186

Chapter  Personality

Table 6.3: The signs of excessive pressure and stress

Work performance Regression

Declining, inconsistent performance Crying

Uncharacteristic errors Arguments
Loss of control over work Undue sensitivity
Loss of motivation, commitment Irritability, moodiness
Indecision Over-reaction to problems
Lapses in memory Personality clashes
Increased time at work Sulking
Lack of holiday planning, usage Immature behaviour

Withdrawal Aggressive behaviour

Arriving late to work Malicious gossip

Leaving early Criticism of others
Extended lunches Vandalism
Absenteeism Shouting
Resigned attitude Bullying or harassment
Reduced social contact Poor employee relations
Elusiveness, evasiveness Temper outbursts

Other behaviours Physical signs

Out-of-character behaviour Nervous stumbling speech

Difficulty relaxing Sweating
Increased alcohol consumption Tiredness, lethargy
Increased smoking Upset stomach, flatulence
Lack of interest in appearance, hygiene Tension headaches
Accidents at home or work Hand tremor
Reckless driving Rapid weight gain or loss
Unnecessary risk-taking Constantly feeling cold

Source: Ayling and Willmott (2017)

relationships (poor relationships can cause stress in the first place), and commitment to work
and the organization falls.
There are two broad strategies for reducing stress: individual emotion-focused strategies,
and organizational problem-focused strategies.
Individual emotion-focused strategies improve resilience and coping skills and include:

• Consciousness-raising to improve self-awareness

• Exercise and fitness programmes
• Self-help training, in biofeedback, meditation, relaxation, coping strategies
• Time management training
• Development of other social and job interests.

Built to rush: pressure and stress are good for you

In his book Rush: Why You Need and Love the Rat able. Buchholz is a Harvard economics professor and
Race, Todd Buchholz (2011a) argues that speed, stress a former White House economic adviser. He has no
and competition at work add to our health and hap- time for ‘work–life balance’, lazy vacations, or yoga
piness. Taking it easy makes us unhealthy and miser- retreats. Instead, he emphasizes the benefits of activ-
 The Big Five (or six) 187

ity. As we are ‘built to rush’, ‘In your bloodstream is an enzyme called lipoprotein
pressure and stress drive us to lipase. It’s a friendly enzyme because it draws fat to
perform better, and competi- your muscles, where it can be burned as fuel. But
tion encourages creativity and sitting on your bum leaves fat in your bloodstream,
innovation. where it might as well clog into formations that spell
Friedman and Rosenman out 999. We want to feel that rush of dopamine when
(1974) argued that people we face a new challenge at work. We need that push
with Type A personalities have of forward momentum in order to be creative. And
problems with their health and we need it much more than we need mantras, deep
with making good decisions. breathing or the murmur that comes when we try to
Todd Buchholz In contrast, Buchholz cites an snooze through life’ (Buchholz, 2011b, p.1).
Australian study, involving 9,000 people, which found
Research has shown that cognitive abilities – speed and clar-
that those with a passive lifestyle, who spent four or
ity of thought – decay in people after they retire from work.
more hours a day ‘de-stressing’ in front of the television,
Competition is beneficial. Buchholz criticizes ‘Edenists’ who
had an 80 per cent higher chance of developing heart
want a simpler, happier lifestyle. What will you do when
disease than those who spent less than two hours a day
you finish this chapter: go relax, or rush on to the next task?
channel hopping:

Organizational problem-focused strategies deal directly with the stressors and include:

• Improved selection and training

• Staff counselling
• Improved organizational communications
• Job redesign and enrichment strategies
• Development of teamworking.

Figure 6.2 summarizes the argument of this section, in terms of the causes of stress, factors
that moderate the experience of stress, stress symptoms, and coping strategies.

EMPLOYABILITY CHECK (self-management, communication skills)

You are stressed at work – you recognize the signs. What action will you personally take to reduce your
stress? How will you approach your manager about this matter? What action can they take to help reduce
the stress that you – and perhaps other colleagues – are experiencing?

The Big Five (or six)

The Big Five consistent
trait clusters that capture
the main dimensions of
personality: Openness,
Conscientiousness,
Extraversion,
Agreeableness and
Neuroticism.
Research on personality trait clusters now focuses on The Big Five (Paul Costa and Robert
McRae, 1992; Sackett et al., 2017; Soto et al., 2017). This is widely accepted as a common
descriptive system. Studies have reproduced these dimensions in different social settings and
cultures, with different populations, and different forms of data collection. However, a sixth
dimension has recently been identified. Let’s explore The Big Five first, and then update the
model.
The Big Five (which spell OCEAN) are not personality types. These are sets of factors,
or ‘super traits’, which describe common elements among the sub-factors or traits which
cluster together. Costa and McCrae identify six traits under each of the five headings, giving
30 traits in total. Table 6.4 summarizes The Big Five trait clusters. You can profile your own
188 Chapter  Personality

Causes of stress

The individual Life changes Organizational conditions

Type A or Type B personality threatening and minor episodes work environment,
job design, role con ict,
management style

Moderators

episodic versus physical and mental cognitive appraisal of degree of individual

chronic stress condition stressors ‘hardiness’

Symptoms

Individual Organizational

heart disease, absenteeism,

respiratory disorders staff turnover
gastrointestinal problems poor performance
emotional dif culties accidents and sabotage

Coping strategies

Individual emotion-focused Organizational problem-focused

improve resilience and coping remove stressors in the
skills work setting

Figure 6.2: Stress causes, moderators, symptoms and coping strategies

personality using the assessment at the end of this chapter, or find online versions of the Big
Five inventory at:

https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/IPIP-BFFM/
https://www.truity.com/test/big-five-personality-test

As you read the following descriptions, see if you can identify where your personality
lies on each trait cluster. How open, conscientious, extravert, agreeable and neurotic
are you?

