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Chapter 9

Personality and Cultural

Values

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 Class Agenda
Personality and Cultural Values.
How Can We Describe What Employees Are Like?
• The Big Five taxonomy.
• Other taxonomies of personality.
• Cultural values.
How Important Are Personality and Cultural Values?
Application: Personality Traits.

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 An Integrative Model of Organizational Behavior

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 Personality and Cultural Values 1

Personality consists of the structures and propensities inside

us that explain our characteristic patterns of thought,
emotion, and behavior.
• What a person is like.
• Determines someone’s social reputation.
• Described by adjectives such as responsible, easygoing,
and polite.
• Traits: Recurring trends in people’s responses to their
environment.

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 Personality and Cultural Values 2

Cultural values are shared beliefs about desirable end states

or modes of conduct in a given culture.
• What a culture is like.
• Described by adjectives such as traditional, informal, and
assertive.
• Can influence the development and expression of people’s
personality traits.

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 How Can We Describe What Employees Are
Like?
By using personality traits and cultural values.
Typically involves using adjectives.
Sorting adjectives into broad dimensions of personality.

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 The Big Five Taxonomy
Five broad dimensions or “factors” can be used to
summarize our personalities:
• Conscientiousness.
• Agreeableness.
• Neuroticism.
• Openness to experience.
• Extraversion.

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 Figure 9-1 Trait Adjectives Associated with the
Big Five

G. Saucier, “Mini-Markers: A Brief Version of Goldberg’s Unipolar Big-Five Markers,” Journal of Personality Assessment 63
(1994), pp. 506-16; L.R. Goldberg, “The Development of Markers for the Big-Five Factor Structure,” Psychological
Assessment 4 (1992), pp. 26-42; R.R. McCrae and P.T. Costa Jr., “Validation of the Five-Factor Model of Personality
across Instruments and Observers,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52 (1987), pp. 81-90; and C.M. Bill and
B.P. Hodgkinson, “Development and Validation of the Five-Factor Model Questionnaire (FFMQ): An Adjectival-Based
Personality Inventory for Use in Occupational Settings,” Personnel Psychology 60 (2007), pp. 731-66.

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 The Big Five

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 Personality Norms

Source: M.B. Donnellan, F.L. Oswald, B.M. Baird, and R.E. Lucas, “The Mini-IPIP Scales: Tiny-Yet-Effective Measures of
the Big Five Factors of Personality,” Psychological Assessment 18 (2006), pp. 192–203. American Psychological
Association.

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 Figure 9-2 Changes in Big Five Dimensions over
the Life Span

Extraversion remains quite stable throughout a person’s life. Openness to experience also
remains stable, after a sharp increase from the teenage years to college age. The other
three dimensions, however, change quite significantly over a person’s life span.
Source: Adapted from B.W. Roberts, K.E. Walton, and W. Viechtbauer, “Patterns of Mean-Level Change in Personality
Traits across the Life Course: A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies,” Psychological Bulletin 132 (2006), pp. 1–25.

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 Conscientiousness
Relevant adjectives:
• Dependable, organized, reliable, ambitious, hardworking,
persevering.

The biggest influence on job performance of any of the Big

Five.
Accomplishment striving—a strong desire to accomplish
task-related goals.
Correlated to career success, good health.

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 Agreeableness
Relevant adjectives:
• Warm, kind, cooperative, sympathetic, helpful, courteous.

Communion striving—a strong desire to obtain acceptance in

personal relationships.
Not related to performance in all jobs or occupations.
Beneficial in service jobs.

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 Extraversion
Relevant adjectives:
• Talkative, sociable, passionate, assertive, bold, dominant.

