PERSONALITY AND CULTURAL VALUES
Personality refer to the structures and propensities inside people the explain their characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior. “A good personality” personality is actually a collection of multiple traits. Traits are defined as recurring regularities or trends in people’s responses to their environment.
One important piece of the environmental part of that equation is the culture in which you were raised. Cultural values are defined as shared beliefs about desirable end states or modes of conduct in a given culture. Cultural values can influence the development of people’s personality traits, as well as how those traits are expressed in daily life.
THE BIG FIVE TAXONOMY
Those five personality dimensions include conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion.
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
Conscientious people are dependable, organized, reliable, ambitious, hardworking, and persevering. The general goals that people prioritize in their working life. Conscientious employees prioritize accomplishment striving. People who are “accomplishment strivers” have a built-in desire to finish work tasks, channel a high proportion of their efforts toward those tasks, and work harder and longer on task assignments.
AGREEABLENESS
Agreeable people are warm, kind, cooperative, sympathetic, helpful, and courteous. Agreeable people prioritize communion striving, which reflects a strong desire to obtain acceptance in personal relationships as a means of expressing personality.
EXTRAVERSION
Extraverted people are talkative, sociable, passionate, assertive, bold, and dominant (in contrast to introverts, who are quiet, shy, and reserved). Extraversion is also the Big Five dimension that you knew your standing on, even before taking our self-assessment.
Extraversion is not necessarily related to performance across all jobs or occupations. However, extraverted people prioritize status striving. Extraverts care a lot about being successful and direct their work efforts toward “moving up” and developing a strong reputation. Indeed, research suggests that extraverts are more likely to emerge as leaders in social and task-related groups. Extraverted employees tend to be high in what’s called positive affectivity a dispositional tendency to experience pleasant, engaging moods such as enthusiasm, excitement, and elation.
NEUROTICISM
Neurotic people are nervous, moody, emotional, insecure, and jealous. Occasionally you may see this Big Five dimension called by its flip side: “emotional Stability” or “Emotional Adjustment.”
Whereas extraversion is synonymous with positive affectivity, neuroticism is synonymous with negative affectivity a dispositional tendency to experience unpleasant moods. Neuroticism is also strongly related to locus of control.
OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE
The final dimension of the Big Five is openness to experience. Open people are curious, imaginative, creative, complex, refined, and sophisticated. Of all the Big Five, openness to experience has the most alternative labels. Sometimes it’s called “Inquisitiveness” or “Intellectualness” or even “Culture”
OTHER TAXONOMIES OF PERSONALITY
Although the Big Five is the dominate lens for examining personality which you might be familiar. One of the most widely administered personality measures n organizations is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
The MBTI evaluates individuals on the basis of four types of preferences.
- Extraversion (being energized by people and social interactions) versus Introversion (being energized by private time and reflection).
- Sensing (preferring clear and concrete facts and data) versus Intuition (preferring hunches and speculations based on theory and imagination).
- Thinking (approaching decisions with logic and critical analysis) versus Feeling (approaching decisions with an emphasis on other’s needs and feelings).
- Judging (approaching tasks by planning and setting goals) versus Perceiving (preferring to have flexibility and spontaneity when performing tasks).
The MBTI categorizes people into one of 16 different types on the basis of their preferences.
Holland’s RIASEC model suggests that interests can be summarized by six different personality types.
- Realistic : Enjoys practical, hands-on, real-world tasks. Tends to be frank, practical, determined, and rugged.
- Investigative : Enjoys abstract, analytical, theory-oriented tasks. Tends to be analytical, intellectual, reserved, and scholarly.
- Artistic : Enjoys entertaining and fascinating other using imagination. Tends to be original, independent, impulsive, and creative.
- Social : Enjoys helping, serving, or assisting other. Tends to be helpful, inspiring, informative, and empathic.
- Enterprising : Enjoys persuading, leading, or outperforming others. Tends to be energetic, sociable, ambitious, and risk-taking.
- Conventional : Enjoys organizing, counting, or regulating people or things. Tends to be careful, conservative, self-controlled, and structured.
CULTURAL VALUES
Culture is defined as the shared values, beliefs, motives, identities, and interpretations that result from common experiences of members of a society and are transmitted across generation.
HOW CAN WE DESCRIBE WHAT EMPLOYEES ARE LIKE?
Conscientiousness reflects the reliability, perseverance, and ambition of employees. Agreeableness captures their tendency to cooperate with others in a warm and sympathetic fashion. Neuroticism reflects the tendency to experience negative moods and emotions frequently on a day-to-day basis. Individuals who are high on openness to experience are creative, imaginative, and curious. Finally, extraverts are talkative, sociable, and assertive and typically experience positive moods and emotions.
HOW IMPORTANT ARE PERSONALITY AND CULTURAL VALUES?
The Big Five should be important consideration, particularly in the case of conscientiousness. Conscientiousness has the strongest effect on task performance. Conscientiousness is a key driver of what’s referred to as typical performance. An employee’s ability, in contrast, is a key driver of maximum performance, which reflects performance in brief, special circumstances that demand a person’s best effort.
Situational Strength suggests that “strong situations” have clear behavioral expectations, incentive, or instructions that make differences between individuals less important, whereas “weak situations” lack those cues. Similarly, the principle of trait activation suggests that some situations provide cues that trigger the expression of a given trait.