Chapter Two

FOUNDATION OF INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR

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 Topics
• Introduction:
– Equation of behavior
• Individual difference variables
— Personality,
— Perception,
— Attribution,
— Attitudes,
— Values, and
— Ethics.
• Personality theory
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 Introduction

According to Lewin’s behavior is a function of

the person and the environment.

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 Introduction

B = f(P,E)
Where, B = Behavior
P= Person
E= Environment

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 Introduction

Idea has been developed by the

interactional psychology approach.

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 Interactional

The person Environment

Skills and abilities
Organization
Personality
Work group
Perception
Job
Attribution
Personal life

Behavior
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Interactional Psychology: Four basic propositions

1. Continuous, multidirectional interaction

2. Person is active in this process and both are changed by
situations and changes situations.
3. People vary in many characteristics, including cognitive,
affective, motivational, and ability factors.
4. Two interpretations: objective situation and the person’s
subjective view of the situation.

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 Individual Behavior

• Individual difference variables:

I. Personality,
II. Perception,
III. Attribution,
IV. Attitudes,
V. Values, and
VI. Ethics.

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 I. Personality

Personality:
— Refers to a relatively stable set of feelings and
behaviors that have been significantly formed
by genetic and environmental factors.

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 Personality

Nature Nurture
Personality
Pattern of
Hereditary life
forces experiences

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Personality

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 Personality Model

The Big Five Model

 Extroversion
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Emotional stability
Openness to experience

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 A. Extroversion

• Refers to the tendency to be sociable, friendly, and

expressive.
• Describes the predisposition of individuals to experience
positive emotional states and feel good about
themselves and the world.

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 B. Agreeableness

o Being courteous, forgiving, tolerant, trusting, and self-

hearted.
o Are caring, affectionate, and likable,
o Individuals low in this dimension are antagonistic,
mistrustful, unsympathetic, and uncooperative .

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 C. Conscientiousness

o Is exhibited by those who are described as

dependable, organized, and responsible.
o Careful, scrupulous, self-disciplined and
persevering.

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 E. Emotional Stability

oRefers to the tendency to experience positive

emotional states.

oNeuroticism, or negative affectivity, refers to

people’s dispositions to experience negative
emotional states, feel distressed, and view the
world around them negatively.

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 F. Openness to Experience

Reflects the extent to which an individual has

broad interests and is willing to be a risk-taker.

Is open to a wide variety of stimuli, has broad

interests, and is willing to take risks

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 The Big Five Model & OB

 High relation with job performance

— Conscientiousness leads to high level of job knowledge.
— Extroverts are good sales persons.
— High on agreeableness makes a person good team player.
— People are good and quick learners if they are high on
openness.

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 Personality Attributes influencing OB

• Other Organizationally Relevant Personality Traits:

1. Locus of Control
2. Self-Esteem
3. Self-efficacy
4. Self-monitoring
5. Positive/Negative Affect

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 1. Locus of Control

The extent to which an individual perceives that

his/her behavior has a direct impact on the
outcomes which result from that behavior.

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 Ic
wh ont
1. LOC
to at rol
m ha
e! pp
en
s
Internal

Pe
cir ople
co cum an
Locus of Control

nt st d
ro an
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yf s
ate
!
External
….Other Personality Traits

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 Implication on OB and work
• Those with an internal locus of control have:
– higher job satisfaction
– more likely to assume managerial positions,
– to prefer participative management styles
– display higher work motivation,
– hold stronger beliefs that leads to performance,
– receive higher salaries, and
– display less anxiety than externals

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 ….Other Personality Traits

1. Self-Esteem:
• Is the extent to which people have pride in themselves
and their capabilities.

• Is an individual's general feeling of self-worth.

• Self-esteem:
– Success tends to increase self-esteem

– Failure tends to decrease self-esteem

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 Self-esteem

High self-esteem Low self-esteem

• Positive feelings about • View themselves
themselves, negatively
• Perceive themselves to • affected by what other
have strengths as well as people think of them
weaknesses, and • Focuses on positive
• Believe their strengths feedback but negative
are more important than feedback worries them.
their weaknesses.