Easiest to judge in zero-acquaintance situations (people

have just met)
Not related to performance across all jobs or occupations
Status striving—a strong desire to obtain power and
influence within a social structure.
Extraversion correlated with leadership emergence and
effectiveness and with job satisfaction.
Positive affectivity—a dispositional tendency to experience
pleasant, engaging moods such as enthusiasm, excitement,
and elation.
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 Figure 9-3 Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Typical
Moods

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 Neuroticism 1

Relevant adjectives:
• Nervous, moody, emotional, insecure, jealous.
Second most important of the Big Five to job performance
• Few job benefits from traits associated with neuroticism
• Most jobs benefit from employees who are calm, steady,
secure.
Negative affectivity—tendency to experience unpleasant
moods such as hostility, nervousness, annoyance.
Associated with low levels of job satisfaction and happiness
in general.

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 Table 9-1 The Neutral Objects Questionnaire
(aka the “Gripe Index”) 1

DISSATISFIED NEUTRAL SATISFIED

Your telephone number 1 2 3
8 1/2 × 11 paper 1 2 3
Popular music 1 2 3
Modern art 1 2 3
Your first name 1 2 3
Restaurant food 1 2 3
Public transportation 1 2 3
Telephone service 1 2 3
The way you were raised 1 2 3
Advertising 1 2 3
The way people drive 1 2 3
Local speed limits 1 2 3
Television programs 1 2 3

Source: Adapted from T.A. Judge, “Does Affective Disposition Moderate the Relationship Between Job Satisfaction and
Voluntary Turnover?” Journal of Applied Psychology 78 (1993), pp. 395–401; J. Weitz, J. “A Neglected Concept in the
Study of Job Satisfaction,” Personnel Psychology 5 (1952), pp. 201–05.

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 Table 9-1 The Neutral Objects Questionnaire
(aka the “Gripe Index”) 2

DISSATISFIED NEUTRAL SATISFIED

The people you know 1 2 3
Yourself 1 2 3
Your relaxation time 1 2 3
Local newspapers 1 2 3
Today's cars 1 2 3
The quality of food you buy 1 2 3
The movies being produced today 1 2 3
The climate where you live 1 2 3
The high school you attended 1 2 3
The neighbors you have 1 2 3
The residence where you live 1 2 3
The city in which you live 1 2 3

Source: Adapted from T.A. Judge, “Does Affective Disposition Moderate the Relationship Between Job Satisfaction and
Voluntary Turnover?” Journal of Applied Psychology 78 (1993), pp. 395–401; J. Weitz, J. “A Neglected Concept in the
Study of Job Satisfaction,” Personnel Psychology 5 (1952), pp. 201–05.

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 Neuroticism 2

Neuroticism affects how people deal with stress.

• Differential exposure—being more likely to appraise day-
to-day situations as stressful.
• Differential reactivity—being less likely to believe that one
can cope with the stressors experienced on a daily basis.
Locus of control—whether people attribute the causes of
events to themselves or to the external environment.
• Neurotic people hold an external locus of control.
• Less neurotic people hold an internal locus.

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 Table 9-2 External and Internal Locus of Control

PEOPLE WITH AN EXTERNAL LOCUS OF PEOPLE WITH AN INTERNAL LOCUS OF

CONTROL TEND TO BELIEVE: CONTROL TEND TO BELIEVE:
Many of the unhappy things in people’s lives are People’s misfortunes result from the mistakes they
partly due to bad luck. make.
Getting a good job depends mainly on being in the Becoming a success is a matter of hard work; luck
right place at the right time. has little or nothing to do with it.
Many times, exam questions tend to be so In the case of the well-prepared student, there is
unrelated to course work that studying is really rarely if ever such a thing as an unfair test.
useless.
This world is run by the few people in power, and The average citizen can have an influence in
there is not much people can do about it. government decisions.
There’s not much use in trying too hard to please People are lonely because they don’t try to be
people; if they like you, they like you. friendly.

Source: Adapted from J.B. Rotter, “Generalized Expectancies for Internal versus External Control of
Reinforcement,” Psychological Monographs 80 (1966), pp. 1–28.

