INDUSTRIAL & ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
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mgmt341_-_week_5.pptxWeek 5 – Dispositionalism
MGMT341 – Industrial and Organizational Psychology
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Learning objectives
Personality and intelligence
Dispositionalism: personality as natural dispositions
Eysenck: personality and illness
Personality testing
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Personality?
Most people believe that they have a personality and that it affects their behaviour, but defining precisely what personality is has proven very difficult
There are as many definitions of personality as there are books or articles about it
Some authors present it as an individual’s underlying biological tendencies, thus innate and inherited
Other authors believe that it is made of values and beliefs acquired through education and socialisation and therefore the product of conditioning
Still other authors argue that personality does not exist in any real sense but is merely a label for game-playing, a metaphor for the roles that people play
While there are authors who argue that whatever one does is a manifestation of one’s personality, many hold that personality can be known through observation of the stable tendencies in people’s behaviour
At first sight, this is an acceptable starting point; everyone displays regularities in behaviour
How to account for an absence of regularity, then: lack of personality?
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Evidence for personality
Innate or the product of socialisation, consistency in behaviour must be distinguished from the performance of roles
Policemen are supposed to be firm, firemen brave, salesmen optimistic and judges distant, etc.: these characteristics cannot be received as evidence for personality, since they can be interpreted as signs of competence in one’s role
Similarly, purposive habits (like brushing one’s teeth every night), although stable, are not deemed to be evidence for personality because there are means to ends
To be considered acceptable evidence for personality, a stable behaviour must be behaviour that persists in spite of roles or objectives, that is, that goes against the performance of a role or the achievement of an objective
People with a strong personality will therefore be unable to adapt their behaviour to the demands of their role or the pursuit of their objectives
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Personality and intelligence
Conclusion: personality traits go against the ability to adapt to changing situations
If intelligence is equated with the ability to perform roles and achieve objectives in various circumstances, then personality and intelligence are inversely correlated
That is, the more personality one has, the less intelligent one is!
Although most psychologists resist this conclusion, the argument is very solid and in agreement with the attribution to abnormal behaviour to personality ‘disorders’ or ‘imbalance’
That the above conclusion is sound is made clearer when one turns to dispositionalism
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Dispositions
A disposition is a feature or quality of an entity that pertains to the very nature (or ‘essence’) of that entity
For instance, a disposition of (pure) water is to freeze when cooled below zero degree in normal conditions; a disposition of glass is to shatter when struck
It is impossible to think of water and glass without these dispositions because water and glass cannot NOT behave according to their dispositions
Dispositions are not unlike causes: they determine the behaviour of the entity that has them
In psychology, the view that behaviour is the result of internal personal characteristics is known as dispositionalism
These characteristics are said to be internal, in opposition to external: that is, their ultimate origin is to be found within the person and cannot be attributed to society via education or culture
The person behaves according to his/her dispositions; as for water and glass, the individual cannot behave but as determined (caused) by his/her dispositions
Other names for dispositions are: internal attributions, potentialities, traits or types
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Personality as dispositions
To conceive of personality as cluster of dispositions is to hold that behaviour is explicable (thus predictable) in the terms of basic and stable elements operating in all circumstances
Known as ‘traits’, these basic and stable elements can be either the product of nature or of nurture: to avoid the confusion, dispositionalists prefer to speak of ‘types’ or ‘personal factors’ (and of course ‘dispositions’) to refer to what they believe is the source of behaviour
Whatever the case and however called, these ‘traits’ or ‘dispositions’ remain theoretical constructs: they are never observed directly but must be inferred from behaviour
If dispositions are ultimately ‘in’ the person (that is, innate but not acquired), then they must be biologically based and inherited at birth
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Cattell’s model
Raymond Cattell (1905-1998) was a dispositionalist; he is one of the most important, if controversial, psychologists of the 20th century
His starting point was the ‘lexical hypothesis’ proposed in 1936 by psychologists Allport and Odbert, according to which if there is a word for something, this thing must exist
Cattell analysed all words in English that are used to describe people and how they behave
From an initial list of 18,000, he arrived at 4,500 words by removing synonyms and words almost never used
Through semantic and factor analysis (correlation), he boiled them down to 16
In other words, Cattell held that 16 words were enough to describe all kinds of people
He called them the Personality Factors or Primary Trait constructs
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The 16 factors (1)
| Descriptors of Low Range | Primary Factor | Descriptors of High Range |
