What is Personality?
A set of psychological characteristics that influences the way an individual reacts with their environment
What are the 3 Approaches to Personality Research and explain them :
- Dispositional Approach : Behaviour caused by internal factors (values, personality traits, moods)
- Situational Approach : The situation influences individuals’ behaviours
- Interactionist Approach (mix of dispositional & situational) : People’s behaviour comes from a mix of who they are and where they are, is the modern approach for research
Weak Situation vs Strong Situation :
Weak Situation : roles are loosely defined, few rules and weak punishment
EXAMPLE : An unstructured company barbecue with vague expectations and few rules
Strong Situation : Roles, rules and responsibilities are more defined
EXAMPLE : A job interview with clear rules
What is The Trait Activation Theory?
A trait shows up in behaviour when the context provides cues that make that trait useful
EXAMPLE : Extraversion gets activated when you’re on a sales call or Agreeableness → activated in customer service/team help situations that cue cooperation
What is “The Big Five”?
The Five Factor Model of Personality
Conscientiousness : responsible, dependable, organized, diligent
Agreeableness : Ability to get along with others, degree of courtesy, trust, cooperation,
Neuroticism : Inability to handle stress, lack of emotional stability
Openness to Experience : The capacity to entertain new ideas, being open-minded
Extraversion : The quality of being comfortable with relationships, degree of sociability
How the Five Factor Model of Personality relates to Job Performance?
Conscientiousness : Strongly positively related to Job Performance
Agreeableness : Positively related to job performance in service jobs
Bell curve
Neuroticism (emotional stability): Threshold graph, Negatively related to job performance
Openness to Experience : Ambiguous, sometimes strong positive sometimes not
Extraversion : weak positive relationship, after a certain amount of extraversion job performance is not shown to increase
What is Person-Job Fit?
The alignment between a person’s characteristics and the demands of a specific job
Person-Organization Fit :
Argues that people leave organizations that are not compatible with their personalities
Locus of Control :
it’s your belief about who/what controls your outcomes
Internal →My effort/choices determine my outcome
External→ outcomes controlled by luck/fate/environment
Self-Monitoring (social setting)
Observing how you appear and behave in social settings
What is Behavioural Plasticity Theory? (self-esteem)
People with low self-esteem are more influenced by feedback, mentors, and social cues than those with high self-esteem
Positive vs Negative Affectivity
Positive Affectivity : Ability to view things in a positive light
Negative Affectivity : Ability to view things in a negative light
What is General Self-Efficacy (GSE)?
An individuals belief in their ability to perform successfully in challenging situations
What is Imposter Phenomenon?
Feeling like a fraud despite success; linked to lower satisfaction/commitment
Continuous Learning Culture :
An employee belief that acquiring knowledge and skills is apart of their job responsibility
4 Primary Categories of learning Content :
1) Practical Skills : job specific skills/knowledge
2) Intrapersonal Skills : interactive skills like problem solving, critical thinking
3) Interpersonal Skills : Interactive skills like : communicating, teamwork, conflict resolution
4) Cultural Awareness : Learning the social norms of organizations and understanding company goals, business operations
Positive vs Negative Reinforcement :
Positive Reinforcement : The addition of a stimulus that increases probability of a behaviour
EXAMPLE : You giving your dog a treat after it sits down like you asked it to.
Negative Reinforcement : You make a behaviour happen more by taking away or avoiding something unpleasant right after that behaviour
EXAMPLE : Ayesha logs orders correctly; her nagging boss stops nagging. That removal of nagging makes Ayesha keep doing the correct logging — that’s negative reinforcement
Performance Feedback
Providing Qualitative information on past performance for the purpose of changing or maintaining performance in specific ways
Social Recognition
A public or personal “thank-you”—informal praise, attention, or appreciation for good work
Continuous vs Partial Reinforcement
Continuous Reinforcement : Reward follows each instance of desired behaviour
EX : giving a dog treat every single time after it sits
Partial Reinforcement : Reward follows some instances of desired behaviour
EX : slowly taking away the reward of a treat after the dog sits
What is Extinction?
Removing positive stimulus for the person who is performing the behaviour, so the behaviour eventually is gone.
Example : Boss asks co-workers to stop laughing at Marks jokes in meetings. Mark then no longer receives positive reinforcement so he then stops making the jokes.
Example 2 : Scenario: A junior analyst keeps @here pinging the whole team in chat to get instant answers. It works—people jump in (attention = reinforcer).
Change: The team sets a norm: don’t reply to @here pings; only answer questions posted in the #help channel.
Result: With the attention removed, the @here spamming fades out (is extinguished).
Punishment (vs. negative reinforcement)
Punishment: You add something unpleasant immediately after a behaviour
EXAMPLE : A dog bites the owner so the owner kicks it
Negative Reinforcement : Increasing a desired behaviour by removing (or avoiding) something unpleasant immediately after that behaviour
EXAMPLE : If you log by 4:00 and the nag email doesn’t arrive, the removal/avoidance of the nag reinforces timely logging
What is Social Cognitive Theory (SCT)?
Argues that learning occurs in social environments, we learn by vicarious learning (observational learning)
What is Observational Learning?
A Process where individuals learn new behaviours by watching others’ actions and the outcomes of those actions.
