Chapter 4

Personality,
Cultural Values,
and Ability

Ian Gellatly, University of Alberta © 2019 McGraw-Hill Education Limited

 Class Agenda
 How can we describe what employees are
like?
 Personality
 Cultural Values
 What does it mean for an employee to be
“able?”
 Types of cognitive, emotional, and
physical abilities
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 An Integrative Roadmap

3 Chapter 4
 Personality
 Thestructures and propensities inside a
person that explain his or her
characteristic patterns of thought,
emotion, and behavior

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 Personality
 While we could come up with thousands
of adjectives, most of them would cluster
around five general dimensions

 We call these dimensions the “Big Five”

 How do you score on them?

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Figure 4-1 Trait Adjectives Associated with
the Big Five

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 OB Assessments: The Big Five (1 of 2)
1 2 3 4 5
Very Moderately Neither Moderately Very
Inaccurate Inaccurate Inaccurate nor Accurate Accurate
Accurate

1. I am the life of the party. _______

2. I sympathize with others’ feelings. _______
3. I get chores done right away. _______
4. I have frequent mood swings. _______
5. I have a vivid imagination. _______
6. I don’t talk a lot. _______
7. I am not interested in other peoples’ problems. _______
8. I often forget to put things back in their proper place. _______
9. I am relaxed most of the time. _______
10. I am not interested in abstract ideas _______

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 OB Assessments: The Big Five (2 of 2)
1 2 3 4 5
Very Moderately Neither Moderately Very
Inaccurate Inaccurate Inaccurate nor Accurate Accurate
Accurate

11. I talk to a lot of different people at parties. _______

12. I feel others’ emotions. _______
13. I like order. _______
14. I get upset easily. _______
15. I have difficulty understanding abstract ideas. _______
16. I keep in the background. _______
17. I am not really interested in others. _______
18. I make a mess of things. _______
19. I seldom feel blue. _______
20. I do not have a good imagination. _______

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 Personality Norms

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 Conscientiousness
 Relevant adjectives:

 Dependable, organized, reliable,

ambitious, hardworking, persevering

 What’s your score?

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 Agreeableness
 Relevant adjectives:

 Kind, cooperative, sympathetic,

helpful, courteous, warm

 What’s your score?

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 Neuroticism
 Relevant adjectives:

 Nervous, moody, emotional, insecure,

jealous, unstable

 What’s your score?

12 Chapter 4
Figure 4-2 Extraversion, Neuroticism and Typical Moods

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 Extraversion
 Relevant adjectives:

 Talkative, sociable, passionate,

assertive, bold, dominant

 What’s your score?

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 Openness to Experience
 Relevant adjectives:

 Curious, imaginative, creative,

complex, refined, sophisticated

 What’s your score?

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 Cultural Values
 Shared beliefs about desirable end states
or modes of conduct in a given culture
Cultural values provide societies with
their own distinctive personalities

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 Table 4-2 Hofstede’s Dimensions of
Cultural Values
Individualism–Collectivism
Individualistic
The culture is a loosely knit
social framework in which
people take care of themselves
and their immediate family.
Canada, the Netherlands,
France
17
Collectivistic
The culture is a tight social
framework in which people take
care of the members of a
broader in-group and act loyally
to it.
Indonesia, China, West Africa
Continued…
Chapter 4
 Table 4-2 Hofstede’s Dimensions of
Cultural Values
Power Distance
Low High
The culture prefers that power The culture accepts the fact that
be distributed uniformly where power is usually distributed
possible, in a more egalitarian unequally within organizations.
fashion.
Canada, Germany, the Russia, China, Indonesia
Netherlands

Continued…

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 Table 4-2 Hofstede’s Dimensions of
Cultural Values
Uncertainty Avoidance
Low
The culture tolerates uncertain
and ambiguous situations and
values unusual ideas and
behaviours.
Canada, Indonesia, the
Netherlands
19
High
The culture feels threatened by
uncertain and ambiguous
situations and relies on formal
rules to create stability.
Japan, Russia, France
Continued…
Chapter 4
 Table 4-2 Hofstede’s Dimensions of
Cultural Values
Masculinity–Femininity
Masculine
The culture values
stereotypically male traits such
as assertiveness and the
acquisition of money and things.
Canada, Japan, Germany
20
Feminine
The culture values
stereotypically female traits
such as caring for others and
caring about quality of life.
The Netherlands, Russia,
France
Continued…
Chapter 4
 Table 4-2 Hofstede’s Dimensions of
Cultural Values
Short-Term vs. Long-Term Orientation
Short-Term Oriented Long-Term Oriented
The culture stresses values that The culture stresses values that
are more past- and present- are more future-oriented, such
oriented, such as respect for as persistence, prudence, and
tradition and fulfilling thrift.
obligations.
Canada, Russia, West Africa China, Japan, the Netherlands
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; and G. Hofstede and M.H. Bond, “The Confucius Connection: From Cultural Roots to Economic
Growth,” Organizational Dynamics 16 (1988), pp. 5–21.

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 Cultural Values

Project GLOBE
 Power distance
 Uncertainty avoidance
 Institutional collectivism
 In-group collectivism
 Gender egalitarianism
 Assertiveness
 Future orientation
 Performance orientation
 Humane orientation
22 Chapter 4
 Ability
 The relatively stable capabilities people
have to perform a particular range of
different but related activities
 In contrast to skills, which are more

trainable and improvable

As with personality, about half of the
variation in ability levels is due to
genetics
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 Cognitive Ability
 Capabilities related to the acquisition
and application of knowledge in
problem solving
 Verbal
Quantitative
Reasoning
Spatial
Perceptual

24 Chapter 4
 OB on Screen
Hidden Figures

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 Cognitive Ability
 One of the most widely used measures
of cognitive ability is the Wonderlic
Personnel Test
50 questions in 12 minutes
A score of 20 is equivalent to an IQ of
100, which is average
A score of 10 indicates literacy

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 Cognitive Ability
 Think of the people you know who are
exceptionally smart. Are all of them
successful?
 Those who are not successful—why
aren’t they? What holds them back?

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 Emotional Intelligence
 Capabilities related to the management
and use of emotions when interacting
with others
 Sometimes labeled EQ or EI
 Especially vital in jobs that require a
lot of “emotional labor”
 Comes in four varieties

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 Emotional Intelligence
 Selfawareness
 The ability of an individual to understand the
types of emotions he/she is experiencing, the
willingness to acknowledge them, and the
capability to express them accurately
 Other awareness
 The ability of an individual to recognize and
understand the emotions that other
individuals are feeling

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 Emotional Intelligence
 Emotion regulation
 The ability to quickly recover from
emotional experiences and control one’s
feelings
 Use of emotions
 The ability of an individual to harness
emotions and use them to improve their
chances of being successful in a given
area
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 Physical Abilities
 Importance varies according to the
nature of the job
 Strength
 Stamina
 Flexibility and coordination
 Psychomotor
 Sensory

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 Figure 4-7 Effects of Personality on
Performance and Commitment

32 Chapter 4
 Figure 4-8 Effects of General Cognitive Ability on
Performance and Commitment

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 End of Chapter: Summary Questions
1. What is personality? What are cultural values?
What is ability?
2. What are the “Big Five” factors of personality?
3. What taxonomies can be used to describe cultural
values?
4. What are the various types of cognitive ability?
5. What are the various types of emotional ability?
6. What are the various types of physical ability?
7. How do individual differences affect job
performance and organizational commitment?
34 Chapter 4