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 ….Other Personality Traits

3. Self-efficacy:
 An individual's beliefs and expectancies about his or
her ability to accomplish a specific task effectively.
 Four sources of self-efficacy:
— prior experiences,
— behavior models (witnessing the success of others),
— persuasion from other people, and
— assessment of current physical and emotional capabilities.
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 …Self-efficacy

• Tools:
– Providing job challenges,
– Coaching and counseling for improved
performance,
– Rewarding employees' achievements, and
Empowerment.

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 ….Other Personality Traits

4. Self-monitoring
• Is the extent to which people base their behavior on
cues from people and situations.
• Refers to the extent to which people try to control the
way they present themselves to others.

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 Self-monitoring

High Low

• Pay to what is appropriate in • Not as vigilant to situational

particular situations. cues
• Pay to the behavior of other • Act from internal states
people • adhere more to internal
• They behave accordingly. guidelines for behavior
• Behave in a socially • “ I am who I am”
acceptable manner.
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 ….Other Personality Traits

6. Positive/Negative Affect
– Positive affect:
• An individual’s tendency to emphasize positive aspects
of him/herself, other people, and the world in general.
—Negative affect:

• An individual’s tendency to emphasize negative aspects

of him/herself, other people, and the world in general.

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 Personality Theories

• Theories include:
i. Trait theory,
ii. Psychodynamic theory,
iii. Humanistic theory, and
iv. The integrative approach.

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 …Theories

i. Trait theory
– To understand individuals, we must break down behavior
patterns into a series of observable traits.
– According to trait theory, combining these traits into a
group forms an individual's personality.
• Pioneers: Raymond Cattell and Gordon Allport

– Thousands of traits have been identified over the years but

reduced to five basic factors.

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 …Theories

ii. Psychodynamic theory

– Emphasizes the unconscious determinants of behavior.
• Pioneer: Sigmund Freud
— Saw personality as the interaction between three elements
of personality. The id, ego, and superego.
— The id: is the most primitive element, the source of drives
and desire that operates in an unrestricted manner.

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 …Theories

Psychodynamic theory
– According to Freudian theory, superego, is the part of the mind that

acts as a conscience to the ego, developing moral standards and

rules through contact with parents and society.

– The superego, similar to conscience, contains values and the "should
and should not" of the personality.
– Ego: Somebody's idea of his or her own importance or worth, usually
of an appropriate level.
• Compromises, and the result is the individual's use of defense mechanisms such
as denial of reality.

• Its focus on unconscious influences on behavior.

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 …Theories

iii. Humanistic theory

• Believed that all people have a basic drive toward self-
actualization.
• Focuses on individual growth and improvement.
• Self to personality theory and contends that the self-concept is
the most important part of an individual's personality.
• Distinctly people centered.

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 …Theories

iv. Integrative Approach

— Personality is described as a composite of the individual's
psychological processes.
— Personality dispositions include emotions, cognitions,
attitudes, expectancies, and fantasies.
— Dispositions, in this approach, simply mean the tendencies of
individuals to respond to situations in consistent ways.
— focuses on both person (dispositions) and situational
variables
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 Measuring Personality

• Several methods can be used to assess personality:

– Projective tests: individuals are shown a picture, abstract
image, or photo and are asked to describe.
– Behavioral measures: involves observing an individual's
behavior in a controlled situation.
– Self-report questionnaires: Is the self-report questionnaire
• Individuals respond to a series of questions, usually in
agree/disagree or true/false format.