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 Openness to Experience
Relevant adjectives:
• Curious, imaginative, creative, complex, refined,
sophisticated.
Also called inquisitiveness, intellectualness, culture.
Beneficial in some jobs but not in others; not related to job
performance across all occupations.
Helpful in jobs that are dynamic, creative, with opportunities
to learn.
Adaptable, good at finding new and better approaches.

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 Figure 9-4 Openness to Experience and
Creativity

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 Figure 9-5 Tests of Creative Thinking

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 Other Taxonomies of Personality 1

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator:

• Extraversion versus Introversion.
• Sensing versus Intuition.
• Thinking versus Feeling.
• Judging versus Perceiving.
16 different personality types based on preferences (for
example, ISTJ)
• Managers more likely to be TJs.

Not a tool for predicting job performance, but helpful in team

building.

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 Other Taxonomies of Personality 2

RIASEC Model: Interest framework summarized by six

different personality types:
• Realistic.
• Investigative.
• Artistic.
• Social.
• Enterprising.
• Conventional.

Commonly used to provide personality profile and a list of

occupations that might be a good match for that profile.

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 Figure 9-6 Holland’s RIASEC Model

Adapted from J.L. Holland, Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Careers (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973).

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 Cultural Values 1

Culture: Shared values, beliefs, motives, identities, and

interpretations that result from common experiences of
members of a society.
• Transmitted across generations.
Cultural values: Shared beliefs about desirable end states or
modes of conduct in a given culture.
• Provide societies with their own distinctive personalities.
• Reflect a feeling of how things “should be done” in a given
society.
Taxonomy of cultural values developed in 1970s by Geert
Hofstede.

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 Table 9-3 Hofstede’s Dimensions of Cultural
Values 1

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 Table 9-3 Hofstede’s Dimensions of Cultural
Values 2

Sources: G. Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across
Nations (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001); G. Hofstede, “Cultural Constraints in Management Theories,” Academy of
Management Executive 7 (1993), pp. 81–94; G. Hofstede and M. H. Bond, “The Confucius Connection: From Cultural
Roots to Economic Growth,” Organizational Dynamics 16 (1988), pp. 5–21; G. Hofstede, G.J. Hofstede, and M.
Minkov, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010).

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 OB on Screen

Soul

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 Project GLOBE 1

An ongoing international research effort to examine the impact of culture

on leadership attributes, behaviors, and practices.
Uses nine dimensions to summarize cultures:
• Power distance.
• Uncertainty avoidance.
• Institutional collectivism.
• Ingroup collectivism.
• Gender egalitarianism.
• Assertiveness.
• Future orientation.
• Performance orientation.
• Humane orientation.

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 Project GLOBE 2

Groups countries studied into clusters:

• U.S. is part of Anglo cluster (United States, Canada, Australia,
England).
• Anglo group scores in the middle on most cultural values.

Examples:
Gender egalitarianism. The culture promotes gender equality and
minimizes role differences between men and women. High: Nordic
Europe, Eastern Europe. Low: Middle East.
Performance orientation. The culture encourages and rewards members
for excellence and performance improvements. High: Anglo, Confucian
Asia, Germanic Europe. Low: Latin America, Eastern Europe.

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 Power Distance

1. A company’s norms should be followed, even if an employee disagrees with them.

2. Letting employees have a say in decisions eats away at managerial authority.
3. A good manager should be able to make decisions without consulting employees.
4. If employees disagree with the company’s actions, they should keep it to themselves.
5. Employees should not question the decisions that top management makes.
6. Managers lose effectiveness when employees second-guess their actions.
7. Managers have a right to expect employees to listen to them.
8. Efficient managerial decision making requires little employee input.

Average score: 20

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 Cultural Values 2

Research into cultural values emphasizes the distinction between

individualism and collectivism, which is relevant to topics within
organizational behavior.
Collectivists exhibit:
• Higher levels of task performance and citizenship behaviors in work
team settings.
• Lower levels of counterproductive and withdrawal behaviors.
• Greater commitment to employers.
• Preference for group rewards versus rewards tied to individual
achievement.

