Personality and Organizations

Benjamin Schneider,D. Brent Smith

• Éditeur: Psychology Press
• Année: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135651718
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Negocios y empresa
• Sous-sujet: Comportamiento organizacional

Personality has always been a predictor of performance. This book of original chapters is designed to fulfill a need for a contemporary treatment of human personality in work organizations. Bringing together top scholars in the field, this book provides a comprehensive study of the role of personality in organizational life. Utilizing a personality perspective, scholars review the role of personality in groups, job satisfaction, leadership, stress, motivation, organizational climate and culture, and vocational interests. In addition, the book looks at more classical topics in personality at work, including the measurement of personality, personality-performance linkages, faking, and person-organization fit. Complete in both conceptual material and reviews of the literature across the variety of domains in which personality plays a role at work, this handbook borrows the idea that personality plays out in many ways in organizations and not just a correlate of task performance. The editors believe that this book supports this belief--that personality in its many conceptualizations is a useful lens through which to shed understanding on the broadest array of contemporary topics in industrial/organizational psychology and organizational behavior. Graduate students and researchers interested in the contributions of personality to almost any topic in which they may have interest will find it valuable.

IV

The Role of Personality in Understanding Micro Organizational Processes

The three chapters in this section explore three traditional topics in organizational psychology: motivation, leadership, and citizenship behavior. The three topics go from within-person issues (motivation) to dyadic leader-follower relationships (leadership) to a kind of performance in organizations, citizenship behavior, which has been receiving increasingly significant attention.

In chapter 9, James and Rentsch present an overview of a new approach to thinking about personality in the workplace, implicit justification. Their reasoning is that the way people explain, or justify, behavior is a key to their personality. James and Rentsch argue that personality and motivation are inextricably entwined, and furthermore, that understanding their linkage is possible via a new measurement procedure called conditional reasoning. This procedure, which requires people to explain or justify vignettes presented to them, seems to offer insights into the prediction and understanding of behavior in ways that yield improved validity over more traditional self-descriptive reports.

In chapter 10, Spangler, House, and Palrecha explore the relationship between personality and leadership. Their focus on the intersection of motives and personality provides a second look (after James and Rentsch in chap. 9) at this personality–motive nexus and shows how this combined perspective offers insights into understanding leadership effectiveness. Furthermore, Spangler and his colleagues show how a focus on motives sheds light on the consistently modest relationships that exist in the literature on the personality prediction of leadership.

Chapter 11, by Organ and Paine, reviews the expanding literature attempting to provide insight into citizenship behavior at work via individual differences correlates. Thus, the early work on citizenship behavior (also known as contextual performance) focused on job satisfaction and situational correlates of job satisfaction (like fairness or justice). In this chapter, Organ and Paine explore various conceptualizations of the relationship between personality and citizenship behavior in an attempt to explain the modest relationships between them shown to date. They then offer an alternative research paradigm for exploring these relationships, one that focuses less on hunting for new individual traits that might correlate with citizenship behavior and more on capitalizing on what we know by using a more configural approach.

9

J-U-S-T-I-F-Y to Explain the Reasons Why: A Conditional Reasoning Approach to Understanding Motivated Behavior

Lawrence R. James and Joan R. Rentsch

The University of Tennessee

Personality consists of those components of cognitive structure and cognitive process that determine individuals’ emotional and behavioral adjustments to environments (see Allport, 1937; James & Mazerolle, 2002). Many of these components are primarily motivational in content, the prime example being the motives (needs) that lie at the core of the cognitive structure (Murray, 1938) and that strongly influence the direction, intensity, and persistence of the characteristic behavioral adjustments that we commonly refer to as traits. To illustrate, differences in the strength of the need to achieve influence the difficulty levels of the tasks that different individuals choose to perform and the varying levels of intensity and persistence that these individuals are willing to devote to tasks to attempt to satisfy their need to achieve. Intervening between the motives and the behaviors they stimulate are various affective (e.g., sense of challenge, anticipation, and excitement) and cognitive (e.g., goals, expectancies, valences) mechanisms that shape and sustain the direction, intensity, and perseverance of the motivated behaviors. In a real sense, the study of personality is a study of motivation because the core explanatory mechanisms of personality— motives—shape the individual differences in behaviors that define traits. We shall refer to this functional link or connection between motives and the behaviors intended to serve these motives as the personality–motivation nexus.