| Impersonal, distant, cool, reserved, detached, formal, aloof | Warmth (A) | Warm, outgoing, attentive to others, kindly, easy-going, participating, likes people |
| Concrete thinking, lower general mental capacity, less intelligent, unable to handle abstract problems | Reasoning (B) | Abstract-thinking, more intelligent, bright, higher general mental capacity, fast learner |
| Reactive emotionally, changeable, affected by feelings, emotionally less stable, easily upset | Emotional Stability (C) | Emotionally stable, adaptive, mature, faces reality calmly |
| Deferential, cooperative, avoids conflict, submissive, humble, obedient, easily led, docile, accommodating | Dominance (E) | Dominant, forceful, assertive, aggressive, competitive, stubborn, bossy |
| Serious, restrained, prudent, taciturn, introspective, silent | Liveliness (F) | Lively, animated, spontaneous, enthusiastic, happy go lucky, cheerful, expressive, impulsive |
| Expedient, nonconforming, disregards rules, self-indulgent | Rule-Consciousness (G) | Rule-conscious, dutiful, conscientious, conforming, moralistic, staid, rule bound |
| Shy, threat-sensitive, timid, hesitant, intimidated | Social Boldness (H) | Socially bold, venturesome, thick skinned, uninhibited |
| Utilitarian, objective, unsentimental, tough minded, self-reliant, no-nonsense, rough | Sensitivity (I) | Sensitive, aesthetic, sentimental, tender minded, intuitive, refined |
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The 16 factors (2)
| Descriptors of Low Range | Primary Factor | Descriptors of High Range |
| Trusting, unsuspecting, accepting, unconditional, easy | Vigilance (L) | Vigilant, suspicious, skeptical, distrustful, oppositional |
| Grounded, practical, prosaic, solution oriented, steady, conventional | Abstractedness (M) | Abstract, imaginative, absent minded, impractical, absorbed in ideas |
| Forthright, genuine, artless, open, guileless, naive, unpretentious, involved | Privateness (N) | Private, discreet, nondisclosing, shrewd, polished, worldly, astute, diplomatic |
| Self-Assured, unworried, complacent, secure, free of guilt, confident, self-satisfied | Apprehension (O) | Apprehensive, self doubting, worried, guilt prone, insecure, worrying, self blaming |
| Traditional, attached to familiar, conservative, respecting traditional ideas | Openness to Change (Q1) | Open to change, experimental, liberal, analytical, critical, free thinking, flexibility |
| Group-oriented, affiliative, a joiner and follower dependent | Self-Reliance (Q2) | Self-reliant, solitary, resourceful, individualistic, self-sufficient |
| Tolerates disorder, unexacting, flexible, undisciplined, lax, self-conflict, impulsive, careless of social rules, uncontrolled | Perfectionism (Q3) | Perfectionistic, organized, compulsive, self-disciplined, socially precise, exacting will power, control, self-sentimental |
| Relaxed, placid, tranquil, torpid, patient, composed low drive | Tension (Q4) | Tense, high energy, impatient, driven, frustrated, over wrought, time driven |
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The 16PF test
Cattell’s psychometric test (often called the 16PF) measures personality over the 16 dimensions he identified
The first edition was published in 1949, the fifth (and last) appeared in 1993
The questionnaire is not timed; it is made of 187 questions and usually takes less than 50 minutes to complete
NB: factor B (‘reasoning’) is not a personality factor strictly speaking but a measure of analytical intelligence (questions are similar to those of an IQ test)
Like all questionnaires, the 16PF transforms ‘inputs’ into ‘outputs’
That is, it does not have supernatural powers to ‘read’ the one’s mind but scores and tallies answers over 16 dimensions (the 16 Personality Factors)
Its outcome is a personality profile made up of 16 independent scores (each between 1 to 10) that must be interpreted by a qualified psychologist
The questionnaire has been calibrated so that the average score on each dimension is 5.5
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Examples of questions
Rather than relying upon self-evaluations like ‘I am a warm and friendly person’, the items (except for factor B) investigate concrete situations; for instance
‘I can find enough energy to face my difficulties’
‘I hold back from criticizing people and their ideas’
‘On social occasions, I readily come forward’
‘My decisions are governed by my heart rather than my head’
‘When I find myself in a boring situation, I usually ‘tune out’ and daydream about other things’
‘When a bit of tact and convincing is needed to get people moving, I am the one who does it’
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Applications
The 16PF test has been used is a wide variety of situations and objectives
Vocational and career planning
Personnel selection, promotion and leadership development
Clinical diagnosis and therapy planning
Identify students with potential academic, emotional and social problems
Marital compatibility and satisfaction
Because some of Cattell’s 16 factors often go together and because their reliability is open to question (see slide 24), later psychologists argued that the 16 Primary Traits constructs can be reduced to 5 Secondary Trait constructs, also know as the ‘Big Five’
Once widely used, the 16PF is no longer fashionable; it has been displaced by the now very popular Big Five test
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The ‘Big Five’ (B5)
Openness to experience
Individuals with high openness are said to pursue self-actualization specifically by seeking out intense experiences; conversely, those with low openness seek to gain fulfillment through perseverance, sometimes even perceived to be dogmatic and closed-minded
Conscientiousness
High conscientiousness are often perceived as stubborn and obsessive; low conscientiousness are flexible and spontaneous, but can be perceived as sloppy and unreliable
Extraversion
High extraversion is often perceived as attention-seeking and domineering; low extraversion causes a reserved, reflective personality, which can be perceived as aloof or self-absorbed.