• Openness is based on six traits: fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas, values. These
run on a continuum from ‘explorer’, at one extreme, to ‘preserver’ at the other:

Explorer (O + ) traits are useful for entrepreneurs, architects, change agents, artists
and theoretical scientists. Preserver (O -) traits are useful for finance managers, stage
performers, project managers and applied scientists. Those in the middle (O) are labelled
‘moderates’ who are interested in novelty when necessity commands, but not for too
long.
 The Big Five (or six) 189

Table 6.4: The Big Five personality trait clusters

High Low

Explorer (O +) Openness Preserver (O -)

Creative, curious, open-minded, Rigidity of beliefs and range of Conventional, unimaginative,

intellectual interests narrow-minded

Focused (C +) Conscientiousness Flexible (C -)

Organized, self-disciplined, Desire to impose order and Disorganized, careless,

achievement-oriented precision frivolous, irresponsible

Extravert (E +) Extraversion Introvert (E -)

Outgoing, sociable, talkative, Level of comfort with Reserved, quiet, introverted

assertive relationships

Adapter (A +) Agreeableness Challenger (A -)

Good-natured, trusting, The ability to get along with Rude, quarrelsome, uncaring,
compliant, soft-hearted others irritable, uncooperative

Reactive (N +) Neuroticism Resilient (N -)

Anxious, depressed, Tendency to maintain a Calm, contented, self-assured

self-conscious balanced emotional state

High Low

• Conscientiousness: competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline,

deliberation. This continuum runs from ‘focused’ to ‘flexible’:
Focused (C+ ) traits are useful for leaders, senior executives and other high achievers.
Flexible (C- ) traits are useful for researchers, detectives and management consultants.
Those in the middle (C) are ‘balanced’, and find it easy to move from focus to being flexible,
from production to research.
• Extraversion: warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement-seeking,
positive emotions. This continuum runs from ‘extravert’ to ‘introvert’:
Extravert (E + ) traits are useful in sales, politics and the arts. Introvert (E - ) traits are
useful for production management, and in the physical and natural sciences. Those in
the middle (E) are ‘ambiverts’ who move easily from isolation to social settings.
• Agreeableness: trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, tender-
mindedness. This continuum runs from ‘adapter’ to ‘challenger’:
Adapter (A+ ) traits are useful in teaching, social work and psychology. Challenger
(A-) traits are useful in advertising, management and military leadership. Those in the
middle (A) are ‘negotiators’ who move from leadership to followership as the situation
demands.
• Neuroticism, or ‘negative emotionality’: worry, anger, discouragement, self-consciousness,
impulsiveness, vulnerability. This continuum runs from ‘reactive’ to ‘resilient’:
Reactive (emotional) or ‘N+ ’ traits are useful for social scientists, academics, and
customer service professionals, but extreme reactivity interferes with intellectual
performance. Resilient (unflappable) or ‘N- ’ traits are useful for air traffic controllers,
airline pilots, military snipers, finance managers and engineers. Those in the
middle (N) are ‘responsives’, able to use levels of emotionality appropriate to the
circumstances.
190 Chapter  Personality

Those trait clusters may be appropriate to particular occupations (Moutafi et al., 2007):
Openness Shown to reduce the performance of rugby referees
Conscientiousness Positively related to salary, promotions, and job status
in most occupations

Extraversion Findings are inconsistent, linked to performance, sal-

ary, and job level in some studies, but not in others;
may depend on type of work

Openness and agreeableness Do not correlate consistently with job performance;

these attributes could contribute to lower perfor-
mance in some jobs

Neuroticism Negatively related to performance, salary and status

Agreeableness Seems to interfere with management potential

Automating personality assessment

Youyou Wu and colleagues (2015) compared human and computer-based judgements

of the personalities of 86,200 participants, who first completed a Big Five personality
assessment. Most of us believe that we are good judges of personality, but this could be
another skill that computers perform better. The researchers also designed a computer
model using Facebook ikes, which indicate ‘positive associations’ with a range of
issues: products, brands, websites, sports, music, books, restaurants. The participants’
personalities were then rated on The Big Five by Facebook friends.

The computer model was more accurate, needing only 100 ikes in order to perform better
than a human judge ( 00 ikes if the human assessor was a spouse). n average, Facebook
users each have 227 ikes. Computers may be better judges because they can store and analyse
Youyou Wu volumes of information which are difficult for humans to retain, and their assessments are not
biased by emotions and motives. Why should Facebook ikes be linked to personality?

‘Exploring the ikes most predictive of a given trait shows that they represent
activities, attitudes, and preferences highly aligned with The Big Five theory. For
example, participants with high openness to experience tend to like Salvador Dali,
meditation, or TED talks; participants with high extraversion tend to like partying,
Snookie (reality show star), or dancing’ (p.1037).

Automated, accurate, inexpensive personality assessment could have several uses:

tailoring marketing messages, matching candidates to jobs, adjusting services to
customers. However, the personal information that can be collected from your ‘digital
footprint’ can also be used to influence and manipulate, raising questions of privacy.

In the movie Her (2013, director Spike Jonze), the writer Theodore Twombly (played by
oa uin Phoenix) falls in love with amantha ( carlet ohansson), who is his computer’s
artificially intelligent operating system. Samantha understands and responds to
Theodore in a more helpful and effective way than his friends. The researchers conclude
that their findings could turn this fiction into reality.

Is personality linked to success in management? Joanna Moutafi et al. (2007) studied 900
British managers, from ten organizations, in retailing, telecoms, manufacturing, consultancy,
accounting, and legal services. They reached three conclusions:

1. Conscientiousness was positively related to management level. This suggests that you
are more likely to be promoted if you are capable, sensitive, effective, well-organized,