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 Type A and Type B Personalities

• Type A
– Always moving, walking & eating fast
– Feel impatient
– Strive to do two or more things at once
– Cannot cope with leisure time
– Obsessed with number; how many, how much
they have achieved
– Competitive
– Desire to achieve

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 Type A and Type B Personalities

Type B Personalities
– Never suffer from a sense of time urgency

– Feel no need to display/discuss their achievements

unless required
– Play for fun /relaxation

– Can relax without guilt

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 Type ‘A and work Behavior

• Type ‘A’
– Suffer high level of stress
– Quantity over quality
– Time pressure/deadlines
– Rarely creative
– Poor decision makers
– Behavior is easier to predict

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 Type ‘B’ and work Behavior

• Type ‘B’
– Difficult to predict behavior

– Good decision makers

– Quality of work

– No compromise on health

– Wiser than hasty

– Creative / innovative solutions to same problem

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 II. Social Perception
• Perception is the process by which individuals select,
organize, and interpret the input from their senses to give
meaning and order to the world around them.
– Touch, smell, hearing, vision, and taste.

• Social perception is the process of interpreting information

about another person.
• Perception is also culturally determined.

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 …Perception
• Factors Affecting Perception
Ch
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f th ac
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ve ta isticr
te
c ei rg s o
ara
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Pe
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Perception

Characteristics of the situation

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 …Perception
• Characteristics of the perceiver
– Familiarity with target
– Attitudes
– Mood
– Self-concept
– Cognitive structure

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 …Perception
• Characteristics of the target
 Physical appearance
 Novelty
 Motion
 Sound
 Size
 Background
 Proximity
• Characteristics of the situation
- Context of the interaction
- Strength of situational cues
- Time
- Work setting
- Social setting
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 …Perception
• Barriers / Perceptual Errors
1. Selective Perception
2. Stereotyping
3. Halo Effect

4. First Impression error

5. Implicit Personality Theory
6. Self fulfilling Prophecies
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 …Perception
1. Selective Perception
• is our tendency to choose information that supports our
viewpoints.
• Individuals often ignore information that makes them
feel uncomfortable or threatens their view­points.
• It is impossible for us to assimilate everything we see
—only certain stimuli can be taken in.

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 …Perception
2. Stereotyping
• Judging someone on the basis of our perception of the group
to which he or she belongs.
• A stereotype is a generalization about a group of people.
• Stereotypes reduce information about other people to a
workplace level and they are efficient for compiling and using
information.
• Can be accurate, and when they are accurate, they can be
useful perceptual guidelines.
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 …Perception
3. Halo-Effect
• A general impression about an individual is based on a single
positive/ negative characteristic.
• Occurs when we draw a general impression on the basis of a
single characteristic.
• When the perception of a person is formulated on the basis of
a single favorable or unfavorable trait or characteristic and
tends to shut out other relevant characteristics of that person.

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 …Perception
4. First Impression error
• Impression : Opinion, or mental image of somebody
• First Impression error: Means that we observe a very brief
bit of a person's behavior in our first encounter and infer that
this behavior reflects what the person is really like.
• The process by which individuals try to control the
impressions others have of them is called impression
management.

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 …Perception
5. Implicit personality theories
• Is ones own mini-theories about how people look and behave.
• Theories help us organize our perceptions and take shortcuts
instead of integrat­ing new information all the time.
• Implicit personality theories are barriers, because they limit
our ability to take in new information when it is available.
• We are cognitive misers:
– the world is complex and ambiguous and we have a limited mental
capacity

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 …Perception
6. Self-fulfilling Prophecies
• - A concept that proposes a person will behave in ways
consistent with how he or she is perceived by others.
• Expectations affect the way we interact with others such that
we get what we wish for.
• A manager's expectations of an individual affect both the
manager's behavior toward the individual and the individual's
response.

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 III. Attribution in Organizations

• Attribution is an explanation of the cause of behavior.

• Is the Process through which individuals attempt to determine
the causes of others behavior.
• Attribution theory describes how people explain the causes of
their own and other people’s behavior.
• To the extent that attributions are accurate, better
organizational decisions can be made.

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 Attribution in Organizations

• Attribution theory aids in this interpretation by focusing on

how people attempt to :

– Understand the causes of a certain event

– Assess responsibility for the outcomes of the event, and

– Evaluate the personal qualities of the people involved in

the event.