Agreeableness
High agreeableness is often seen as naive or submissive; low agreeableness personalities are often competitive or challenging people
Neuroticism or emotional stability
A high need for stability manifests as a stable and calm personality, but can be seen as uninspiring and unconcerned. A low stability causes a reactive and excitable personality, often very dynamic individuals, but they can be perceived as unstable or insecure
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Other tests
The Myers-Brigg Type Indicator (MBTI) was developed at about the same time as Cattell’s
It is based on 4 bi-polar dimensions, leading to 16 personality types
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was created by clinical psychologists working at the University of Minnesota (first version 1943, second 1989) to identify and measure pathologies
Various versions exist to measure different families of pathologies; they have 10 to 15 dimensions
The California Psychological Inventory (CPI; first version 1957, third version 1987) is based on the MMPI
The test measures not pathologies but 15 everyday, ordinary personality concepts like ‘dominance’, ‘sociability’ or ‘empathy’, etc.
MMPI and CPI have been simplified and combined into PsychScreen, a test used in the selection of personnel
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Rorschach test – card 1
Big business
All tests combined, personality testing is big business today
In the USA alone, 40% of large companies spend together over $400m each year on personality testing
About 2.5m people worldwide undertake the MBTI test each year
92% of UK employers and 69% of Australian HR managers believe psychometric tests are important and useful
In the USA, the MMPI test is used by 60% of police departments
Many large companies in the banking or security industry will not hire without the results of a personality test
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Hans Eysenck (1916-1997)
Eysenck was a major contributor to personality psychology
He is remembered for conducting the first studies (from 1951) linking personality with intelligence, political views and illness
In particular, he held that personality is biologically based (thus stable throughout life) and that intelligence is mostly hereditary
Eysenck’s model of personality is based on two main dimensions
Extraversion: activity, sociability, risk-taking, impulsiveness, expressiveness, lack of reflection and responsibility
Anxiety (or neuroticism): low self-esteem, unhappiness, worry, obsessiveness, guilt, hypochondriasis and lack of autonomy
(Psychoticism was added later; its role in Eysenck’s model is unclear)
Although his name is well-known of psychologists and his ideas have proved influential, Eysenck is not known of the general public and his work remains controversial
Some of this findings have not been replicated
Some of his studies were funded by tobacco companies; this attracted much criticism
Critics have accused him to have manipulated his data to support his theories
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Eysenck’s extraversion
For Eysenck, extraverts have a filter located in their lower brain, which insulates their upper brain from stimulation
This filter makes extraverts seek more stimulation (louder music, brighter lights, more numerous and intense relationships, etc.) than introverts
Arguments
Alcohol is a depressant drug, yet when people take it, they usually become more agitated: this is because alcohol acts like a filter and thus makes people seek more intense stimuli
Twin studies: extraversion scores of 64 pairs of identical twins separated from birth are more correlated (0.61) than of different twins brought up together (-0.17)
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Eysenck’s model
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Biological factors
Conditioning
Personality dimensions:
Extraversion
Anxiety
Effects:
Neurosis
Psychosis
Crime
Accident
Sexual orientation
Political ideals
Activating experiences
Eysenck Personality Inventory
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Type A
Type B
Personality and illness
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Introverts
Extraverts
Anxious (neurotics)
Stable
Addictions
Suicides
Accidents
Crimes
Neuroses
Obsession
Depression
Phobia
Smoking
Overeating
Caffeine
Psychoses
Type A
CHD prone
Type B
Cancer-prone
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Dispositionalism and personal responsibility
If dispositions are innate and define the behavior of the individual who ‘has’ them, then they limit the range of his or her behavior
For instance, if I have a strongly marked disposition to behave boldly (extrovertly, agreeably, etc.), then I will (because I can only) do so in most situations
In this sense, dispositionalism is a deterministic picture of human nature
My dispositions cause me to behave in certain ways: I am not responsible for my behavior, but my personality is
I do not act but my personality factors react to my (their) environment as I watch helplessly myself behaving, perhaps in ways I do not approve