In organizational research, almost all the studies of this personality– motivation nexus are based at least in part on self-reports (Schwarz, 1999). This fact implies that investigations of the motivational shaping of behavioral and emotional adjustments to environments are predicated almost exclusively on individuals’ conscious cognitions. Conscious cognitions consist of those components of cognitive structure and cognitive process that are accessible to introspection by the individual. Measures of personality based on conscious cognitions are often referred to as being self-ascribed (as in self-ascribed motive; see Greenwald & Banaji, 1995).

Mounting evidence suggests that implicit or unconscious cognitions provide an additional, important, and often unique (in relation to conscious cognitions) source of information about the personality–motivation nexus (see Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Winter, John, Stewart, Klohnen, & Duncan, 1998). Implicit cognitions are (a) components of cognitive structure and cognitive process that determine individuals’ perceptual, emotional, and behavioral adjustments to environments (see Allport, 1937; James & Mazarolle, 2002) that (b) are not accessible to introspection by the individual (cf. Greenwald & Banaji; Kilstrom, 1999; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977;Winter et al.). Implicitness is believed to be a function of one or more factors such as the following:

Basic biological drives that have not reached consciousness (e.g., implicit motives).
Developmental or learning experiences that have been lost to memory (e.g., conditioned associations between stimuli and emotions).
Cognitive processing that was at one time consciously controlled but has become automatic and lost to introspection (e.g., an unrecognized propensity to prefer internal over external attributions to explain success/failure).
Cognitive processes that unconsciously serve to enhance or to protect self-esteem and subjective well-being (e.g., rationalization or denial; see Fiske & Taylor, 1984, 1991; Greenwald & Banaji; Kilstrom; Nisbett & Wilson; Winter et al.).

Substantial breakthroughs in the understanding of how implicit cognitive structures and processes are employed by humans to give meaning to, and to determine their functioning in, social contexts have been provided primarily by research in social cognition. In general terms, research in social cognition involves examinations of the inferences, judgments, explanations, and theories that people have about the causes and effects of their own behavior and the behavior of others in social environments. The specific domains of research in social cognition that involve implicit cognitions include framing, attribution errors, illusionary correlations or halo, confirmatory biases in hypothesis testing, categorization/protoyping (e.g., stereotyping), downward comparison, implicit personality theories, rationalization and self-justification, discounting, positive and negative leniency in evaluation and judgment, self-handicapping, escalating commitment, felt contentment, and defense mechanisms underlying ego protection and ego enhancement (cf. Fiske & Taylor, 1984, 1991; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Kilstrom, 1999; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Winter et al., 1998).

It is our belief that the evolving field of implicit cognition has great potential for advancing our understanding of the personality–motivation nexus in work settings. An indication of the potential of this field is given by a comparison of validities furnished by self-report measures of conscious cognitions compared to validities furnished by a new procedure for measuring implicit cognitions. With respect to self-report or self-attributed measures, it is well documented that a major problem for personality measured via conscious cognition is a ceiling on validity coefficients. Mischel (1968) observed that correlations between self-report measures of personality and consequential behaviors infrequently exceeded .30 and therefore accounted for 10% or less of the variance in salient behavioral criteria. Researchers have made amazingly little progress to improve the measurement of personality in the past 30 years. For example, recent meta-analyses have indicated that the average, uncorrected validities for single predictors against behavioral criteria rarely exceed .30 and have a mean of approximately .12 even when the review is limited to studies of theoretically predicted relationships—see Barrick & Mount, 1993; Ghiselli, 1966. (Uncorrected refers to lack of adjustment for unreliability in the criterion, unreliability in the predictor, or range restriction.). It appears reasonable to conclude, therefore, that personality measures tend to have significant but modest—make that low and generally unimpressive— criterion-related validities. Explaining slightly more than 01% of the variance in behavior on the average suggests that conscious cognitions may not have captured all there is to know about how personality affects motivated behavior.