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 Attribution in Organizations

• Internal and External Attributions

– Internal: Behavior caused by some characteristic
of the target/individual.

– External: Behavior assigned to factors outside

the individual.

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 Attribution in Organizations

• Attribution patterns differ among individuals:

– Achievement-oriented individuals attribute their success to

ability and their failures to lack of effort, both internal

causes.

– Failure-oriented individuals attribute their failures to lack

of ability, and they may develop feelings of incompetence

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 Attribution in Organizations

• Kelley's Attribution Theory:

– identify the antecedents of internal and external
attributions.
– Kelley proposed that individuals make attributions based
on information gathered in the form of three informational
cues.
– These are: Consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency.

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 Attribution in Organizations

– Distinctiveness: Shows the different behaviors in

different situations.

– Consensus: Response is the same as others to the same

situation.

– Consistency: Responds in the same way over time.

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 Attribution in Organizations

Attribution Biases/errors
• Two very common errors:

i) The fundamental attribution error: The tendency to make

attributions to internal causes when focusing on someone
else's behavior.
Eg. The managers claimed that internal causes (their
employees' lack of effort or lack of ability) were the basis for
their employees' poor performance-

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 Attribution in Organizations

ii) The self-serving bias: occurs when focusing on one's own

behavior.

Eg. When we succeed, we take credit for it; when we fail, we

blame the situation or other people.

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 Individual Behavior

• Individual difference variables:

— Personality
— Perception,
— Attribution,
— Attitudes,
— Values, and
— Ethics.

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 IV. Attitudes
• Attitude is a mental stage of readiness, learned and organized

through experience, exerting a specific influence on a person’s

response to people, objects, and situations with which it is

related.

• Attitudes are evaluative statements that are either favorable

or unfavorable concerning objects, people, or events.

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 Attitudes
• Three components of an attitude:
– Cognition: Thinking or mind set

– Affect: is the emotional or feeling segment of an

attitude.
• Example: “I don’t like Jon because he discriminates
minorities.”
– Behavior: refers to an intention to behave in a certain way
toward someone or something.
• Example: “I chose to avoid Jon because he discriminates.”

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 A tti t u d e s
• OB h a s b e e n
c o n c e rn e d w i th th r e e a tt
itu d e s :
– job satisfacti
on,

– job involvem
ent, and

– organization
al commitment.

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 V. Values
• Values: Are people’s personal convictions about what one
should expect to obtain from working and how one should
behave at work.

• There are two types of work values:

– Intrinsic work value

– Extrinsic work value

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 Values
• Intrinsic work value: Are values related to the work
itself.

– Example: Something interesting and challenging or

having a sense of accomplishment

• Extrinsic work value: Are values related to the

consequences of work
– Example: Having family security or status in the
community.
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 Values
• Work Values

– Achievement (career advancement)

– Concern for others (compassionate behavior)

– Honesty (provision of accurate information)

– Fairness (impartiality)

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 Values
• Basic convictions: “A specific mode of conduct or end-state of
existence”.

– They contain a judgmental element in that they carry the

individual’s idea of what is right, good, or desirable.
• Sources of values
– Parents.
– Friends.
– Teachers??????????
– Role models.
– External reference groups.
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 VI. Ethics

• Ethics
– Moral principles/values -- determines whether actions are

right/wrong and outcomes are good/bad.

• Ethical behavior
– “Good” and “right” as opposed to “bad” or “wrong” in a
particular setting.
• An organization’s ethics are rules, beliefs, and values that
outline ways in which managers and workers should behave.

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 Ethics…

• Ethical behavior enhances the well-being (the happiness, health,

and prosperity) of individuals, groups, organizations, and the
organizational environment.
• Ethical dilemmas occur in relationships with:
– Superiors.
– Subordinates.
– Customers.
– Competitors.
– Suppliers.
– Regulators.
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End of the Chapter

Thanks you

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