Personal responsibility is a casualty of dispositionalism
Most personality psychologists do not seem to appreciate fully this implication of their ideas, however; one who did was Hans Eysenck
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General critical comments
Although referring to biological characteristics, personality tests like Cattell’s, Eysenck’s or the B5 are based on hypothetical, self-reported behaviour and not on biological evidence
In theory, if dispositions were really innate, they should be assessable through saliva, blood test, urine sample, DNA sequencing, etc.: to date, no such evidence has been unambiguously identified
Eysenck himself never produced physiological evidence for his link between lower brain and extraversion
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Testing the tests (1)
To be acceptable, tests have to meet three general criteria
Accuracy: are test results accurate for the same person?
Validity: does the test actually measure what it is supposed to measure?
Consistency: are the various components of the test consistent (measure the same thing)?
To measure accuracy, psychologists ask people to complete their test several times and compare results, the idea being if a test is accurate, its results for the same person must be stable over time
While 16PF and B5 test / retest correlations are good to acceptable over short period of times (people tend to answer in similar ways when tested days or weeks apart), longer term correlations are much weaker and the longer the interval, the weaker the correlation
Some tests like the MBTI have low to very low correlation scores even for short intervals (a few days) between test and retest
People ‘learn’ the questionnaire as they complete it; this presumably influences their answers
The accuracy of personality tests is therefore uncertain
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Testing the tests (2)
Since the Personality Factors are arrived from the observation (or self-report) of behaviour, they logically cannot be used to explain, let alone predict, behaviour
‘Shy people behave shyly’ is true but is a tautology, since the only way one can say that A is shy is because A behaves shyly in the first place
This is the classic circularity problem which can only be broken if an independent observation of the factor (e.g., shyness) is provided, by way of a biological test for example
This comment alone should suffice to disqualify personality tests completely
Personality tests are administered in situations in which tester and tested have a vested interest
Answers provided under duress are of dubious value
Besides, can pen-and-paper situations be compared with real ones? Is it not the case that actual circumstances will always take precedence over theoretical conditions?
For the individual tested, the temptation is very great to answer not truthfully but as per one’s understanding of the tester’s expectations, i.e., in socially desirable ways, adjusted to the actual situation
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Testing the tests (3)
Studies have repeatedly found that test scores do not correlate with behaviour and performance at work
At best, correlations have been measured at 0.21 (B5 ‘Conscientiousness’ factor), leaving 95.6% of variance unexplained
The average correlation between the B5 scores and performance is 0.07, meaning that the test ‘explains’ 0.005% of behaviour…
Conclusion: the validity of tests like the MBTI, MMPI, CPI, 16PF or B5 is too low to be taken seriously
Anyone making a decision on their results is a lot more likely to make a mistake than by throwing a coin (which correlates with behaviour 50% of the time)
Serious psychologists reluctantly admit this problem and try to deflect it by speaking of traits or factors as ‘theoretical constructs’, imperfect because reflecting the status of current research
After decades of research, however, no significant progress has been made
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Testing the tests (4)
Tests measure personality over a fixed number of dimensions (16, 5, etc.) by asking a fixed number of questions (187 for the 16PF, including demographics items)
That is, a given trait or factor is tested a number of times (tests do not necessarily measure different factors the same number of times)
Checking the consistency of a test amounts to checking whether the various questions which probe the same factor are answered consistently
These internal coefficient correlation are known as Cronbach’s alpha coefficients
While some tests have personality factors achieving alpha coefficients of 0.8 (i.e., questions probing that factor are consistently answered 64% of the time), values below 0.5 are not uncommon (meaning that questions for the factor are answered inconsistently 75% of the time or more)
Cronbach coefficient for Cattell’s dimension N (‘privateness’) is 0.19: one is justified in wondering what, if anything, the questions measure (consistency is only 3.6%!)