Recently, instruments have been developed to measure implicit aspects of the personality–motivation nexus. These instruments have produced much more impressive validities against independently assessed behavioral criteria. For example, James and Mazerolle (2002) reported results for conditional reasoning tests developed to assess implicit motive strength (an assessment of whether the implicit motive to achieve is stronger or weaker than the implicit motive to avoid failing) and implicit cognitive readiness to aggress (a measure of implicit preparedness to engage in aggression). A crucial test of the construct validity of these conditional reasoning tests was whether empirical validation analyses confirmed that the tests predicted behavioral indicators of achievement and aggression. The predicted links for aggression were tested in eight studies, which included one experimental study and seven field studies. The inferential links for achievement motivation were tested in five studies of which one was a natural experiment and four were field studies.

TABLE 9.1 Uncorrected Validities for Conditional Reasoning Tests (CRTs) for Aggression and Achievement Motivation

The absolute values of the uncorrected validities were all statistically significant and ranged from .30 to .62. These validities, all of which are predictive or cross validities, are reported in Table 9.1. The mean validity in this table is approximately .43. If one compares the variance accounted for by this average validity (i.e., .432 = .1849) to the variance accounted for by the average self-report measure (.122 = .0144), then indications are that implicit measures of personality offer the opportunity to enhance prediction of behavior by approximately 1200% (i.e., [.1849 − .0144]/.0144) in comparison to explicit measures. This result serves to indicate that measures of implicit cognitions are likely to add substantially to our understanding of the personality–motivation nexus. It also suggests that personality is as important as cognitive problem solving skills in regard to predicting salient behaviors in the workplace.

What is the secret to developing highly valid personality tests? Of initial note is that by virtue of being hidden from introspection, implicit social cognitions cannot be assessed by self-report (cf., Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). Rather, indirect procedures must be used to capture what for respondents are unconscious cognitive processes. The conditional reasoning measurement system taps into the unconscious, habitual reasoning biases that humans use to justify motive-based behaviors (James, 1998). Individuals with different implicit motives behave differently and develop different implicit biases to enhance the rational appeal of their respective behaviors. It follows that whether an individual engages in the use of a specific bias is dependent or conditional on whether he or she is motivated to engage in the behaviors that are served (e.g., protected) by this bias. Having respondents solve what on the surface appear to be inductive reasoning problems is the method used to assess the conditional use of implicit biases. Unknown to respondents, different answers are based on different reasoning biases. The intent of measurement is that only those individuals who are prone to implicitly use a particular justification will see the answer based on this bias as logical or rational. How one answers the problems is thus indicative of one’s underlying justification propensities and implicit motive structure.

The social cognitive studies of implicit cognition noted previously made it possible to develop the conditional reasoning measurement system. The purpose of this chapter is to overview the essentials of these studies, the objective being to introduce the reader to implicit cognition and its role in motivation. Specific topics of discussion include implicit motives, unconscious framing proclivities, implicit assumptions, and the implicit role of justification mechanisms in what individuals believe to be rational reasoning. We shall also discuss the relationship between implicit and explicit cognitions. We have found that it is helpful to introduce implicit cognition using exemplars. The exemplars employed here, achievement motivation and fear of failure, were chosen because of their centrality to the study of motivation in work settings. We begin by examining the personality– motivation nexus in greater depth, beginning with the two building blocks of personality, motives and traits.

THE PERSONALITY–MOTIVATION NEXUS

The personality–motivation nexus exists because motives engender the individual differences in behaviors that define traits. For example, to say that a person is achievement motivated or high in the trait of achievement motivation means that he or she consistently, over time and evocative situations, directs intense and persistent effort toward accomplishing demanding tasks. Note that we are describing this person’s behavior. Now suppose we ask: Why does this person approach (select) demanding tasks and then devote intense and persistent effort toward accomplishing them? In other words, why does he or she behave in ways that we describe as achievement motivated? An answer to this question appears to be that people who aim intense and persistent effort at achieving demanding objectives have a strong need (motive, desire) to do things better (McClelland, 1985).