Awareness of cultural variations is critical because differences can

influence reactions to change, conflict management styles, negotiation
approaches, and reward preferences.

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 Figure 9-7 How Can We Describe What
Employees Are Like?

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 How Important Are Personality and Cultural
Values? 1

Conscientiousness has the strongest effect on task performance.

Conscientious employees:
• Have higher levels of motivation.
• Are more self-confident.
• Perceive a clearer link between effort and performance.
• Are more likely to set goals and commit to them.
Conscientiousness is a key driver of typical performance (performance in
the routine conditions that surround daily job tasks).
Ability is a key driver of maximum performance (performance in brief,
special circumstances that demand a person’s best effort).

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 Figure 9-8 Effects of Personality on Performance
and Commitment

Sources: M.R. Barrick, M.K. Mount, and T.A. Judge, “Personality and Performance at the Beginning of the New Millennium: What Do We Know and
Where Do We Go Next?” International Journal of Selection and Assessment 9 (2001), pp. 9–30; C.M. Berry, D.S. Ones, and P.R. Sackett, “Interpersonal
Deviance, Organizational Deviance, and Their Common Correlates: A Review and Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Applied Psychology 92 (2007), pp. 410–24;
A. Cooper-Hakim and C. Viswesvaran, “The Construct of Work Commitment: Testing an Integrative Framework,” Psychological Bulletin 131 (2005),
B. pp. 241–59; L.M. Hough and A. Furnham, “Use of Personality Variables in Work Settings,” in Handbook of Psychology, Vol. 12, ed. W.C. Borman,
C. D.R. Ilgen, and R.J. Klimoski (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003), pp. 131–69; J.E. Mathieu and D.M. Zajac, “A Review and Meta-Analysis of the Antecedents,
D. Correlates, and Consequences of Organizational Commitment,” Psychological Bulletin 108 (1990), pp. 171–94; and J.F. Salgado, “The Big Five
E. Personality Dimensions and Counterproductive Behaviors,” International Journal of Selection and Assessment 10 (2002), pp. 117–25.

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 How Important Are Personality and Cultural
Values? 2

Personality is more important in some contexts than in

others.
Situational strength suggests that “strong situations” have
clear behavioral expectations that make differences between
individuals less important.
• Personality variables tend to be more significant drivers of
behavior in weak situations than in strong situations.
Trait activation suggests that some situations provide cues
that trigger the expression of a given trait.
• Personality variables tend to be more significant drivers of
behaviors in situations that provide relevant cues than in
situations in which those cues are lacking.
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 Application: Personality Tests
Many companies use personality tests to assess job applicants.
• Integrity tests, also called honesty tests, focus on
predisposition to counterproductive behaviors.
• Clear purpose tests assess attitudes toward dishonesty,
including confessions of past dishonesty.
• Veiled purpose tests assess general personality traits
associated with dishonesty.
Most integrity tests assess a combination of high
conscientiousness, high agreeableness, and low neuroticism along
with honesty.
Even allowing for some “faking” among test-takers, personality and
integrity tests are among the most useful tools for hiring.

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 Table 9-5 Sample Integrity Test Items
TYPE OF TEST SAMPLE ITEMS
Clear Purpose • Would you say that most people lie on their résumé?
• Have you ever taken something home from work without
saying anything about it?
• If a cashier gave you too much change, do you think
you’d point out the error?
• At what dollar value would theft from work become a
fireable offense?
Veiled Purpose • I rarely do things impulsively.
• I try to avoid hurting people’s feelings.
• There are people out there I’d like to get back at.
• I’m someone who follows the rules.

Source: From J.E. Wanek, P.R. Sackett, and D.S. Ones, “Towards an Understanding of Integrity Test Similarities and
Differences: An Item-Level Analysis of Seven Tests,” Personnel Psychology 56 (2003), pp. 873–94. Reprinted with
permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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 Figure 9-9 The Effects of Faking on Correlations
with Integrity Tests

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