers about the causes and consequences of job satisfaction. 2. Job Involvement: Job involvement is the degree, to which a person identifies with his or her job, actively participates in it and considers his or her performance important to self-worth. Employees with a high level of job involvement strongly identify with and really care about the kind of work they do. High levels of job involvement have been found to be related to fewer absences and lower resignation rates 3. Organizational Commitment: Organizational commitment is the degree to which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals, and wishes to maintain membership in the organization. High organizational commitment means identifying with one's employing organization.

Attitude formation
Attitudes are learned. Individuals acquire attitudes from several sources but the point to be stressed is that the attitudes are acquired but not inherited. Our responses to people and issues evolve over time. Two major influences on attitudes are direct experience and social learning: 1. Direct Experience: Attitudes can develop from a personally rewarding or punishing experience with an object. Direct experience with an object or person is a powerful influence on attitudes. Research has shown that attitudes that are derived from direct experience are stronger, are held more confidently and are more resistant to change than are attitudes formed through indirect experience. One reason that attitudes derived from direct experience are so powerful is because of their availability. This means that the attitudes are easily accessed and are active in our cognitive processes. When attitudes are available, we
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can call them quickly into consciousness. Attitudes that are not learned from direct experience are not as available, and therefore we do not recall them easily. (a) Classical Conditioning: One of the basic processes underlying attitude formation can be explained on the basis of learning principles. People develop associations between various objects and the emotional reactions that accompany them. (b) Operant Conditioning: Attitudes that are reinforced, either verbally or nonverbally, tends to be maintained. Conversely, a person who states an attitude that elicits ridicule from others may modify or abandon the attitude. (c) Vicarious Learning: In which a person learns something through the observance of others can also account for attitude development particularly when the individual has no direct experience with the object about which the attitude is held. It is through vicarious learning processes that children pick up the prejudices of their parents. 2. Social Learning: In social learning, the family, peer groups and culture shape an individual's attitudes in an indirect manner. Substantial social learning occurs through modeling, in which individuals acquire attitudes by merely observing others. (a) The Family: A person may learn attitudes through imitation of parents. If parents have a positive attitude towards an object and the child admires his parents, he is likely to adopt a similar attitude, even without being told about the object, and even without having direct experience. Children also learn to adopt certain attitudes by the reinforcement they are given by their parents when they display behaviors that reflect an appropriate attitude. (b) Peer Groups: Peer pressure molds attitudes through group acceptance of individuals who express popular attitudes and through sanctions, such as exclusion from the group, placed on individuals who espouse (promote) unpopular attitudes. (c) Modeling: Substantial social learning occurs through modeling, in which individuals acquire attitudes by merely observing others. The observer overhears other individuals expressing an opinion or watches them engaging in a behavior that reflects an attitude, and the observer adopts this attitude.

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Understanding Impression Management

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In sociology and social psychology, impression management is a goal-directed conscious or unconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of other people about a person, object or event; they do so by regulating and controlling information in social interaction. It is usually used synonymously with self-presentation, in which a person tries to influence the perception of their image. The notion of impression management also refers to practices in professional communication and public relations, where the term is used to describe the process of formation of a company's or organizations public image.

History and Modern Usage

Many writers and philosophers have observed that people engage in strategic behaviors to control the impressions that their audiences formas Shakespeare wrote, "All the worlds a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts." The sociologist Erving Goff man popularized this idea further, arguing that ordinary people in everyday life work to convey desired impressions to others around them, just as actors on a stage work to present their characters to audiences. Of course, given that actors are pretending to be people they are not, this metaphor implies that impression management is intentional and duplicitous. While early research reflected this assumption, more recent research has revealed that people engage in impression management even when they are not intentionally trying to do so. For example, even if you feel like you can just be yourself around close friends and family members, we may find ourselves acting quite differentlyor presenting a somewhat different version of ourselvesaround our best friend than around our mother, without really thinking about it. We might exhibit such different behavior not only because of our own desire to be viewed somewhat differently by our friend versus our mother, but also because our friend and our mother have different expectations or demands regarding what sort of person we should be. Thus, engaging in impression management can help to ensure that social interactions go smoothly. Impression management is not risk-free, however. Becoming excessively concerned over others opinions can cause anxiety, thereby increasing health problems. And engaging in highly deceptive forms of impression management runs the risk that people will see through the act (although getting caught seems to be the exception rather than the rule). Conversely, impression management may sometimes be too effective; for example, if you try to act like a rebel in one situation, your impression management may carryover such that you start to see yourself as relatively more rebellious and behave in a rebellious manner in subsequent situations. Of course, to the extent that people generally try to put their best foot forward, such carryover effects of impression management may have positive consequence.

Motives and Strategies

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There are several motives that govern impression management. One is instrumental: we want to influence others and gain rewards. Conveying the right impression aids the acquisition of desired social and material outcomes. Social outcomes can include approval, friendship, assistance or power while conveying an impression of competency in the workforce can bring about positive material rewards such as higher salaries or better working conditions. The second motive of self-presentation is expressive. We construct an image of ourselves to claim personal identity, and present ourselves in a manner that is consistent with that image. If we feel like this is restricted, we exhibit reactance/be defiant. We try to assert our freedom against those who would seek to curtail our self-presentation expressiveness. A classic example is the idea of the "preachers daughter", whose suppressed personal identity and emotions cause an eventual backlash at her family and community. People adopt many different impression management strategies. One of them is ingratiation, where we use flattery or praise to increase our social attractiveness by highlighting our better characteristics so that others will like us. Another strategy is intimidation, which is aggressively showing anger to get others to hear and obey us. A strategy that has garnered a great amount of research attention is selfhandicapping. In this case people create 'obstacles' and 'excuse s for themselves so that they can avoid self-blame when they do poorly. People who self-handicap choose to blame their failures on obstacles such as drugs and alcohol rather than their own lack of ability. Other individuals devise excuses such as shyness, anxiety, negative mood or physical symptoms as reasons for their failure. Concerning the strategies followed to establish a certain impression, the main distinction is between defensive and assertive strategies. Whereas defensive strategies include behaviors like avoidance of threatening situations or means of self-handicapping, assertive strategies refer to more active behavior like the verbal idealization of the self, the use of status symbols or similar practices. These strategies play important roles in one's maintenance of self-esteem. One's self-esteem is affected by his evaluation of his own performance and his perception of how others react to his performance. As a result, people actively portray impressions that will elicit self-esteem enhancing reactions from others.

Self, Social Identity and Social interaction

The concept of self is important to the theory of impression management as the images people have of themselves shape and are shaped by social interactions. Our selfconcept develops from social experience early in life. Schlenker (1980) further suggests that children anticipate the effect of their behaviors will have on others and how others will evaluate them; they control the impressions they might form on others and in doing so they control the outcomes they obtain from social interactions. Social identity refers to how people are defined and regarded in social interactions. Individuals use impression management strategies to influence the social identity they project to others. The identity that people establish influences their behavior in front of others, others treatment of them and the
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outcomes they receive. Therefore, in their attempts to influence the impressions others form of themselves, a person plays an important role in affecting his social outcomes

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