A similar question could be posed regarding people who experience considerable anxiety or fear over failing and engage in avoidance or other forms of inhibitory behaviors. Why do they react this way to evocative situations? Consider that one of the reasons that an achievement-oriented objective is considered an achievement is because it is difficult. People fail out of college or are not accepted into graduate schools. It is not uncommon to be passed over for promotion at least once in one’s life. A majority of new business ventures fail. One may practice unrelentingly for an athletic event and yet still fail to win or even place among the top finishers. Basically, striving to achieve carries with it a degree of uncertainty, a risk that the venture may be unsuccessful. These types of situations may stimulate the need in some individuals to protect themselves from undertaking actions that put them at risk of experiencing psychological discomfort. These individuals have a strong need (or motive) to avoid failure. These two examples illustrate the inextricable link between personality and motivation, or the personality–motivation nexus. We continue this discussion in the following sections, where we look at motives and traits more fully and add the intervening implicit cognitions.

IMPLICIT COGNITIONS IN THE PERSONALITY–MOTIVATION NEXUS

As noted earlier, personality refers to dynamic mental structures and coordinated mental processes (i.e., cognitive structures and processes) that determine individuals’ emotional and behavioral adjustments to their environments (see Allport, 1937). The term dynamic suggests that personality continues to evolve throughout one’s lifetime. Evolution for a given individual is predictable, however, because there is also considerable coherence in personality over time. For example, mental structures include motives, memories, and self-images. These attributes may adjust and modify to correspond to changes in activity level, development, education, occupation, marital status, health, socioeconomic status, and so on. But we also witness consistency over time. To illustrate, over time and across situations, the achievement-oriented person will continue to seek success, whereas the person high in fear of failure will continue to avoid demanding tasks. The same is true for mental processes such as perception and reasoning. Over time, one’s attributions for why one acts in particular ways may sharpen and reflect increased understanding. However, unrecognized rationalizations in these attributions may remain with one throughout the life span. We shall focus on these unrecognized rationalizations, or justifications, because they play key roles in the implicit processing that underlies motivated behavior. The treatment of justifications begins by reviewing the attributes that they serve, namely traits and motives.

TRAITS

The term trait refers to a disposition to behave in a relatively consistent manner over time and across situations. The three salient aspects of a trait are as follows: A number of related behaviors can be grouped into one general category, this category can be operationally defined in terms of these behaviors, and the behaviors representing the trait are consistently manifested over time and situations (James & Mazerolle, 2002).

Traits become evident when individuals are faced with difficult decisions (see Stagner, 1977). These are decisions that are evocative—that is, they are important to the individual—and imply that the individual is free to make a choice about behavior. In the workplace, these decisions often involve whether to approach or to avoid a demanding task or objective. Whether to approach or to avoid often becomes a form of approach– avoidance conflict (Atkinson, 1978). How these conflicts tend to be resolved provides the foundation for two primary traits, namely achievement motivation and fear of failure.

The Trait of Achievement Motivation

Over their life spans, some people exhibit a recurring pattern in which they resolve approach–avoidance conflicts in favor of approaching achievement-oriented objectives. An achievement-oriented goal is one that (a) relative to one’s skill and ability, is personally challenging or demanding, (b) requires intense and persistent effort to attain, and (c) is perceived by the individual as an important and worthwhile accomplishment. A recurring pattern of seeking successively more challenging goals and tasks is also likely to include a willingness to devote intense effort to the selected objective. Intensity is reflected by competitiveness, devoting long hours to honing the skills required for success, and a level of involvement in goal accomplishment that may result in neglecting other aspects of one’s life. Accompanying intensity is tenacity, exemplified by a willingness to persevere for long periods of time to accomplish the demanding objectives. Individuals who consistently resolve approach–avoidance conflicts in favor of approaching high-press-for-achievement tasks and who are willing to devote intense and persistent effort to accomplishing these tasks are displaying consistent behavioral tendencies that define the trait of achievement motivation (see McClelland, 1985; Wright & Mischel, 1987).

The Trait of Fear of Failure

Fear of failure refers to the anticipatory feeling of uneasiness, apprehension, dread, and anxiety about attempting a difficult task, failing, and appearing incompetent (Atkinson, 1978). Fear of failing, or more precisely the desire to reduce a...

Table des matières

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• About the Authors
• I
• II
• III
• IV
• V
• VI