Source: Barret, P & Kline, P. 1982. An Item and Radial Partial Factor Analysis of the 16PF Questionnaire. Personality and Individual Difference Journal, 3(3): 259-270
It was this embarrassing lack of consistency that spurred psychologists into simplifying Cattell’s 16 factors in the 5 factors of the Big Five
They merged and renamed those factors that achieve the highest coefficients
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Equal Employment Opportunity aspects
When present, EEO regulations apply to all selection methods and techniques, including interviews and tests
An organisation using tests to select or promote employees must be able to prove
That its tests are related to success or failure on the job (validity)
That its tests do not unfairly discriminate against minority or even nonminority subgroups
Most personality tests would not resist a legal challenge
Ex: PsychScreen test in Soroka v. Dayton Hudson Corporation (Target Stores), California Court of Appeal, First District, 1991
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Soroka v. Dayton Hudson Corporation
Sibi Soroka applied for a job as security guard for Dayton Hudson Corporation in 1988
As part of the selection process, he was asked to complete PsychScreen (704 true/false questions, about 2 hours to complete)
Although hired, in 1989 Soroka filed against DHC for discrimination on the basis of religion, sex and race
The lawsuit slowly made its way through the Californian justice system; in January 1992, the Californian Supreme Court agreed to hear the case
That PsychScreen probed into private religious and sexual matters was admitted by DHC, but, as Californian laws allow, they argued that security concerns trumped privacy protection
Regulatory changes introduced in 1990 made this defense look very weak; in 1993, DHC agreed to settle the matter out of court
$1.3m were placed in a compensation fund and DHC promised not to use PsychScreen in California again
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Examples of PsychScreen questions
I feel sure that there is only one true religion.
I have no patience with people who believe there is only one true religion.
My soul sometimes leaves my body.
A minister can cure disease by praying and putting his hand on your head.
I believe in a life hereafter.
I am very religious (more than most people).
I believe my sins are unpardonable.
I believe there is a God.
I wish I were not bothered by thoughts about sex.
I have never been in trouble because of my sex behavior.
I am very strongly attracted by members of my own sex.
I have often wished I were a girl. (Or if you are a girl) I have never been sorry that I am a girl.
I have never indulged in any unusual sex practices.
I like to talk about sex.
Many of my dreams are about sex matters.
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Source: http://www.danpinello.com/Soroka.htm
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Faking the tests
One never scores well on a personality test; at best, one does not score badly
The reality is that, although many tests have a ‘lie scale’, they are easily faked
‘Lie scale’ questions are questions that do not seek to measure a personality factor but are meant to check whether the tester responded honestly to the other questions; examples:
‘Would you rather win that lose a game?’
‘Do you sometimes boast a little?’
‘Have you sometimes told lies in your life?’
Answers to these questions that do not match testers’ expectations are considered as lies (yet one could prefer losing in some circumstances, one sometimes boasts a lot, etc.), regardless of whether the person is honestly deluded about himself or herself
The safest strategy when completing a personality test is to answer in the most common and pedestrian way possible (conservative, but not too much) so as to score ‘in the middle’ in as many personality factors or dimensions as possible
In this way, the tester will have very little to say about the tested except that he or she has a ‘well rounded personality’ (whatever this expression is supposed to mean)
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Drucker: performance, not personality
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Peter Drucker (1909-2005) wrote repeatedly against the use of personality tests in the workplace; he insisted that
Jobs have to be objective and determined by outputs rather than inputs such as the personality of the incumbent or applicant
Structuring jobs to fit personality or hiring based on personality leads to favouritism, conformity and blandness
‘Perfect fit’ becomes misfit when the environment changes
The ultimate test of management is performance not personality, however defined
Would you have hired them?
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Dispositionalism: the personality cult
Although personality appears to be inversely correlated with intelligence…
Although personality tests are unreliable, invalid and inconsistent…
Although personality test scores cannot be correlated with performance at work…
Although most personality tests breach privacy protection regulations…
… they are still actively promoted by unscrupulous consulting companies and are increasingly popular with many uninformed if presumably well-meaning HR managers because they provide a scientific varnish to selection and promotion decision
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